ACO Meeting Minutes June 23, 2016

Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on June 23, 2016

Present:  D. Keenan, J. Simpson, S. Hartung, K. McGowan, H. Balagtas, N. Bromley, S. Paterson, J. Schildroth, T. Marshall-Taylor

Co-ops:   D. Kingsley, I. Zinck, J. Hillo

Regrets: S. Speers, N. Bromley, L. Tomalty, C. Wallace

  • Dawn
    • CTSC Updates:
      • Engineering is using OwnCloud to provide disk space for faculty, researchers and lecturers beyond that provided by Nexus on a cost recovery basis. Engineering are willing to provide this service to everyone at UW subject to their Operational Level Expectations (service during business hours only).
      • Math/CS are moving toward the use of the campus Request Tracker system.
      • A new SEW course on computing at UW for new staff will be offered in October. It is encouraged that new employees from Fall 2016 forward attend to understand how computing is supported at UW and what resources are available.
      • Steve Bourque is the new Director, Technology Integrated Services, in IST.
    • A post-mortem was received from IST-TIS for May 11 network migration. Standards and documentation are being addressed to prevent future issues.
    • Housekeeping updates to the Memorandum of Understanding between ACO and IST have been reviewed and accepted.
    • Fall 2016 co-op hiring is progressing. The technical writer will visit on August 15th, and offers have gone out for one of the two Computing Assistants. Scott and Dawn will be interviewing for the remaining open position on July 11th.
  • Jennifer
    • This is Jennifer’s last meeting as Acting Associate Dean, Infrastructure and Technology. She has learned a lot and enjoyed working with ACO. Bob Park will be returning to the role on July 1st.
  • Sherry
    • Course evaluation labels have been sent out.
    • Working on matching invoices to orders received for Faculty Rollover and ensuring anything outstanding is addressed.
    • Ordered new Faculty computers. Seven new faculty in total (five ordered, two have not yet responded).
    • In Colin’s absence, a reconfigured laptop was ordered for an SAF faculty member as the original computer was discontinued and order cancelled by Dell. When the laptop arrives, we will follow ACO process to image and deploy the computer.
  • David
    • Continuing work with the rollover process. Deployments are going smoothly with only a few small fixes needed.
    • Working on editing and writing articles for the Fall 2016 Newsletter.
    • Maria Sillato from Spanish Studies had a Nexus Issue. Her computer account had been removed from the domain. Nevil has added it back and she has been reconnected.
  • Ian
    • Faculty Rollover continues. The issue of a person not being available for their rollover appointment was discussed.
    • Looking into using the bar code scanner to automate recording information. Updating existing documentation on how to use the scanner.
    • Setting up a temporary computer for Adrienne Lo (new faculty) in Anthropology for use until new computer arrives.
    • Re-imaged Phil Curry’s non-rollover computer.
    • Moved three computers and stored two for Speech Communication due to construction. One of the machines was a faculty rollover for Timothy Paci, so new computer set up at that time.
    • Working on Newsletter articles.
  • Janine
    • Newsletter articles for Fall 2016 are finished. Working on final editing. Reviewing and editing David’s and Ian's articles. Will pass articles to Lisa for review.
    • Met with Dawn and Sherry, and reviewed work to be done on the ACO lab bulletin boards. This work is started.
    • Created process documentation for accessible files and documents.
    • Visited the WCMS drop-in lab to get help on resizing images on the ACO site for move to Responsive Web. Only the banner needs to be resized. Other images just transfer over as they are.
  • Keith
    • Removed non-existing printers, psyprt3, p_econgrad, p_arts-is, nxsartsapp. There are some Psychology printers apparently offline that have documents pending. Will check with Bill and Michael to determine which of those printers no longer exist and should be removed from the server.
    • Anthropology to hold OAS2016 conference. A new email account has been created for them.
    • All St. Paul’s virtual machines have been moved to their new server. Set up new certificate for spc-starrez.
    • Needed to updated protocol list and cipher suite on spc-starrez in order to improve the SSLabs web security score from an F to an A.
    • Drobo disk failed and new replacement disk ordered. Due to age of the NAS and suspicion the failing disks may be a backplane issue, we are considering a replacement device.
    • SCCM Software packaging training completed.
  • Herbert
    • Re-imaged MacBook Air for Goetz Hoeppe (ANTH) and Joel Blit (ECON). Recently spoke with Goetz and he said the issue hasn't occurred since reimaging and update to Microsoft Office 15.23. Will follow-up with Joel later today. It appears to be a known Microsoft issue.
    • Implementing additional report features for Printing Stats as requested by Sherry to get a greater level of detail on usage.
    • Investigating use of barcode scanner with the CALMS project and automating rollover ticket creation.  
    • Set up admin account for Owen Gallupe (SOC). He could not login after a reboot due to Filevault registration being incomplete. There are no other known instances of this issues with the current rollover, but we have not determined whether other faculty receiving Apple computers have rebooted since receiving their machines.
    • Toby Malone and Andrew Houston (DRAMA) requested that we setup a listserv for the CanDrama (Canadian Association of Theatre Research). The list was previously hosted with University of New Brunswick but is moving to UW hosting. Sean setup the listserv on MailMan.
    • Completed SCCM training.
  • Scott
    • There were multiple issues with GIMP version 2.8.16 install. Continuing work to determine cause.
    • Working on task sequence for managed Windows 10 systems. Wanted to remove Store App but discovered a Microsoft patch released in the past month means Store App can no longer be removed.
    • There have been two requests for use of the USB floppy. Russel Adams borrowed and had it for an extended time when Paul Thagard asked to borrow one. Directed both to Canada Computers. USB floppy is back in ACO possession.
    • Mini-display port to HDMI/VGA adapters have been given to Danielle J. and Pat G. for their new loaner laptops.
  • Jameson
    • Worked on SCCM deployment failures doing troubleshooting and cleanup. There are three computers remaining from the report to fix.
    • Phil Curry desktop had a lot of failed SCCM deployments. Recommended to him to have it re-imaged to correct them. Ian completed that.
    • Contacted Stephen Markan in Science Computing regarding Brigitte Schneebeli’s webcasting request for an event to be held in STC2002. Was referred to Paul Miskovsky to see how we can accommodate this request. Room only has a projector so webcasting equipment will need to be brought in.
    • Created software package for new version of Dropbox using AutoIt and created documentation on how to do it for future reference. Will document any future deployment packaging.
  • Todd
    • The ceiling leak in ML 101A appears to be back.
    • Set up a drop-in session for SI 101R for a missed May session that had been paid for.
    • There was an error on langlab40 in ML 113 due to out of date BIOS. At least one other system in that lab has experienced similar issues. It may be worthwhile to update the BIOS for all workstations in that lab.
    • Bulats test June 29th ML 109 and ML 113.
    • François Paré received his Adobe Presenter software.

General Items:

  • Reminder to send an email to Sherry when work is done for St. Paul’s. Details to include specific date of work, time spent and description of work done as this level of detail is required for the line items on the invoice. Copy email to Michael Steinmann at St. Paul’s.
  • Mark Byerley will be attending the upcoming MacAdmins Conference at Penn State, and will give a presentation about it on July 7th.