| Aug. 27, 2010 COPY BY: Rana McDonald, 806-651-2129, rmcdonald@wtamu.edu MyBuff Offers WTAMU Students Single Sign-on Access CANYON, Texas—Signing on to multiple applications to access courses, grades and email is a thing of the past for students at West Texas A&M University, thanks to a new secure single sign-on for all University web-based applications. The new single sign-on capabilities will make web navigation much easier for WTAMU students by bringing all student-oriented applications and information together in a portal called MyBuff. Students will begin using the MyBuff portal Monday, Aug. 30 at http://mybuff.wtamu.edu with a single sign-on through CAS (Central Authentication Service) to view multiple applications without repeated logins. “This is like the web version of the University’s Student Success Center,” James Webb, chief information officer, said. “We’ve brought everything under one umbrella with a single sign-on for a one-stop shop for students. Navigation is simple, and it’s efficient and convenient for our students.” The MyBuff portal is a unified dashboard for all University applications for timely delivery of University services, resources and communication. The single sign-on portal provides student access to WTClass to search for course syllabi or to participate in online classrooms or to Buff Advisor to register for classes. The portal also provides various portlets for announcements, email, calendar events, bookmarks, weather, Facebook, search engines and an RSS news feed. MyBuff also can be integrated with mobile devices like iPad and iPhone and customized to deliver specific information to specific users such as certain classifications, majors or interest groups. “MyBuff gives students a personal homepage to help ensure their success as students,” Webb said. The new single sign-on component is designed by uPortal for the higher education community as an open source enterprise portal framework. Many universities across the country are using the portal system for efficient delivery of information to students, staff and faculty. Institutions using uPortal’s single sign-on include Yale University, Duke University, Cornell University, Kansas State University and Texas Tech University, to name a few. MyBuff is a joint effort between multiple areas in WTAMU’s Office of Information Technology and represents more than 700 man hours in graphics, programming and integration to get the portal up and running. The student portal represents Phase I, and Phase II of the project will focus on a single sign-on for faculty and staff web-based applications. For more information or assistance, call the University’s Help Desk at 651-4357 or email itsc@wtamu.edu. —WTAMU— | 