ACO Meeting Minutes June 25, 2015

Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on June 25, 2015

Present:  Keith, Scott, Nevil, Herbert, Barb, Dawn, Jennifer

Co-ops: Sarah, Chris, Darius

  • Dawn 
    • CTSC updates
      • Engineering will be changing their faculty printing services to use local Watcard integration. They don't have a timetable for this move yet.
      • AHS Signed an OLA for support of Exchange that may be useful as a template for other faculties.
      • IST has plans to move to a one router per building network design as infrastructure routers and switches age out of service over the next several years. The end goal is redundant networking to all buildings including separate fibre paths.
    • The Admin Coordinator position has been advertised. The job posting will automatically go external if needed. Dawn and Jennifer will interview candidates. Until we have the position filled:
      • Ayala in Anthropology can place Pcard orders for both ACO and other Arts purchases under Dawn's direction (thanks to Bob and Maria)
      • Bookings for PAS 1237 can go through Sean and Dawn (bookings@watarts.uwaterloo.ca email address goes to both)
      • Do not wait for 36933 or 84542 to ring three times before picking up
      • If in doubt about anything you would usually refer to Barb, check with Dawn.
    • New space construction is effectively finished. Awaiting network, phone, locks, furniture, and blinds.
    • Reminder: Herbert, Keith, and Mark will be at the PSUMacAdmin conference July 7-10.
  • Jennifer
    • In ML for about a month, office in the Speech Comm area. Then will be in an office at the near end of the Dean's wing.
  • Barb
    • Barb has created a job manual for the Admin Coordinator position. There is a physical copy in a binder on her desk and a soft copy in the "Admin Coordinator" directory on the ACO share.
    • A projector. screen, and mounting hardware were recently removed from the AUO wing. The equipment is currently in Marilyn's old office and can be used for any Arts department that needs a new or replacement projector.
  • Chris 
    • Receiving a lot of calls from SAF. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a lot more volume.
    • Some office moves in HH for people wanting to get away from the noise of construction but remain in the building.
  • Darius 
    • A total of eight rollover PCs have been delivered. Laptops are waiting for the Crashplan server and licenses.
    • Taking Lynda courses (Java, HTML) to prepare for Chromebox project.
  • Sarah 
    • Working with Herbert on the Mac Rollovers. Binding to Active Directory is being done manually.
    • Wrote a News item for LastPass users, due to the recent security issue.
    • Doing research for this term's staff Lunch and Learn session.
    • Took the WCMS Form Creation course.
    • Discussion about Psychology rollovers and how the old computers are being handled. Take home procedures will be reviewed with Psychology IT staff (Scott & Dawn).
  • Keith 
    • More TLS certificates were upgraded. There was a minor issue with SANs for the artsresearch server.
    • Continuing with the Stratford Mac lab upgrades. There were a number of Munki issues, largely on Yosemite. Only a few workstations are left to upgrade.
    • Building the new CrashPlan server.
    • Student Email in the Cloud project will be administering a five question survey in the Student Life Centre to gather information about student preferences related to migrating email to a cloud-based server and related services.
  • Herbert 
    • Helpiung set up new hire in Economics: Lynn Mrakava. She is working with Pat Gruber.
    • Set up Sharepoint access for new acting chair of Economics Mikal Skuterud.
    • Working with Keith in helping out Brandon Rad (ASU) setting up their iMacs. Want to provide a share for ASU document storage; limitations for what to share and size should be communicated.
    • Updated Mac Imaging instructions to include notes for Psychology Macs and how to set up a temporary psych admin account.
  • Nevil 
    • Nexus Windows users automated mailing list is now populated in AD and updated by a schedule task. This list is for the specific audience that have logged onto a Nexus machines so they can be informed of important software changes without spamming those not affected. St. Paul's and Renison users can be included if necessary.
    • Testing the ONA lockdown tool again for exams in PAS 1237. Learn was very slow on Friday's exam due to problems with the firewall rules. One client out of 35 was able to sign in after 45 minutes, so the firewall rules were dropped for the remainder of the exam. Discovered afterward that Google Analytics had to be added to the rules. Science and Engineering will be implementing updated rules once we have verified they work normally for us.
    • Updated SCCM permissions for Psychology and Renison after issues were found during training on use of the console.
    • SWORDC has had a technical site inspection; awaiting report. During the audit, it was discovered that a printer could be accessed from Guelph. This misconfiguratino has been corrected.
    • C:\temp not existing as a directory had been causing problems, largely on computers with the most recent image applied. The issue has been fixed on all affected machines and the image updated.
  • Scott 
    • New coop match for next term Lydia Kim. Madeline has agreed to come in the half week (Monday to Wednesday) in December. The other students will be done their work term December 18th.
    • E-Prime issues arose as a result of historical manual installation of the software (instead of using the Tuque package that had been created). Uninstalling the old version failed due to a missing product code.
    • Powerchute UPS monitoring software has been sent to Psychology testers. ACO could not test it but will test now all staff have compatible UPS units.
    • On holidays next week.
    • During SAF-HH3111 reimaging, one SCCM software timeout was 6 hours in length. Have not identified the problem package or configuration. No evidence of similar problems during the faculty rollover (imaging new computers).
    • Advanced Firewall has been deployed in non-Psychology Arts, replacing older firewall rules.
    • The new SCCM distribution server hardware has arrived. Additional disks to be shipped but the basic server setup can begin.

Next Month Birthdays:

·  Scott

·  Mark

·  Sarah