ACO Meeting Minutes November 9, 2017

Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on November 9th, 2017

Present:  S. Hartung, K. McGowan, R. Park, H. Balagtas, S. Speers, N. Bromley, J. Schildroth

Co-ops:  M. DiGiacomantonio, M. Oonwala, C. Persaud

Regrets:  S. Paterson, W. Lewis, T. Marshall-Taylor, M. Byerley, C. Wallace

Attendees:

  • Sherry
    • Trained Brenda Maciel at Renison on the new version of eValuate.
    • Have received an account from Xing to pay for the Adobe Acrobat Pro DC upgrades. Will be starting to make those purchases.
    • Sessional computer/monitor replacement pretty much completed. About half a dozen old computers I'm still looking into, but unlikely to need replacing as most are old rollovers.
    • A number of monitors (16) were left on the "to be surplussed" shelving. Only four were to be surplussed. The rest were needed to replace the sessional equipment. Please be careful where equipment is stored so it is not unnecessarily surplussed when we have a need for the equipment.
    • Reminder that PAS 1098A storage is for computers and monitors that are less than four years old. Equipment four years (from rollovers) and older to be stored in PAS 1084. If space is an issue, PAS 1098A can be used as a back up, but ensure equipment is properly marked.
  • Keith
    • CTSC report
      • Discussed compromised accounts for undergrads that get locked. Looking into ways to inform students that their account has been compromised.
      • IST was not asked to install Wifi in the Arts quad. This will need to be arranged through Plant Ops.
      • Applied Health Sciences is looking into an absence tracking system for students sot that if away with a doctor’s note, that that information is registered and valid for classes and exams. Science currently has a student accountability system.
      • IST is trying Mattermost as a collaboration tool, but receiving mixed reviews.
    • Have access to VM production pool from IST. Looking into a VM for SAF to gather student analytics.
    • NVivo proposal is being distributed for consideration.
    • Greg Parks is starting on Monday, November 13th. Will need to arrange keys (Sherry).
    • Reminder to register for WatITis Conference to be held on December 5th.
    • Office 365 is now available to faculty and staff. There should be instructions on how to best use it, and what you can and can’t do. OneDrive is also available and requires instructions. Security issues also need to be addressed. Bob will share documentation received from Math that has been revised for Arts to get feedback. Information to be distributed to faculty and staff.
  • Bob
    • Since the last meeting, Bob went over to the IST Help Desk to purchase software using his credit card. Barb Yantha had to get involved due to the email link to the software download, but the system is now in place and acceptable to Finance for faculty to make software purchases using credit cards at IST Help Desk. If any issues with acceptance, please see Bob.
  • Marco
    • Deploying sessionals systems. Followed-up with two Classical Studies yesterday. Currently awaiting pre-staging of one for Germanic & Slavic Studies, and another ready to be deployed next Monday.
    • Re-imaged system for Speech Communication co-op student. Previously in Windows 7 and screen turned black for a few seconds periodically (fixed by updating display adapter). Followed-up after deploying system, no problems.
    • Re-imaged system twice (hard drive wasn't detected after first re-image, Scott replaced HD) for Angela Christelis (English). Previously in Windows 7 and slow. Will follow-up next Monday.
    • Imaged Greg Parks' office system Tuesday then deployed yesterday. Had to update display adapter because screen would turn black for a few seconds periodically.
    • Working on privileged user monitoring PowerShell script. Figured out how to gather users from security groups and one OU. Now working on filtering users based on properties 'PasswordLastSet' and 'whenChanged' (users of interest will be reported to email to Nevil). Looking at GPO monitoring script for ideas.
    • Updating CALMS after hours to make up for two days booked off. Emailing faculty and staff about assets under their name with 'Unknown' status. Receiving replies, and received ACO laptop and monitor at Help Desk this week as a result.
    • Revising three newsletter articles for Cynthia as she edits them.
    • Will be filling up the empty surplus bin as full one was picked up Tuesday. Surplus shelf includes printer and several iMacs. To surplus old DVI Dell splitters
  • Mahammed
    • Most Sessional Rollovers complete. A few left to do.
    • Working on my third newsletter article about Creative Services.
    • Completed Rollover with Joan Coutu yesterday.
    • Lots of Taxprep questions.
    • Made progress on Powershell project from Nevil to improve deployment failures database format. Work to continue.
