• MSDNAA Overview

• How to Obtain Software

• CSIS Technical Support for MSDNAA

The MSDN Academic Alliance is an annual membership program for technical departments in the area of Computer Science, Engineering, and Information Systems. This subscription includes Microsoft platforms, servers, and developer tools software.

Any CSIS faculty member, along with any student who is taking at least 1 credit from CSIS is eligible to have a copy and use any of the MSDNAA software forever, as in "for life". Students are not required to remove or uninstall the software at the end of the semester or when they graduate from Pace... it is theirs to use and keep for as long as they wish.

*** Important Information *** As part of the license agreement a you are limited to one installation only. Therefore you need to think carefully about where to install MSDNAA software. If you have more than one computer i.e. home computer and laptop or work computer, you will need to choose on which one you'd like the use the software.

The MSDNAA subscription administrator, E-Academy, keeps track of what software has been downloaded by each user. Therefore students should be warned that they should not remove software at the end of a semester as they may need it in a future class and would not be allowed to download it again.

A wide range of programming tools (Visual Studio.net, Visual Studio 6.0), operating systems (Windows XP), software development and management (Visio and Project), and other packages are available. The complete list of software is available at the Pace E-Academy site,
http://msdn01.e-academy.com/elms/Storefront/Home.aspx?campus=pace_csis.

The distribution of MSDNAA software is administered by E-Academy, a company working with Microsoft to manage subscriptions for colleges and universities. In order to obtain MSDNAA software, you must first obtain an account for Pace's E-Academy site,

http://msdn01.e-academy.com/elms/Storefront/Home.aspx?campus=pace_csis.

E-Academy accounts can be obtained by any CSIS faculty member, or any student taking a CSIS course.

1. Faculty:
   Send an e-mail to msdnaa@csis.pace.edu from your Pace e-mail account. Your username will be your e-mail account. Therefore all communication, announcements and support for both faculty and students will be through Pace e-mail accounts. You will receive an e-mail with your account information and website link. Please after logging in click on the support button and read the FAQ section. It is very informative and helpful.

2. Students:
   Accounts for students are created and/or reactivated at the beginning of every semester. As per the agreement with Microsoft accounts can only be active during the lapse of a semester and a student must be registered for at least one credit for a csis course. Accounts will not become active until the start of the semester and they will become inactive at the end of the semester. If you need to resolve an incomplete session after the official end of the semester, you request must come through your instructor.
   Your account, once created will be the same one from semester to semester. Only the availability to download new software will activate/deactivate based upon your registration from semester to semester.
   **PLEASE NOTE** If you register late it is possible that your account may not be activated. If you are currently enrolled in a course but do not yet have access, please request activation through your instructor who can confirm your enrollment.
   

• Create faculty E-Academy accounts
• Create and re-activate accounts for qualified CSIS students
  **must be currently enrolled in at least one credit of CSIS
  **management of accounts can only happen during the semester, i.e. while classes are in session
• Provide troubleshooting support for MSDNAA download problems

• Microsoft Developer's Network - this site contains substantial documentation on all of these products

• MSDNAA Home

• Microsoft Home Page

We also cannot provide support for problems encountered during the installation of these products. Many of these downloads have quite complicated installation procedures which require you to first install patches to your operating system, and/or burn installation CDs from the files you have downloaded. You need to read (and print out!!!) the installation instructions from E-Academy and follow them exactly. Be sure to also reference the E-Academy FAQ.