ACO Meeting Minutes January 26, 2017

Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on January 26, 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

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

Regrets:  M. Byerley, C. Wallace

Attendees:

  • Dawn
    • There is a change to the rollover process for staff and faculty. Follow-up after deployment will now be done by the primary support person. This provides a consistent contact for staff and faculty since co-ops change each term..
    • eValuate statistics calculation has been corrected so online results match paper for all questions.
    • Wendy Philpott is IST point of contact for OpenScholar use in Arts, primarily dealing with content-related questions from communications standpoint. See email distributed January 26 detailing expected contacts for different types of issue.
    • Skype for Business enterprise voice is currently intended for new areas where phone service does not currently exist. All AHS grad students have Skype for Business non-enterprise accounts for communication/messaging. Skype for Business is working well and is encouraged for staff, faculty, grad students in Arts who are not assigned an office with a telephone extension.
    • Exchange 2016 server environment migration expected to proceed non-disruptively over the next few months as servers are built and tested. 50GB quota for all accounts by default, but exceptions will be allowed as necessary.
  • Bob
    • General Group meets next Tuesday. A decision will be made on whether to default to online course evaluation with opt-out to paper. Political Science has decided to go ahead with online as the departmental default.
  • Sherry
    • There are ten computers (8 desktops, 1 laptop, 1 iMac) to be upgraded in the 2017 Staff Rollover. Of those, three for Psychology and three for Stratford. Help Desk will image the Stratford computers. There is potentially one additional computer depending on decision made on length of contract and if position remains.
    • Work is underway for preparation of upcoming budget discussions. Dawn to meet with Keith and Nevil in the next few days to identify projects requiring special request funding.
    • Currently there is one 1TB (desktop), one 2TB (server) and one 250MB (SSD) hard drives in stock as spare parts. A list of cables and adapters is in Sherry’s office. Is there a need for additional adapters, memory, cables or hard drives not currently in stock? Let Sherry know as soon as possible.
  • Lindsay
    • Have been updating spares to Windows 10.
    • Learning PowerShell, to work on a script for security groups for Nevil.-
    • Attending the Student Leadership course on Presentation Skills for skill goal (communication).
  • Marco
    • PowerShell course completed. Three more course to complete.
    • Re-deployed a sessional computer for Political Science.
    • Told Herbert and Sherry about no 'wiped' option in status of computer on CALMS.
    • Swapped three computers with Psychology for Vanguard testing.
    • Deployed computer for Rachel Stevenson of French Studies.
    • Reviewed CALMS documentation for Janine.
    • Updating Wiki with the RTs
    • Completed first draft of first Newsletter article. Working on second article.
  • Janine
    • Editing Lindsay’s and Marco’s Newsletter articles. Scheduling interviews for articles on Proofpoint testing and a user experience story.
    • Starting work on Online Faculty Application System (OFAS) documentation with Herbert.
    • Working on Lynda.com courses. Working towards certificate for Student Leadership Program.
  • Keith
    • Cleaned up Watarts accounts with 570 accounts backed up and removed. One account was restored on request.
    • Artsweb account cleanup continues.
    • Worked on Alexis Dolphin’s boot problem due to non-enterprise DropBox. Added her to DropBox security group. Note the computer, not the user, needs to be added to the security group to have the change take effect.
    • Artslab security certificate updated.
    • Rebuild of DeployStudio workflow for PAS 1098 Mac lab. Re-imaging PAS 1098 iMacs to el Capitan.
    • l22huynh was in the Orphaned OU in Nexus but in Arts in WatIAM. Sean Mason in IST had no insight into this anomaly. Moved the userid manually but home directory was not created so Nevil did that manually.
    • Sent message about restricting SSH on Watarts earlier this week. All accounts with a login at any point in the last two years were contacted.
    • Adobe CC 2017 update will need special handling because of the way Adobe manages upgrades. Process requires an uninstall and then install.
  • Herbert
    • CALMS - added additional search field for the main asset list, enabled editing of user and userid from main list, currently testing on Artslab. Appreciate feedback for improvements and bugs.
    • Fixed column order in spares. Working on importing ACO Hardware database comments.
    • Added status "Returned to ACO" for assets that were returned and is currently being held for 30 days to be wiped and then either goes to surplus or spare. Also creating a listing of assets that have been returned with their scheduled wipe date and status.
    • LDAP search and add users from LDAP now works. User ids
