ACO Meeting Minutes April 13, 2017

Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on April 13, 2017

Present:  D. Keenan, R. Park, S. Hartung, K. McGowan, H. Balagtas, S. Speers, N. Bromley, J. Schildroth, W. Lewis, T. Marshall-Taylor

Co-ops:   M. DiGiacomantonio

Regrets: S. Paterson, M. Byerley, C. Wallace, L. Glofcheskie, J. Hillo

Attendees:

  • Sherry
    • Preparing for the Finance system changeover to Unit4 in new fiscal year:
      • Mapping old accounts to new format (Will for IST Webstore, Herbert for CALMS).
      • Freeze on purchasing starting April 15th due to fiscal year end.
      • Blackout period for Pcard April 15th to May 2nd, possibly longer as account numbers are changed.
      • Blackout period for Concur (expense reports) May 1st to 15th as account numbers are changed.
    • Faculty Rollover program:
      • Between 51 and 65 eligible faculty members. Working on determining final number.
      • Fourteen are currently on or going on sabbatical, so determining number of computers to be in this rollover versus how many to be deferred until 2018.
      • Dell is presenting new models on April 26th, which may delay communicating choices available to faculty rollover.
      • Blackout period for purchasing may slightly delay purchases in the new fiscal.
    • Course evaluation update:
      • Paper evaluations - 65 course received of 77 expected.
      • Five of above paper courses will not be included in department or faculty results as four are evaluations for grad students in Fine Arts and one student under a mentoring program.
  • Dawn
    • Bruce Campbell will be arranging a UW IT trip to Cisco office late April or early May to see current offerings of Cisco technologies, including networking, security, video conferencing, beacons / wayfinding, and Spark. One person from each faculty will be able to attend.
    • Categorized funded work for the coming fiscal year is listed at https://uwaterloo.ca/arts-computing/projects-april-6-2017. Work to be done over the next 12 months. Notable projects:
      • Lab updates for ML 109 in conjunction with construction running May through August.
      • ECH lab workstation upgrade with some older systems being re-purposed to a Fine Arts student lounge.
    • Replacement server for Artsstore1 has arrived.
    • Expecting replacement shelving for PAS 1084 and PAS 1098A soon.  
    • Ankita George, our new Computing Assistant for Spring term, will be job shadowing with Lindsay on Monday, April 17th. Jennifer Guillen, our new Technical Writer, will be with Janine on April 19th.
  • Bob
    • As a result of reorganization of the Associate Dean roles, Bob will be taking on Emanuel Carvalho’s role of Associate Dean, Co-op, Administration and Planning, while Manny is on sabbatical as well as continuing his current Associate Dean, Infrastructure and Technology duties starting in the Fall 2017 term.
  • Marco
    • Completed two assigned staff rollovers.
    • Emma Courlander could not see old emails prior to 2016. Fixed configuration for her to allow the emails to show.
    • Have organized the surplus room and filled a bin of ewaste. Advised Sherry that it’s ready for removal.
    • Created an inventory of printer ink cartridges for Sherry. All cartridges are stored in PAS 1084.
    • Have submitted project code to Nevil for review.
    • Working on replacing the podium computer system for ML 117.
  • Keith
    • Created a new certificate for Acoxy, the server monitoring system.
    • Have been working on the MPS move to EC5. Teardown went well except for an ongoing exam in two of the rooms. Could not get in until exams completed. Setup in EC5 has not gone as smoothly and is still underway with the following issues:
      • The area is still a construction zone.
      • There is no window in the lab area, so computers have not been installed.
      • No power connections to the lab desks.
      • The network uses dynamic addressing but ports are not patched until requested, so no systems have been connected initially. MPS will be included in Arts scope for SCCM.
      • Instructor offices are not set up yet as desks are not put together.
      • Requested connections for the three offices they are working.
      • Requested two private connections for the printers. One is working after updating the Nexus printer port configuration. Will check why the second printer is not connecting.
      • Connected IP phones in the three offices.
      • Created a list of the DVO port numbers for all the rooms so port patches can be requested preemptively.
      • Podium in one room is in an odd location. MPS may request that moved.
      • Still some work to be done, but staff is up and running.
    • Sean helped to assemble one of the new racks for HH 236A. Will need to have that and the new server moved. A key for the Econ Grad room was requested and picked which gives us access to HH 236A. Key is labelled and in our key cabinet.
    • Several MacTUG people met with Parallels to see how Macs could be managed through SCCM. AHS is using SCCM for Mac management and Environment is in planning stages. Munki provides what Arts needs at this time. Additional privileges would be required to provide similar functionality under SCCM. May do some testing to determine whether SCCM could eventually replace Munki.
  • Herbert
    • Updated Acrobat to display Chinese characters for Hong Ying Wang (ECON). Also updated her laptop and take home machine to use SCEP and removed Symantec.
