OIT's FY11 Draft Recharge Rates are posted on the IT Business Office website (link below) and are also available through the OIT Support Center (450-8300) for your reference.

http://www.alaska.edu/oit/business/recharge-services/

OIT is providing these rates now for FY11 budget and planning purposes. These rates are considered draft until July 1, 2010.

If you have any questions about OIT's recharge services please contact Wendy Rupe, Recharge Fiscal Officer, at x6908 or wendy.rupe@alaska.edu
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Five Blackboard Gradecenter help sessions will be offered between now and May 14 to help instructors wrap up grades before the end of the semester.

Wallk-in times are available for TOAD, Google Apps, and Blackboard on Fridays.

A new Social Bookmarking Tools class will be offered on May 12.

OIT will have some training opportunities during Staff Appreciation Day including: Making the most of your web browser - Firefox, What's New in Google Apps, Calendar, and an introduction to Twitter. Be sure to sign up early since classes are limited in size.

Discover new and interesting features in your Google Apps! The two tips below, and many others are here: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/?utm_source=us-en-gmnav&utm_medium=et&utm_content=gmnav

Posted by Oana Florescu, Software Engineer

Since my friends share their schedules with me in Google Calendar, when I want to see a movie with them, I can check to see which nights they're free before sending out an email about it. However, I need to switch between Gmail and Calendar in order to check their availability and send an email invitation.

Today, we're launching a new feature that brings tighter integration between Gmail and Calendar, making it easier to create Calendar events from within Gmail. When you compose an email message, there's now an "Insert: Invitation" link right under the subject line.

When you click it, a small window appears that displays your availability as well as that of the people you're emailing provided you have permission to see their calendars.

You can check your friends' availability and choose an appropriate time for the event you're setting up right from there. When you've settled on the details of the event, click the "Insert Invitation" button and a preview of the invitation will appear in your email message.

When you send the email, the event gets added to your calendar as well as to your friends' calendars.

Posted by Manu Cornet, Software Engineer

Labels are more flexible than folders because a given email can have several labels but can't be in several folders at the same time. A highly requested feature for labels, though, comes from the world of folders: the ability to organize labels hierarchically.

If you think this might be useful to you, go to the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, look for "Nested Labels," enable it and click "Save." You'll then need to name your label with slashes (/) to make it the child of another. For example, let's say you wanted to create a simple hierarchy with a "Home" label, and inside it a "Family" and a "Vacation" label. Just create three labels with the following names:

Home
Home/Family
Home/Vacation

You can then create "Home/Family/Kids," "Home/Pets," etc., to get something like the screenshot on the left. If you had the parent label "Home" before you don't have to create it from scratch.

You can create complex hierarchies of labels if that's the way you like to organize your mail, and you can expand/collapse labels to save space. You'll always be able to tell whether a given label contains unread messages in its collapsed child labels by looking at whether it's bold or not.

Please note that this lab doesn't play nicely with the "Hide Read Labels" lab. You might not get exactly what you expect if you have both labs enabled; for example, the collapse/expand icons won't always appear when they should.

Another highly requested feature is the ability to preview messages to get a glimpse on what they contain and maybe take immediate action without opening them.

This is exactly what "Message Sneak Peek" does. After you turn it on, right-clicking on a line in your inbox shows a preview pane with the message in it.

You can also use keyboard shortcuts for a faster sneak-peeking flow (enable keyboard shortcuts in Settings first if you haven't done so): hit 'h' to open a sneak peek card, then navigate with 'j' and 'k,' and dismiss the current card by pressing "Escape." Messages you peak at will stay unread (or it wouldn't really be a sneak peek, would it?).
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OIT's Training & Development Group (part of the Support Center x8300) has its May training offerings available online - http://www.alaska.edu/oit/training

Classes in May include:

• Blackboard Grade Center
• Google Apps
• Roxen
• TOAD
• TOAD Reader
• Banner Navigation
• QMenu
• QAdhoc
• Adobe Acrobat

Go to the TRAINING CALENDAR for information or to register for a class.