The work will require a small number of short outages to Internet access (including MS Teams and off campus VPN) that will last up to 15 minutes. Users may experience short delays to internet access during the afternoon.
IMPORTANT: Colleagues are asked to be aware of any meetings scheduled on MS Teams during this time, as they are likely to experience interruptions; therefore, you may want to reschedule these for a different date. This will include Microsoft Teams Phone service for those Departments and Schools that have already migrated.
How does this affect me?
On campus:
During the short outages, users working on the Loughborough and London campuses will experience:
- Loss of internet access (from any web browser) but Loughborough University webpages will remain accessible.
- Short delays sending or receiving emails during this period.
- Access to local University resources which use Single Sign On (SSO) such as Learn and Workspaces may not be available.
Microsoft 365 services will also be affected causing limitations when syncing documents to online locations such as:
- OneDrive
- Microsoft Teams
- SharePoint sites
Off-campus access:
Users off campus will not be able to access any University resources that are campus-restricted as the VPN will not be accessible for brief periods during the afternoon.
Email will not be impacted and will continue to work but users on campus may experience a delay receiving it until the work is completed.
Microsoft Teams will continue to work for users off campus, but they may be unable to connect via chat or video call with users located on the campus network.
The University website will be unavailable off campus during the brief outages, and we have worked with Marketing and Advancement on Business Continuity plans.
Additional information
This time has been carefully selected to minimise the effect on teaching, by taking place during Leicestershire Schools half-term, and whilst having the availability of our Professional Services teams and external supplier to complete the upgrade.
Service status updates are available on the IT Service Availability page, with guidance on other ways to connect during a network outage www.lboro.ac.uk/it/service-availability.
If you have further questions or queries, please contact the Service Desk at IT.Services@lboro.ac.uk.