Monday, March 20, 2006 –The long awaited rollout of Active Directory begins in the Buffalo Public Schools district this week at School 66. The Active Directory initiative is part of ERATE Year 8 and will provide a centralized network managment system for the district's 70+ buildings. (Currently each building manages its own user lists, document storage, printers, and desktop security.)

A team, made of  IBM consultants and server support personnel as well as BOCES and BPS technical support staff, will spend a week at  School 66, located at Parkside and Tacoma

For the most part, the work will take place behind the scenes, but, at some point during the week, users will not be able to log on to workstations in the labs, libraries, classrooms and offices.  These computers will be reimaged. The hard drive will be erased and a updated set of applications installed. When the team arrives at your school, if you  have – or think have– any documents on a computer, please notify one of the technicians, so the files can be copied.

Once the work is completed:
•  Teachers and students will have a new  screen name and password.
•  There will be no more generic users (ie. user099).
•  There will be a single user name for Macs and PCs
•  You can back up  your files from your PC laptop to the server
•  A teacher's or student's files will be available anywhere in the district