  • Cynthia
    • Finished editing three out of six newsletters.
    • Attending IT seminar on TeamDynamix tomorrow and creating a report based on the seminar.
    • Working on moving personal Watarts websites to UW Scholar. Have set up an Excel spreadsheet on Sharepoint to track the information.
    • Completed the second of two student leadership programs.
    • Completed SEW016:Writing for the Web course.
  • Herbert
    • Working on Psych database migration testing in CALMS-DEV. Have asked Marco to help, and awaiting Bill E’s feedback.
    • Friendly URL feature enabled for CALMS that includes both ID number and ACO number to prevent confusion.
    • Upgraded auditing package to allow us to track events by specific user.
  • Sean
    • Completed Docker setup in testing with Varnish front-end and NGNIX SSL proxy. Next phase will be building a production server at some point. Agora's Ubuntu is EOL in 2019, so lots of time.
    • Met with English MA student to assist with Chiastic website. Showed them how to convert a bibliography from BibTeX to HTML easily using BibTeX2HTML and dissuaded from using Drupal 7 Biblio module which is unsupported.
    • Investigated HH280-11 malware report. Resulted from a user who downloaded malware to watch illegal stream; SCEP caught most of it.
    • Apple updated the HP drivers. Seems older firmware HPs will not print after (just disappears or causes an error on the printer), solution is to update firmware on the printer to latest.
    • AUO piloting working from home and asked for advice. Sent them links to Policy 46 and its recommendations. My recommendation was to use RDP for everything and don't save password on local machine. Upcoming MFA (multi-factor authentication) will add another layer soon.
    • Created report for History's self-study with evaluation statistics complied over 3 years for department.
    • User in Dean's Advancement Office infected themselves downloading what they though was an MP3, but it was an .exe file. Hijacked Firefox and tried to install lots of bad things. SCEP caught a lot of it. Just a reminder that when doing profile reset we now have to get rid of the N:\SettingsPackages\Firefox(.*) as that's where UEV stores its conf. This is in addition to AppData stuff and the profile (local & remote).
    • Rezdechaussee.uwaterloo.ca created with base install of CentOS, SSH public key added for the developers to setup and transfer their Drupal site.
    • Sourced out replacement disks for smcdam. Has one failed and one predicted failure.
  • Nevil
    • Investigating Microsoft Office updates.
    • Investigating empty Endpoint reports.
    • Reboot Tool redeployed.
    • SCCM collection reductions required as packages not appearing right away. Some collections update on daily basis. Due to number of collections, there is a queue to update at 1:00 p.m. Some collections end up waiting so looking at reducing number of collections in Arts.
    • New co-op students Lee Ma, Samuel Luckhurst, Angelica Sanchez have been chosen.
  • Scott
    • SQL Server Express and Management Tools 2017 - SAF (RT#691598).
    • E-Prime 3.0 - Psych (having issues with last step).
    • RT Queue for Software Requests requested.
    • RT Form for software requests (finalizing word template - results will go to the new queue above - admin CC's are spaterso, kmcgowan, njbromle, sean)(RT#694795).
    • ACO Office doors - can we move to closed but unlocked doors with proper door labeling (not pieces of paper) and possibly a window with privacy glass? Many students walk through the office and check out the fridge, noise from students before and after classes is very distracting. Eng Comp. does this. Sherry to ask for quote on putting safety glass in door.
    • New co-ops job shadow days: Angelica Sanchez (Tech Writer) and Samuel Luckhurst (Computing Assistant) are on Dec 11th, Lee Ma (Computing Assistant) is on Dec 5th.
  • Jameson
    • Successfully packaged Veracrypt for Psychology. It's been deployed to Psych Vanguard with Bill to push out to Production at his discretion.
    • Investigated WOL and have a procedure to turn it on for Dell Computers. Working on packaging up an automated solution for changing the settings in Windows and BIOS. Dell systems are working but some issues with Lenovos. Problems with updates being pushed out at 10:00 p.m. but machines are being turned off. Then when turned on in the morning the updates delay the use of the computer. Some updates are not getting done and it is hard to track these machines.
    • Helping Scott with working through issues on Packaging Eprime 3.0. for Psychology.
  • Will
    • Helped Andrea Quinlan activate Acrobat Pro 2017 on her new Mac. There seems to be delay when it still shows a countdown timer for the trial. Serial number can push out on Munki to Macs.
    • Working on API for the IST Webstore. Looking at authenticating the user requests and permissions.