Contact Us

CTools Support Chat (Beta) -- You can now reach CTools Support Staff through instant message

Beginning May 1, 2007, you can contact CTools Support via instant message.  CTools Support Consultants are available to chat through instant message Monday through Friday, 10 am to 3 pm.  CTools help is available for chat on both Yahoo! Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). 

- Simply add our screen name, ctoolshelp, to your Yahoo or AIM buddy list and send us a message with your help request.

Phone

Between 9:00 and 5:00, Monday through Friday you may telephone CTools Support at (734) 615-5512. We cannot return long distance calls. Voicemail messages left outside of these hours will be retrieved at the start of the next business day. If you leave a voicemail message, please speak clearly and include the following information:

- name and/or URL of the site in question

- browser being used (include the version number)

- operating system being used

- any error messages

You may find the answer to your question in this list of commonly-asked questions:

Don't see a tab for your course?

Synching registrar data with CTools: Due to security concerns about access to Registrar data, CTools does not always have up-to-the-second changes that have been made to class registration information. Student course drops/adds are processed by the Registrar, and CTools syncs up with that data periodically, but is not connected live to the Registrar data. This can cause a lag between when a student adds a class and when the student sees the course site tab in CTools.

By 9:30am each morning, data from a backup copy of the Registrar's data that was made the previous evening is available to CTools. Thus through the day, CTools can be up to 24 hours behind live Registrar data. Students who register for a class, or drop a class, may not see the results of that action in CTools until the following day.

Do you have too many tabs for older and unused course and project sites?

It's not possible to delete old course and project sites from your Workspace. However, you can hide the tabs for sites you are no longer using. To do this:

1... Open your workspace if it is not already open.

2... Click Preferences in the menubar.

3... Click Customize Tabs along the top of the main window.

You will see two small windows with scroll bars. The window on the right contains all the sites that are visible as tabs or in the pull-down menu with site names. The small window on the left, "My Sites," is a holding place for the sites you make not visible.

4... To add site or remove a site from Sites Visible in Tabs list box, select the site and use the right or left arrows to move the site.

Is there a way to reduce the amount of email I get from CTools sites?

You can reduce the amount of email you receive by going to the Preferences area and choosing to receive only high-priority emails from CTools. (Click Preferences in the left-hand menubar while you are in your My Workspace.)

However, you may want to reduce the amount even more. At present, there is no feature in CTools to do this, but you can set up a mail filter that will redirect all emails you receive with @ctools.umich.edu to a mail folder that you specify. You can also set it up so that emails with @ctools.umich.edu are filtered out, except those that are from a particular site or site(s), such as anthro@ctools.umich.edu.

For complete information on how to set up mail filters, see the ITCS (Information Technology Central Services) how-to document S4325, "Using Server-Side Filters to manage/Organize Your E-Mail (Including Accept and Block Lists)." Click this link to see the document:

http://www.itd.umich.edu/itcsdocs/s4325/

What is the CTools maintenance schedule?

CTools is periodically unavailable during scheduled maintenance windows in order to maintain the smooth running of the system. Regularly scheduled maintenance periods are:
- Tuesday, Thursday 5am-7am
- Saturday 3am-7am

If you are attempting to access CTools during these times, you will receive a status message indicating that the site is unavailable. Please be sure log off the system prior to the beginning of a maintenance window or you may lose your session and any unsubmitted data.

How can I avoid error messages when I print PDFs from CTools?

1. Please keep PDF files sizes to less than 10MB or smaller whenever possible to reduce download and print rendering times.

2. Update your desktop software to the latest PDF creation software where possible to ensure maximum compatibility.

3. Please select the grayscale option when converting your documents to PDFs. Use this option when your PDFs do not absolutely have to be in color. The method for choosing grayscale varies from one type of computer to the next and from one application to the next. Often the option can be found in the print dialog box that opens when you choose the Print command.

Don't see a link for a site in My Courses?

CTools does not work with My Courses the way the original UM.CourseTools did. The best way to find sites for your courses is to open CTools and look for the site tab for your course.

Having trouble using your browser's back button?

PLEASE DON'T USE YOUR BROWSER'S BACK BUTTON! In the CTools, the back button won't always render the desired results. Please use the navigation tools in CTools, instead.

Don't see your course content?

If you don't see your course content, make sure you have selected the correct tab along the top of the main window.

Questions about course content?

If you have questions about course content, please contact your instructor.

Would you like to set up a course site or project site?

Click the My Worksite tab if you are not in your workspace. Click the Worksite ! Setup button on the left menubar. Select the type of worksite you wish to create, and follow the on-screen setup steps. (Only instructors can set up course sites.)