    • Greg Campbell (DRAMA) Outlook was not syncing contact groups. It was set up properly but he was using an older version of Office. Recommended that he upgrade.
    • Resolved several bugs and new feature requests for CALMS:
      • Include Donated status for assets that are not ewaste but can be used in another area.
      • Date picker corrected to work in Chrome and Firefox.
      • Working on email reminder notifications for co-ops for assets that need to be wiped.
      • Retaining an asset that has not been wiped on dashboard.
    • Completed fiscal year reporting functionality for printing stats.
    • Will follow up with Mikal Skuterud (ECON) to see if the latest patch resolved the issue with footnotes on his machine. Cannot replicate the issue on own system after patch applied.
  • Sean
    • Updated MacOS Sierra image for DeployStudio to version 10.12.4 for take home machines.
    • Artstvc2 Vcenter server update was successful. Hosts in the cluster have been updated with critical patches.
    • Paper and online evaluations have been processed for Renison and Arts. Renison has few extra SWK CEL courses to evaluate then process. Conrad Grebel doesn’t appear to have any paper evaluations, but contact is on vacation.
    • Course approval application updated for this year with minor changes for Julie Mulvey.
    • Updated Office 2016/2011, Flash, Acrobat DC/Pro XI, Reader, Thunderbird, Firefox, Chrome and Skype for Business on Macs.
    • Configured and tested Bacula on Cogito2, and documented setup. Thinking of setting up a VM on Artsstore2 when it is deployed, to take over for Cogito. Bacula still seems to be the best free backup solution for us, based on testing some other systems (Duplicity, UrBackup).
    • Windows 10 start menu fix found and applied to language lab. Still unsure of cause, but suspect registry keys appear only in older Windows 10 image. Workaround is available instead of having to re-image. New rollover systems don’t have the keys and have not demonstrated the same symptoms.
  • Nevil
    • Psychology have two HP LaserJet 1022 printers that are having problems when clients are moved to Windows 10. Need to set up printing directly to the device to install the correct driver:  lack of printing restrictions and server side logs is an issue. Working on a solution.
    • Reviewing co-op projects for Marco and Lindsay.
    • Working with faculty member who accidentally typed in password in clear view on screen in front of class. They changed password immediately after class but were concerned about anyone trying to access account. Investigating email logs and authentication to identify any unauthorized access. Potential technology changes were discussed. Dawn will bring this up at the CTSC meeting as this could affect any instructor on campus.
    • SWORDC:
      • An Apache vulnerability identified by federal government IT could also affect VMWare.
      • Planning on migrating from VMWare to HyperV. A free version may be usable for the centre.
      • Guelph location will be temporarily shut down due to renovations. Data to be copied here to maintain researcher access during the site closure.
    • IST will be reimaging e-classroom podium machines with Windows 7 for the start of Spring term.
    • Kelly Deeks-Johnson at St. Paul’s is using Raisers Edge with Office 2016. Some issues have been noted. 
  • Scott (presented by Nevil)
    • Trying to test SAS in a VDI environment for the August reimage of the Finance lab. Discussion on Monday with SAS and IST to determine what can or cannot be done, and whether the School’s licensing agreement (separate from the campus educational license) can be updated to permit use of the server version.
    • Mulham's test system is in place to test Finance lab software on Windows 10. Determination to be made whether to move to Windows 10 and/or Office 2016 for Fall term.
    • Reviewing and cleaning up Arts GPOs.
    • Co-op evaluations are being finalized for the term. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback.
    • Working with IST on “evaluation state 2” for SCCM applications. Attempting to determine why the SCCM client on some machines doesn’t think it’s supposed to get specific packages, when we expect it to.
  • Jameson
    • Working on getlocalartsadmin.vbs script to have it log to a database with better security hygiene.
  • Will
    • Working on final preparation for ACO Lunch session on Tuesday, April 18th.
    • Deadline to make purchases through IST Webstore for this fiscal year is April 19th. Will need to determine when to make the switch to the new Unit4 account numbers in May.
    • All IST accounts have been migrated to Exchange 2016, and documentation has been updated. Overall experience has improved.
  • Todd
    • ITMS is working on reprogramming the Crestron system in ML 117 / ML 101. As part of their work, they are also removing unused audio-visual components and cleaning up redundant wiring. They will provide a list of items removed which likely will go as ewaste. The new smaller AV rack will be set up as work flow permits.
    • Power supply failure for the main video switcher has been fixed.
    • Have received more interest from Renison ELI to use ML 113 in Spring term. Michele Parrott is the contact to coordinate all requests.
    • Will need to supply 30 headsets to Renison for July bookings in PAS 1237. Michele to be responsible for them during the duration of these bookings.