For Faculty & Staff

In case of an emergency, the ability to interact with employees and students in dispersed locations may become increasingly important. Texas A&M Technology Services provides tools to continue communications and maintain productivity. Most of these resources require advance preparation, and we encourage you to learn how to use these resources before a situation requires you to work off-campus.

If you work with financial information, student records or other confidential information, please encrypt all data, files and email messages that you use from home. Visit Encryption, for more information.

Keep Teaching

KEEP TEACHING AT TAMU is a resource for faculty to learn how to shift courses online. While the current conditions present a unique opportunity to position the delivery of instruction online as a key component to teaching and learning continuity, we recognize that these conditions are not ideal for the development of quality online learning experiences for students and faculty. KEEP TEACHING AT TAMU is designed to encourage course instructors to determine priorities, limit complexity for both faculty and students, and access resources to assist along the way. Check out keepteaching.tamu.edu for more details.

Need Help?

Help Desk Central is our main contact point for technology related questions. Contact them via email at helpdesk@tamu.edu or phone at 979.845.8300. If you need help with departmental IT resources, contact your department's IT support person. We also have a list of FAQs for working from home. 

During times where tech is not working as it should, you can check and follow ITalerts.tamu.edu to get updates on outages and maintenance in real time.

Call Forwarding and Voice Mail

Call forwarding allows you to forward calls from your office telephone to another telephone, such as your home phone or cell phone. You can also check your office voicemail from off campus. The first step to getting these features set up is to confirm what type of phone you have: Polycom phones and Cisco phones are branded with their names, and Centrex phones are analog phones that do NOT show Cisco or Polycom branding.
**Please note that to set up these features you will need to set them up BEFORE leaving campus.

Centrex

Clearspan/Polycom

  • Forwarding - Call forwarding instructions can be viewed on the VoIP Telephone page.
  • Voice mail - You can check your office voice mail from off campus. Help Desk Central has provided step-by-step instructions for managing your voice mail. You can also forward your voice mail to your email account and receive an email alert when you receive a voice mail. To learn how, visit the Voice Mail to Email page.

Cisco
** Cisco is the only phone system that can be managed remotely. Instructions are available via the instructions download. 

  • Forwarding - Call forwarding instructions can be viewed on the instructions download.
  • Voice mail - Voice mail instructions can be found on the instructions download.
  • Jabber Soft Phone - An application that is installed on a Windows or MAC device that can place and receive calls just like you are at your office desk. Instructions are available via the instructions download to add the Jabber client on your computer. 

Update Contact Information

Make sure that your contact information is up to date in case you need to be contacted at home. To update your contact information:

  1. Visit SSO.tamus.edu.
  2. Log in with your NetID or UIN, password and Duo Two-Factor Authentication.
  3. Click Workday from the SSO Menu.
  4. Click Personal Information from the menu.
  5. Click Change > Update my Personal Address/Phone Information.
  6. Edit information as needed and click Save.
  7. Exit Workday.

Zoom

Zoom allows you to have online meetings with anyone who has an Internet connection - including mobile users. You will be connected via audio and/or video and can share content from your computer which lets you see the same things at the same time - like PowerPoint files, Word documents or even browse the web together. Within the meeting, you can "Pass the Ball" so any attendee can control the meeting and share.

You have two options for Zoom audio: use the microphone/speaker in your computer or the mobile app for your phone, tablet or Apple Watch. To view your computer's available speakers and microphones, follow the instructions on IT.tamu.edu. Get started at tamu.zoom.us.

Note: Zoom Videoconferencing has requirements for user operating systems, devices, internet bandwidth and more. Visit support.zoom.us for the full details on all requirements.

Virtual Private Network (VPN)

There are some resources, including websites or files, that you can only access on campus. VPN allows you to be "on campus" from anywhere by providing the same level of access to resources as being directly connected to the campus network.

Get started at the Virtual Private Network page and follow the instructions for connecting through Windows or macOS using the Cisco Secure client. VPN requires Duo Two-Factor authentication to log in. Using a landline phone as your Duo authentication device? Learn more about the unique steps for phone call Duo authentication for VPN.

**Texas A&M Health VPN Note: If you are accessing the Texas A&M Health VPN only, follow the instructions for connecting through the Texas A&M Health Virtual Private Network for either Windows or macOS using the Cisco Secure client.

If you use Windows, you may be able to use Windows' Remote Desktop to access your work computer. Contact the IT support employee for your department for more information about accessing your files and computer resources from home.