Engineering is now encouraged to use Apporto for remote instructional computing.
Mosaic Anywhere to Apporto Transition
Mosaic Anywhere, the College of Engineering's former remote computing tool, served for 20 years. The service’s eight-year-old hardware could not be upgraded to Windows 11. So, as Microsoft support for Windows 10 came to a close, the Mosaic Anywhere service was retired and permanently shut down on August 8, 2025.
Apporto, the UNC Charlotte standard for remote instructional computing, was selected as the replacement for the Mosaic Anywhere service. Apporto is a commercial service for remote functionality and is widely used and cost-effective.
Apporto offers several significant benefits for both faculty and students, including:
- Faster Logins: Log in to Apporto in less than a quarter of the time it takes to log into Mosaic Anywhere.
- Cloud Offering: Providing reliable and accessible virtual desktops from anywhere with an internet connection.
- Familiar Interface: Apporto is already utilized by students in other colleges and courses across campus, offering a consistent virtual desktop experience.
- Up-to-date hardware, including GPU acceleration: Ensuring access to modern and powerful resources, including a GPU accelerator for computationally intensive tasks
- Canvas Integration: Facilitating seamless access to Apporto resources directly within our learning management system.
- Cloud Storage Integration: Allowing easy integration with popular cloud storage services such as Google Drive and OneDrive.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Enabling students and faculty to share screens for collaborative work.
- Mapped Drive Access: We plan to enable the tunnel feature for access to mapped network drives.
Using Apporto
The Apporto system is separated into three components for Engineering: