M-Pathways Update
August 2023

The beginning of a new academic year is always a time of heavy system usage. The peak period during which students drop and add classes is anticipated to begin on Monday, August 28 and continue through the drop/add deadline on Monday, September 18.

UM Emergency Alerts are mass notifications used solely in the case of a campus wide alert that keep students, faculty and staff informed about major active emergencies. Examples of situations where a notification may be sent are a tornado warning, potential life threatening incident, hazardous spill, campus emergency, weather-related or other class cancellations. For additional details, see the UM Emergency Alert page.

Previously, the Supervisor ID Upload process allowed batch loading changes to the Supervisor ID or the Supervisor ID and Position Number (PCN). The process now allows batch loading changes to the Position Number without updating the Supervisor ID.

The Student Business, Student Center is a primary resource for academic, financial, and personal transactions. When assisting students, you can view the associated Student Business Help pages. In My LINC, search on keyword 'Student Business Help' for a link to the menu.

The help pages contain documentation and simulations for many student transactions. In Student Business, the Help link on the Student Center page opens this same menu. Specific transaction help is linked from other Student Business pages.

The Sponsor System, which is used to create uniqnames and online identities for sponsored affiliates, was upgraded successfully on Saturday, June 24. The Sponsor System allows units
to sponsor people as members of the U-M community for specified periods of time. Sponsored affiliates include, for example, short-term guests, contractors, incoming faculty/staff who need access to U-M resources before the hiring process is complete, and others.

The upgrade provided users with an improved interface that’s more intuitive and better meets accessibility standards. While most business functions and processes remained the same, some enhancements include:

• Self-service password creation was expanded so that all sponsored people with regular uniqnames choose their own passwords. All uniqnames require a non-UMICH email address that may be used by the sponsored person to set up their initial password.
• The process for creating multiple temporary uniqnames by uploading a list of names and email addresses can be used by all users. Previously, some users submitted spreadsheets to the ITS Service Center to be uploaded, which is no longer necessary because of improvements to processing speed and reliability.

For more information:

• Visit the Sponsored People page to learn about the Sponsor System.
• See the Sponsor System Upgrade, Summer 2023 - Overview of Change for details about the recent upgrade.

Update: The switch to the Duo Universal Prompt has been postponed to early 2024.

Duo has released a new Universal Prompt to replace their traditional two-factor authentication prompt that U-M currently uses. ITS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is planning to switch U-M Weblogin to use the Duo Universal Prompt on October 21, 2023. Visit the Upcoming Changes to Duo page on Safe Computing to see an example.

The advantages of the Universal Prompt include:

• Uses safer technologies offered by Duo.
• Streamlined login experience for users, such as defaulting to the last-used authentication method and requiring automatic Duo push notifications when that option is used.
• Designed and tested to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at the AA level.
• Support for more types of hardware security keys.

Users will not need to change anything to log in with the new Universal Prompt.

• There’s no change to the Duo Mobile app.
• All the methods that people currently use to log in will carry into the new prompt.

Units that have their own instances of Duo applied to their logins will receive detailed communications from IAM on how to prepare for and implement the new prompt.