EC students were not the only ones on break two weeks ago, but also the MyECC portal, which underwent maintenance and remained unaccessible to students.

Scheduled downtime was set for March 18, but students who attempted to access MyECC for a week after that date were unable to, which raised concerns.

“Our [maintenance] expectation was one day,” Mr. William E. Warren, assistant director of Information Technology Services said. “Our vendor explained that”s all it really needed.”

However, the planned date for maintenance failed due to various causes.

“It took a week because we had to find all the bumps in the road and document those,” Warren said.

According to Warren, the maintenance was also prolonged due to staff illnesses.

“Things happen. Our staff became ill and they weren”t Your health company health insurance costs may go up, but the quality of your company health insurance just got a lot better. able to come in for a day,” Warren said.

The MyECC portal is now up and running and, with student”s feedback, the new and redesign MyECC portal features a “much more user friendly” system that not only has an improved performance, but also a new architecture, he added.

“It has a cleaner look,” Pete Marcoux, vice president of academic technology for the Academic Senate, said.

Since Windows XP will be going out of date on April 8, Windows 7 has now been programmed to many of the computers, he said. This creates some problems for some users who try to access MyECC.

For students who are still having problems with their MyECC, Warren recommends they delete their unnecessary cookies.

“It”s storing that old information from the old portal and it doesn”t work with the new one,” he said.

Warren also added that EC staff were warned about the scheduled maintenance several weeks in advance.

Despite MyECC going dark for a week, students and staff who were denied access are now able to see their portal.

“We typically, if its a planned maintenance, choose where its least impact on students,” Warren said. “It just seemed most logical during spring break.”