ACO Meeting Minutes February 9, 2017

Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on February 9, 2017

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

Co-ops:   M. DiGiacomantonio, L. Glofcheskie, J. Hillo

Regrets: M. Byerley

  • Dawn
    • The default for course evaluations has been changed to online. Paper will remain available where requested and for those courses that are more complicated to administer online, such as MTax in Toronto and courses co-taught with WLU at the Basillie School. February 17th is the deadline to request paper, then online course evaluations will be set up.
    • The March audit report for the internal audit committee is due February 10. Work for disaster recovery will be recorded as incomplete.
    • Work Placement requests for three co-ops for ACO for Spring, Fall and Winter terms have been submitted to the Dean of Arts.
    • Staff performance appraisal meetings will be held between February 22nd and March 7th. Awaiting clarification from Kathryn on use of the new rating grid.
  • Bob
    • ML 109 computer lab will be unavailable in the spring term as it gets reconfigured for mixed usage (research and teaching, no fixed desks).
  • Sherry
    • With W17 course evaluations now defaulted to online, the scope of work is greater at the front end and less at the end of term. Work is underway preparing for online course evaluations.
    • Some processes are changing for the 2017 Staff Rollover. This is being determined and documented so training can begin soon.
    • With the move to CALMS current procedural processes will be changed:
      • New assets will be added on CALMS by Sherry as equipment is purchased. This will generate the ACO #. When equipment received, Sherry will update information and generate an RT so work can be appropriately assigned.
      • When changes are made to assets already set up on CALMS, such as changing out a defective monitor, loaning out a computer, work requested at the HelpDesk, or if missing information comes to light, CALMS is to be updated by the person doing the work.
      • Everyone can update any missing information on CALMS that you discover. Even adding a comment about an issue will help in tracking patterns of a piece of equipment to see if it needs replacing.  
  •  Lindsay
    • PXE booting in PAS 1075 was not working.  Scott and Keith got network boot working from one of the ports in PAS 1077.
    • Have set up four hot spares and four regular spares.
    • The two long term Psychology computers have been picked up by the grad students.
    • Followed up with Chantale Bessette, Sessional in French. She's not usually on campus, but her computer is working fine. She will email if there are any problems.
    • A list of suggestions has been compiled for Sebastian to try on his really old printer. The drivers are supposed to be included in the OS, but he can't get Windows updates to work, so that is being worked on first. This is a personal home printer and several hours have been spent. Further issues supporting this printer to be directed to Dawn.
  • Marco
    • Alan Macnaughton cannot download images in Daily Bulletin emails despite whitelisting as sending address is different each time. Recommend filling out the Daily Bulletin survey.
    • Janice Aurini problems opening or saving Microsoft Word documents on Mac. Restarting her computer is working sometimes. Office 2016 has several known problems on the Mac platform.
    • Issue with Sociology copier: sensor problem on printer, selecting tray 1 instead of auto select is a workaround. Contact Retail Services to fix it.
    • Imaged ACO Department laptop
    • Jennifer Doyle had both Connect and mailservices accounts and email redirection issues.
    • Finished all 3 newsletter rough drafts
    • Continue learning PowerShell through courses and eventually start coop project
  • Janine
    • Have edited two of the three Newsletter articles for Marco and Lindsey and given them to Will for his review. Working on last articles.
    • Bulletin board borders has been received. Content is being reviewed and bulletin boards updated as time permits.
    • Testing and creating documentation for OFAS and CALMS.
  • Keith
    • Have received new certificate for Artscomm, the e-commerce server for SAF.
    • Packaged up Unity3D for Stratford and pushed to several systems. Provided package to Mark Byerley for further installations (license login required). Stratford has 24 licenses.
    • Backed up the files from Adie Nelson's 14-year-old vault system onto a USB.
    • Elise Lepage had slow logins that were traced to old Documents and Desktop directories in her profile. Removed a lot of files from her profile and improved logins from 12 minutes to less than 30 seconds.
    • A student experienced very slow printing of a PDF to the PAS 1099 printer. She had changed the print options from colour to black and white due to concern about getting charged for colour printing, but this caused the printer to re-render the pages. Further testing is needed for a standardize solution.
    • Lynne Taylor from History had her Safari on MacBook hijacked. Used Malwarebytes and found six different pieces of malware. This has now been cleaned. Sean notes that a hard reset of Safari can eliminate malware that hasn’t got a foothold on the system outside the browser.
  • Herbert
    • Grad lab computers in Economics were having issues running TeXworks. Determined that econgrad9 was affected, but others seemed fine.
    • Enabled soft deletes in OFAS after cases where admin users accidentally deleted applicants. Applicants were able to reapply.
    • An RT button for assets has been added on the CALMS development site for testing. Will deploy to production if no further features are required. The test version is using a test queue in RT.
  • Sean
    • Murielle Landry replaced Danielle Jeanneault on Feburary 1st in AUO so set up computer accordingly. Built a temporary machine for Heather Smith in the Dean’s wing for her to finish a project.  
    • Processed Dean's Honour List data for Donna Joudrey. This is done yearly so personalized emails can be sent based on awards won.
