ACO Meeting Minutes March 10, 2016

Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on March 10, 2016

Present:  D. Keenan, S. Hartung, K. McGowan, H. Balagtas, S. Speers, S. Paterson, J. Schildroth, L. Tomalty, T. Marshall-Taylor

Co-ops:   S. Schmidt, S. Lee, J. Asif

Regrets: J. Simpson, N. Bromley, C. Wallace

Note: Keith will lead discussion on disaster recovery at ACO Professional Development meeting on March 17th.

  • Dawn
    • Initial audit meeting was held with the Deloitte auditors to get a common understanding of expectations and review IT structure in the Faculty. The audit team will likely interact with IT staff from Renison, SAF, Psychology and Stratford. Auditor’s report to be finalized mid to late April with their recommendations.
    • The ACO-CM RT queue is modelled on the IST change management system. Please review the queue for utility, and pass suggestions along. Lisa will send out information to the group on how IST uses RT in their change management system.
    • There is an upcoming project in IST for RT ticket management. Lisa will provide more information as it becomes available. In the meantime, please provide Lisa with feedback and ideas.
    • CTSC Updates:
      • Science and Optometry are refining MarkBox exam creation/marking application and are open to providing the system for use in courses outside Science and Optometry.
      • Surveyor application from Engineering Computing was demonstrated and is available for use.
      • Computer Science is moving ahead with use of JAMF/Casper Suite for Mac imaging and workstation management. Contact Dave Gawley if you would like more information.
  • Sherry
    • Ordered next batch of 25 computers for lab replacements.
    • Getting plans in place for Winter 2016 course evaluations.
    • Budget work is continuing.
    • Gathering information for faculty rollover.
    • Checking into software required for staff rollover to ensure software needed is not lost in transition. Lessons learned in the staff rollover will be used to improve the process for future staff and faculty rollovers.
  • Sarah
    • Monitors and computers have been unpackaged and imaging is progressing well. Psychology is processing their own staff rollover computers.
    • Will be providing IST with input and feedback for IST co-op orientation process.
    • Following up on open Helpdesk+ tickets.
  • Sean L.
    • Rollover process (unboxing, encrypting, prestaging) is underway. Emails to go out by end of week to schedule deployments starting next week.
    • When joining a reimaged workstation to the Nexus domain, software is usually pushed out in one or two hours. Software updates are taking longer to starting with the rollover computers.
    • Timing and process of moving Webstore-purchased software to be followed closely and documented. Sherry’s rollover would be a good test case.
    • Surplus Room management continues.
  • Javairia
    • Two newsletter articles remaining to be edited. Lisa is reviewing them.
    • VPN instructions for Mac and Windows have been uploaded and published on ACO site. Needs to be linked to an active/existing web page.
    • Researching what is new in Office 2016, and working on slides for ACO Lunch Session. Slides to be completed by March 16.
  • Keith
    • Replaced Xerox colour printer copier in Drama. Drivers have been updated for the new device.
    • Working on documentation for IT audit.
    • Machine room has been cleaned up. There are number of tables to be surplussed.
    • Rebuilt Linux terminal server on newer hardware.
    • Server inventory documents are now on Sharepoint. This includes a list of virtual and physical servers,. All machines in server room have also been labelled.
    • Working on getting Independent Studies a colour printer that meets their needs. Printer stored in PAS 2034 will either go to them or be moved to the surplus room.
  • Herbert
    • Installed Ubuntu for Tao Chen (ECON) and R+RStudio on a take home machine.
    • Deploying Macbook to Sorouja Moll (DRAMA) this afternoon.
    • Deployed scanner to Pat Gruber (ECON).
    • Helped John North (ENG) with his iMac and setting up Quickbooks.
    • Installed Photoshop Elements 13 for Ceylan Turkeri (DRAMA). Scott helped get the software deployment set up in SCCM.
  • Sean S.
    • Pushed out patches for Acrobat 11 & DC, Reader 11, Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, Office 2016/2011, and Chrome for Macs.
    • Tip for deleting 'in use' print drivers: remove 
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Providers\Client Side Rendering Print Provider
      and restart spooler.
    • Completed Drupal 7 security updates. Drupal 6 is now at end of life with only sig.uwaterloo.ca remaining on the old version.
    • Modified Meeting Room Booking System system to return to the weekly view of a particular room when adding or editing an entry.
    • Migrated Nxsartstest to Artsvc2 and turned off Esxi-3. Also migrated Globalautonomy from Esxi-4 to Artsvc2.
    • Artswsus has been turned off. The last person using it was pointed to standard WSUS.
    • Cleaned up lots of old packages for Thunderbird, Chrome, Flash, etc. on our Munki server, using Munkiadmin which is nice GUI interface for the repository.
  • Scott
    • Update on HH 280 Lab Setup:
      • Thomson Reuters Eikon now deployed.
      • Classroom licensing info for PyCharm has been received. PyCharm itself is deployed but requires a license server to be set up. Waiting on Nxsartsws to be moved to the private network.
      • Waiting on add-ons for R.
      • Monitors now in correct alignment.  
      • Capital IQ userid password list failure is being investigated.
    • Kensington lockable cables will be used for securing PAS-1080/1098/1099, ML-110 and HH-280 monitors and CPUs. The under desk locking systems in PAS will be removed by Plant Ops once the hardware has been replaced.  
    • Technical Writer co-op interviews to be held this afternoon.
    • Nexus Common Services being cleaned up to remove packages no longer used (or associated with Engineering configurations). Left user app server and logs to monitor for problems.
    • Nexus Audit removed except for Psychology. SCCM provides equal or better info. Audit database seems to be easily corrupted.
    • Dropbox 3.14.7 and Skype 7.18.112 software upgrades were updated last night.
  • Jameson
    • Working on Event Viewer Powershell script. It's written but working out bugs and refining its operation.
    • Working on creating a Windows 10 image that will be used in the Games Institute.
    • Working on logistics for moving a Wordpress site for the Games Institute from an external host to a site hosted by us.
  • Lisa
    • ACO Lunch session has been confirmed for April 13, 2016.
    • Editing newsletter articles.
    • Delivered new iPad mini to Ashley Kelly in English.
    • Completed process documentation for Rollover and Pre-Staging. Documents located in Sharepoint site in Shared Documents/ACO Processes. Will be working on web request process with Herbert.
    • We have documented process to post News items on the ACO web site. Please refer to this documentation when requesting or creating News items.
    • ACO site content has been updated to reduce links to XAS printing pages under Student section.
    • Will be conducting Technical Writer interviews with Scott.
  • Todd
    • Renison Studies in Islam bookings have been arranged for spring term: labs and a few irregular requests. Gave instructors a tour of the facilities and discussed ways to meet their needs. Want to avoid overnight loan of additional headsets due to wear and tear.
    • Have received further information on ML 101 water leak. The roof patch is temporary so metal pan to stay until the roof is permanently fixed.
    • There was some water leakage in the hall outside ML 117. It was traced to a failed copper pipe from the women’s washroom.
    • Edcom provided a service call to look into faulty Visca connector on ML 117 camera 1. There will be an hour’s worth of additional service work that will be billable.