ACO Meeting Minutes March 26, 2015

Present:  H. Balagtas, N. Bromley, D. Keenan,  T. Marshall Taylor, K. McGowan, R. Park, S. Paterson, S. Speers,  L. Tomalty, B. Yantha

Coop Students: M. Fletcher, M. Shuttleworth, M. Smith

Absent: C. Wallace

  • Dawn
    • CTSC update: new chair, IST directions
      • Bruce Campbell appointed Chair; CIO will attend periodic meetings as guest.
      • IST's annual plan and future directions: reduced the amount of labour to maintain infrastructure and want to spend more than half their resources on new and transformational technologies over the next few years.

      • As part of CTSC members discussing similarities and differences among their plans for the current and coming years, Faculty IT directors and managers are being encouraged to share their plans. Dawn is working on ACO's annual plan.

    • work placement results

      • ACO will be receiving one work placement allocation each term in the 2015-2016 fiscal year, as in previous years. Some other departments, including AUO, have lost WP allocations due to fewer being given out by Student Awards.

    • course evaluation processing in PAS 2023

      • Due to space constraints, temporary staff working on course evaluation processing will be occupying PAS 2023 starting Monday. Meetings should not be scheduled in that room until further notice. Barb has moved some meetings originally scheduled to use that room into PAS 2030.

  • Bob

    • A new Associate Dean position has been created in Arts, splitting the AD Undergrad load into Programs and Students.

  • Mercedez
    • Rollover progress
      • Rollover is moving along, as is work on project.
    • Lab Cleanliness
      • Lately up to 80% of people using the PAS labs are eating and drinking at the computers. The labs are unpleasantly dirty in the mornings, including crumbs everywhere and sticky keyboards and mice. What do other faculties do? (Scott checking with Engineering, Dawn checking with Math: faculty IT units that have shut down dirty labs) Our goal is to ensure equipment remains functional and the environment does not degrade.
  • Matthew
    • Rollover
      • One note from rollover deployments so far: Outlook configuration has changed between Office 2010 and Office 2013. The documentation will be update​d

  • Madeline

    • newsletter articles feedback

      • would like feedback from ACO staff before publication

    • PAS 1099 boards

      • boards being updated and rearranged.

  • Keith
    • New certs for artsfinemdid3, artsonline and econserv
    • Watarts upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04
      • Watarts upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 (from 10.04) is less disruptive than going to 14.04 and will keep the server and software on a supported version for another 1-2 years.
    • Mac packages built for SAF printers
    • Accounting uPrint printer installed

      • ​​Accounting students uPrint printer in HH2302 will initially run without a release monitor, since students will mostly be printing from laptops and can use the web client to release print jobs.​

    • New certs for artsfinemdid3, artsonline and econserv
    • Watarts upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04
    • Mac packages built for SAF printers
    • Accounting uPrint printer installed
  • Herbert
    • Worked on Jill Tomasson's (DRAMA) laptop, after testing the memory we found out that they needed to be replaced but she was due for a rollover soon, so it was decided that we would expedite her rollover laptop.
    • Setup a new macbookpro for Peter Pillsworth (St Pauls)
    • Added Michell O'Farrel (ECON) to econ coop share and to the shared mailboxes.
    • Assisted an applicant to get her application into the system for Finance after the hiring period has ended.
    • Made some improvements on the Helpdesk system, allow comments and minor interface tweaks.
  • Sean
    • updated flash, chrome, firefox for Macs
    • Gosling patched, munki updated to address security issue with curl
    • political economy (watpeg) moving to WCMS, I'll be POC, future POC's for non-departmental WCMS will be department support person
    • cantus moved to own VM, had brought down agora, diagnosed issue with their drupal setup.
    • drupal core, webform and ctools security updates applied
    • serious wordpress google analytics flaw, I found 3 sites on our severs were using it, I updated them
    • artsresearch configured to use Rails, multi-user install of rvm and passenger application server setup with apache
    • work on Arts research database continues
  • Nevil
    • new spcfin server installed
      • once all installed, can deploy Office 2013
    • q_arts removal script from all Arts machines
    • sessional and dept lab usage in place
    • Firefox Update
      • tested by 6 ACO staff  
  • Scott
    ​
    • FACCUS updates
      • Software update--Adobe CS6- will be subscription-based
      • Interim CIO will begin their position soon
      • IT Pop-up booth in SLC May 11. Any suggestions welcome for future locations
      • Orientation for new TA's for examproc
        -group training
        -perhaps Bill & Colin would be interested so they can help their department's TA's.
      • CSCF-have their own cloud server
      • Twitter: @uwaterloo_IT
    • Susan Gow
      • while pushing out a new version of Photoshop CS6, bitlocker errors came up even after the code was entered. Scott removed bitlocker to fix the issue.
    • Licensed Software deployments
      • all are now up to date
    • Testing MatLab R2014a, SPSS 22.0.0.1, Amos 22
      • SPSS failed
  • Todd
    • ML 117 update
      • refund of $2K expected from recent equipment install
      • some issues due to security of the room (leaving door unlocked) and room-use guidelines 
    • FR 151, FR 152 Lab tests
    • Alice Kuzniar System
      • has an older computer for working at home; starting to cause some issues
  • Lisa
    • John north Pascl lectures site-waiting for confirmation from him to move it to WCMS
    • Lunch session PPT almost done
    • Reviewing intro to Wordpress notes that Madeline created for new co-ops
    • Basic RT stats ..do a search and click on Chart
    • FACCUS minutes (Mar 23) online: https://uwaterloo.ca/faculty-computing-user-support-group/sites/ca.faculty-computing-user-support-group/files/uploads/files/faccus_meeting_minutes_march_23_2015_1.pdf
    • Meeting with Will re: webstore (how Arts could deploy software and who in Faculty of Arts would be allowed to purchase through webstore)
    • Links updated on ACO site for new Account Request form
    • Sccm presentation (John Mayall): http://tcs.uwaterloo.ca/tcs/#page:recordingList&pageNumber:1&id:18B9F1AD-CA09-46AA-89C2-A4817D89485A
  • April birthdays: Sean & Herbert