    • Online FR/SPAN TA evaluations set up for this term.
    • Fixed issue with Advancement loaner laptop where Office would crash on open. Had to force Windows updates by deleting local update cache. Sherri Anne Arsenault will have the laptop run Windows updates on a regular basis to prevent this happening again.
    • Created reports for Classics, Economics and Conrad Grebel with data broken down by class size for department review.
    • Trying to get access to create/register VMs in IST's VMware infrastructure so we can test disaster recovery.
    • Added Duplicity backup to Artsadmin to provide three months of dailies.
    • Working on writing code to automate processing of online evaluations.
    • Support for CrashPlan on OSX as a server platform is ending May 2018. Will need to migrate to Windows or Linux by next year. There will be 9 TB of data to move.
  • Nevil
    • The Reboot tool runs at 6:00 a.m. +/- 10 minutes every day if no one is logged on, forcing a reboot with a popup warning in before the end of the previous day on Thursdays (if default is used). This affects all Nexus workstations in Arts. Some people have only recently seen this pop-up and there appears to be a bug in one version that reboots daily. Nevil will investigate reported issues.
    • MatLab 2015a was not installing in labs since the Windows 10 upgrade. Windows 10 was missed in the package as a valid OS. This has been fixed by IST.
    • Working on an improved script to test if executables exist on a machine (to distinguish between labs, offices and Psychology in specific locations) to easily test if software is all there.
    • Investigating Psychology SCCM permissions. More people are being given access by IST to view reports involving deployments that have a scope beyond their areas.
    • Writing a PowerShell script to cleanup brand new machine SCCM direct queries.
    • Beginning to investigate options to upload machines to Windows 10. There are several issues to consider, as was discussed at the February projects meeting.
  • Scott
    • Splash screen for labs is displaying information on the undergraduate student survey until February 16th..
    • Updated a number of documents related to co-op student’s work terms.
    • Reached out to St Paul's for feedback on our IT relationship, the activities with them, how we have done, are they happy. Feedback received has been generally positive. Some email problems were noted: this may have been related to campus email issues in addition to any StarRez configuration reversion from vendor updates. Peter Penner is a doing a good job of first level IT support for St. Paul’s.
    • Working with Science Technical Services to design covers for AL cabinetry to secure NUCs. Have found a good, inexpensive solution. Will get a quote for the quantity required. Hardware change will occur during reading week (February 21-24).
    • Re-imaged Cynthia Tremblay's system to Windows 10. Fixed the Flash error she had been seeing since last September. Her Thunderbird addressbook was not preserved, likely due to the offline files synchronization issues. She has been advised to call ACO right away when there are any problems instead of waiting.
    • Troubleshooting the ethernet port in PAS 1075, which fails downloading the Windows 10 image over the network.
  • Jameson
    • Games Institute:
      • Started imaging three "Super Gamers" high end gaming computers to WIndows 10. Some have specialized equipment attached, such a biometric reader and motion detection equipment.
      • Various system moves and imaging of computers.
      • Updating the GI Windows 10 image with additional requested applications and current Windows updates.
    • Working on documentation (ACO troubleshooting guide and podium user manual) for the new wireless microphone system for PAS 1237. Hope to have the mic ready for use next week.
    • Troubleshooting R deployment issues with several Psychology computers. Should be working and not sure why. Asking IST (Mike Cocker) to investigate.
    • Researching rack replacements for use in ML 101A. Space, security, and existing furniture are constraints.
  • Will
    • Skype for Business deployment requires identifying who should get the service. AHS and Science have deployed to their user communities. Looking at accounts in the main Arts Users container in NEXUS to see if this is a good fit: this is roughly 3000 accounts including employees and grad students. Will investigate connecting with other Skype for Business instances.
    • IST's Virtual Desktop service is available by request. Possible uses include former thin clients or for older machines.
    • Exchange 2016 rollout continues. On February 22nd, the login screen will change to 2016 server. After login, users will continue to use the 2010 interface until their mailbox is moved. IT staff will be invited to move first, likely through FACCUS. Looking for testing volunteers.
    • Working on Newsletter article editing.
  • Todd
    • ML 101/ ML 117 connection is being used as normal, with complaints of tinny sound problems from SPCOM 325.
    • Replacing eight pairs of arm caps for chairs in ML 117.
    • Adobe Connect usage in ML 117. A booking during reading week requires a webcam. ITMS will provide a loaner.
    • Nexus workstations have been reimaged and taskbars are now usable.
    • Nevil worked on preventiing shutdowns of Nexus workstations caused by the Shutdown and Log Off menu items being too close.
    • Plant Ops is looking into a leak in ML in the hallway between the main building and the theatre. Contractors have been looking at it and have also found that the ceiling in ML 101 is stained. This appears to be where the roof repair was recently done.
  • Colin
    • Had delays of over a month and a half and no status available with a Dell order. Found that the Dell rep is no longer working for Dell. Situation has been sorted out and the order processed and received.
    • Room projector in HH 2104 was not starting and required two to four restarts to come up. Unit was diagnosed as not working and has been replaced.