    • Finished deployment of Mac laptop for Imre Szeman (DRAMA). USB keys for DeployStudio imaging were not working
  • Sean
    • Grebel online evaluations have been processed.
    • Have completed Office 2016 updates for Macs.
    • Updated the 5-Year Grad funding analysis with new data for the Dean's Office.  
    • Wrote Excel macro for Dean's Office to export teaching data into separate files for each department. Have shown them how to use the macro for future use.
    • Upgraded all WordPress sites to latest 4.7.1 version.
    • Cogito2 used for St. Paul’s image-based backups became unbootable. It’s been wiped and a fresh Ubuntu 16.04 install done. Server is now stable.
    • Artscp froze up requiring a forced restart.
    • Changed all MySQL database root passwords.
    • CEL no longer provides course evaluation reports since Winter 2016. Wrote program to download, process and produce department reports for CEL online evaluations. All reports on R: drive for Sherry to distribute to departments.
    • Printed labels and red sheets for Winter 2017 evaluation process for Colleges. Holding off printing labels for Arts courses until a decision is made on online versus paper evaluations.
    • Artsonline has been upgraded to 14.04 via migration. LearnLock used against this server should be tested before it’s used in production for exams.
  • Nevil
    • Working on software installation issues. Psychology test machines had Windows 10 pushed out and we have several reports to work on.
    • Installed new version of SPSS and Windows updates in SWORDC. One machine in Deep Freeze had to be unlocked.
    • Some students in HH 280 were having issues with Eikon and Thomson Reuter Accounting software. Automatic password setup is working well but passwords may need to change to prevent unauthorized access to licenses.
    • Reboot tool is working but going through on Friday instead of Thursday. Investigating.
    • Psychology has made several requests related to the reboot tool, some of which are feasible.
  • Scott
    • Working on Intel NUCs to replace eight AL lobby thin clients. Created device collection and added to appropriate collection receiving the Windows 10 image deployment. Work to be done during February reading week (February 21st-24th). Physical security change needs to be determined and tested.
    • Preparing the schedule to upgrade grad lab computers to Windows 10. Work to be done in February. Any Windows computers in Arts to be re-imaged will go to Windows 10. This includes staff and faculty rollover computers.
    • SAF server updated with recent Tableau software license update.
    • Imaged several spares and hot spares to help co-ops.
    • Co-op one-on-one end of month meetings to be held on Monday, January 30th.
    • Co-op interviews are set for Tuesday, January 31st with Nevil. Candidates have been selected and can go online to schedule their interview.
    • François Paré from French Studies retired on December 31st, 2016, and the department had been using his old system for their French Writing Centre. That equipment has now been returned to ACO to be wiped and is available as a hot spare. A loaner computer is being deployed for temporary use by the French Writing Centre.
    • Helped student with a Movie Maker issue in ML 257C. Internet Explorer would open instead of Movie Maker; profile was reset using Engineering Computing tool.
    • Updated Tableau software package to new version for HH 280, with new license code.
  • Jameson
    • Helped Scott to image some of the Intel NUCs.
    • Investigated the Start Menu/Taskbar issue with computers in the Language lab. This is a known issue in Windows 10, but Microsoft’s suggested fixes did not work. All machines will need to be re-imaged. We need to determine whether this issue is happening in other labs.
    • Helped Win Siemerling with some Office 2013 issues on his Laptop. Had to set up network access on Eduroam, activate Office, and set up his email. Win did not want to have the Office 2016 upgrade done at this time. Work will continue as Win’s schedule allows.
    • Investigating with Peter Schepers in IST about removing some start menu items for Psychology.
    • Working on an issue with Bonnie Bishop where she gets an error when saving documents from Office to her N drive. This is an intermittent issue.
    • Spec'd out a wireless microphone system for PAS 1237.
  • Will
    • Newsletter articles are underway.
    • Starting to plan for the ACO Lunch Session and looking for topic suggestions.
    • The Webstore will need to be updated due to the May 1st implementation of the new Finance system and changes in account numbers.
    • Exchange 2016 testing is starting in IST.
  • Todd
    • There have been some issues with the keyboard and mouse in ML 117. Newer equipment with supported Windows 10 drivers is needed.
    • A SPCOM co-op is familiarizing themselves with the Movie Maker software in ML 101 and ML 117 so they can operate it for small meetings.
    • Working with Jameson on Taskbar functionality in the Language lab systems.
    • Processing asset disposal for old furniture and e-waste from the Language labs.
    • Talking to Debbie Stanley-Pallas about getting the chair arms for ML 117 replaced again.
    • Looking into fob access to ML 101 and ML 117 to keep the system in support.