MFA Enforcement Begins May 13th for All Employees

Starting Thursday May 13th, all employee accounts will have Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) enforced for Microsoft 365 logins which includes Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive.  To make this day a non-issue for you, we are encouraging you to configure your account prior to this date.

Setup your mobile phone device.
Choose your preferred MFA setup instructions from the options listed below under . Call 610-499-1047, option #3 to assist you at any time.

Once completed, your next Microsoft 365 login will prompt you for the MFA action you chose during device setup.

Note: You will not be prompted for MFA while connected to Widener’s Internet or Wi-Fi Network.

Setup instructions for your Phone for MFA :
  Frequently Asked Questions- FAQs
  iPhone App Setup (recommended)
  Android App Setup (recommended)
  Text Verification Non-App Setup
(Can be used by Flip Phones, iPhones, or Android.)
  “Call Me” Non-App Setup (No Mobile Phone )


Anytime you are interested in testing MFA on your account, select one of the optional links below for instruction.
  Test using Safari
  Test using Chrome
  Test using Firefox

Note: You will not be prompted for MFA while connected to Widener’s Internet or Wi-Fi Network while testing.

5 things you should be doing for the CampusCruiser closeout

Here are the top 5 things you REALLY need to do if you haven’t already:

  1. Download all your data within CampusCruiser.

We have no guarantee that CampusCruiser will be available until March 15th, and even if it is, there is very limited support.  Therefore, we are directing everyone to download their data as soon as possible if you haven’t done so yet.

  1. Move your office data to a Group in Office 365.

Do you currently have an office within CampusCruiser that is only for use by internal students, staff, and faculty of Widener?  If so, you can create an Office 365 group for your office. For assistance with creating the group, please contact the helpdesk by opening a quick ticket. http://quickticket.widener.edu and select “Microsoft Group Creation” from the dropdown.

Also, don’t forget to extract your memberships list out of your offices!

  1. Remove all mail.widener.edu accounts from your contact lists.

We recommend when sending an email to check the address of the person you are sending the message to.  If it shows that it is a mail.widener.edu account, please click on the black X to delete that account for your contact. If you are unsure, please contact the helpdesk for assistance.

  1. Sign up for e2campus alerts.

Remember to sign up for the e2campus alerts.  Please go to the Omnilert page and register.  Click here to register for the e2campus alerts

  1. Subscribe to the blog.

We highly recommend subscribing to this blog to receive notifications when new information is posted.


Do you have a question or concern?  Please send an email to cruisercloseout@widener.edu for further assistance.

What will happen after Campus Cruiser’s sunset

We know that the community is eager for new information about the Campus Cruiser closeout process. Due to Cruiser’s upcoming disappearance, we have had to make a series of quick decisions. The good news is that we are able to consider a lot of options in the weeks before the holiday break, and now we’d like to share more information with you about our progress.

Announcing MyWidener

ITS is already constructing the platform to replace Campus Cruiser. Over the next two months, a sophisticated, mobile-friendly website will emerge, which we will call MyWidener. The essential features of Cruiser (committees, clubs, organizations, WebAdvisor, etc.), will all be available through this single point of access

MyWidener will use keyword searches to navigate and access services directly. While the new site is under construction, you may be interested to see a public version using the same software at University of Michigan: http://maizelink.umich.edu. (Note: everything you see there is just a link to web sites and applications that UMich uses. Our links will be tools that are specific to Widener, e.g. StudentPlanning, WebAdvisor, Office365, etc. The underlying software, rSmart OneCampus, doesn’t provide us with any of the applications or modules, it simply allows us a better way to find and access our own information.)

For departments that currently use Cruiser to publish websites, we have good solutions to offer as well. Members of the Cruiser Closeout team will be reaching out to those departments to coordinate.

In the meantime…

Campus Cruiser is still running for now. You may continue to use it to access administrative services, such as time sheets. Moving our essential services over to MyWidener is a top priority, and we do have a backup plan if we lose access to Campus Cruiser prior to the expected final shutdown in March.

As always, the best way to follow up to this message with questions or comments is to email cruisercloseout@widener.edu. ITS staff also continues to make updates to the Cruiser Closeout FAQ.

A few words about process

ITS is relying on the advice and feedback of Faculty Council TIRC and other stakeholders as we make changes. Even so, the urgency of this project has required us to make some of our decisions faster and with less input than we prefer. Thank you for your cooperation as we’ve worked through this challenging situation. We are also grateful for all the work you have done to move/manage your own information on extremely short notice.

Widener will be in a much better situation once this migration is complete.

Colleague and WebAdvisor Scheduled Maintenance Notice

PLEASE NOTE on your calendars that all Colleague, Informer, and WebAdvisor services will be unavailable from 6am Friday, November 23rd until 8am Monday, November 26th.

During this scheduled maintenance time we will be moving the Colleague environment to a new SQL database.  This update to the university’s technology infrastructure sets the stage for future improvements to many administrative services.

For the majority of students, faculty, and staff this transition should be a non-event.  For those who log in to Colleague every day please be on the lookout for a series of emails over the next several weeks that will inform you of changes to the Colleague environment that will be affecting you.

Colleague SQL Migration Project

Not everything we do in ITS is super interesting and fun.  (Shocker, I know!)  Some of our work is just takin’ care of business, and the SQL migration project for Colleague is one of those things.

Colleague is the primary Student, Financial, and Human Resources/Payroll information system for Widener University.  It is the system that handles most of our back-office administrative functions.  Some staff log directly into Colleague at their desktops every day.  Many other students, faculty, and staff access Colleague information from web services more commonly known as WebAdvisor and Student Planning.

Our Colleague environment is currently operating with an outdated database, which limits us from making many improvements. For two  years we have been progressing through silent phases of this project to move our data to a modern SQL server environment and SQL database.

We have completed the portion of the work that we can do without impacting others. Soon, we will make noticeable changes to the way some things are currently done at the University.

Our target Go Live date is Monday, November 26, 2018 and our intent is to make that day as non-eventful as possible.  Our very best outcome is that nobody even notices that we changed anything over the holiday weekend.  And to do that, we are going to begin enlisting the help of more of the administrative staff throughout the summer and fall to test, test, and test with us.

So stay tuned as we begin to announce upcoming changes.  And THANK YOU if you made it all the way to the end of this article.  Stop by the University Systems office in ACN and ask for your VIP gold star (while supplies last)!