Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on September 22, 2016
Present: D. Keenan, R. Park, S. Hartung, K. McGowan, H. Balagtas, S. Speers, J. Schildroth, L. Tomalty, T. Marshall-Taylor
Co-ops: J. Brown, M. Mambo, E. Tam
Regrets: N. Bromley, S. Paterson, C. Wallace
Attendees:
- Dawn
- September 8 CTSC meeting was cancelled, so nothing to report this month.
- Working with Nevil on change management guidelines. Significant progress has been made and we are in good shape to meet the October audit deadline.
- User and group access is being reviewed and documented. Conducting an annual review to ensure necessary access for all groups and privileges is provided and any outdated access is removed.
- Audit goals to be completed by the end of November are log gathering and reporting and disaster recovery planning.
- Local Administrative Password Service (LAPS) is in production at Stratford for Windows machines. Working with Peter Pillsworth to get it set up at St. Paul's.
- Five 32-bit Windows systems remain in Arts. Two have replacement or reimaging planned, and three in St. Paul's need reimaging.
- Sherry
- Working through sessional computer requirements. Six RT tickets have been set up. Determining if six additional computers need replacing.
- Ethan
- Working on sessional rollovers and processing take home machines. Jameson walked through the imaging process with Ethan and corrected a problem with the USB imaging.
- Imaging instructions need to be improved to help future co-ops. Will work with Murielle on documentation.
- There was a discussion about BIOS passwords. They are not included in documentation due to confidentiality. If one is needed, please see one of the Information Technology Specialists in the department. BIOS sequence also needs to be modified in the prestaging instructions.
- Jackson
- Have completed the analysis of temperature monitoring in the server room. Documenting the pros and cons of the suggested system.
- Elise Lepage Is having issues with SecureDoc failing. Have been in contact with IST for assistance. Will escalate to Lisa if needed.
- Rollovers are mostly complete with a few on hold awaiting appointments.
- Murielle
- Working on organizing the Survival Guide into a section for day-to-day tasks that would ensure quick access for troubleshooting issues at the Help Desk, and a general information section for reference.
- Have been reading and viewing Lynda.com videos.
- Working on the student section of the ACO website to provide better targeted information for graduate students as the current focus is on undergraduate students. Information is needed for graduate students in using Connect and the extra steps needed for forwarding all email to a third party provider.
- Keith
- MS Project software is required for Master of Public Service to complete course assignments. Looking into solution for licensing of the software for multiple users. Current work around is to download trial version for 60 day use.
- The three computers in the MPS lab are aging and need to be replaced. They were replaced two years ago with recovered rollover machines.
- Computers for the Balsillie School of International Affairs are challenging to support as they are not on the UW network, and hosted by CIGI. We need to be better informed of staff changes to review access.
- There is an issue with ITMS equipment in the HH theatre centre connecting to local networks. Publicly accessible ports need to be identified clearly and ensure that they can be turned on when needed and off when not in use to prevent unauthorized access.
- Individual student web pages are no longer supported on Artsweb. One alternative would be to direct students to IST’s mySharePoint service.
- SAF faculty members would like to have a folder set up to share course resources for teaching. It was suggested that mySharePoint is one potential solution.
- Geoff Fong's system has been fixed and will be coming back to ACO for re-imaging.
- A new certificate has been set up for arts.uwaterloo.ca.
- Herbert
- Worked on backup and removal of website on Watarts for James Skidmore.
- Helped students install GAMS for a course given by Trien Nguyen (ECON).
- Supervising co-ops while Scott is away at training.
- An Econ sessional machine in PAS 2204 would not start. Worked with Keith to identify the cause. Swapping memory fixed the issue.
- Working with Nicolas Gauthier (FRENCH) to rectify issues with his rollover machine concerning Sticky Notes, Antidote and Word macros.
- Working on software associated with assets in CALMS.
- Sean
- Chrome, Office 2011 and 2016, Flash, and Munki core were updated for the Macs. Verified upgraded Munki will work with the new Sierra OS release.
- AUO recruitment requested a blog site. Artsonline.uwaterloo.ca/blog was created in WordPress.
- Due to redirection of Application Data, being logged in to more than one Nexus machine simultaneously can cause issues with browsers, shortcuts and other applications. Lecturers accessing podium may report problems when they are also logged in to their desktop computer in their office. A communication should be sent out to remind instructors to log off one computer before logging in to another.
- Updated 30 to 40 WordPress sites from version 4.5.x to 4.6.1.
- Jameson
- Met with Roy Brouwer and corrected the remaining Outlook issues he was having. Some had been fixed by phone while Roy was in Germany.
- While working on Kramer documentation for HH 280 lab, found that some functions of the Kramer software didn't work and required the use of an additional keyboard and mouse. Working on testing where keyboard and mouse can be plugged in to get the other features to work, as well as connecting to podium.
- Antidote deployments have had some issues after the Office 2016 update. Pushed out an update to the required computers, but the program then started prompting for admin credentials when being used. This has been corrected on all but three computers. Todd has confirmed the fix works.
- After some discussion with Neil Randall, his rollover computer will be reclaimed as he indicated he no longer needs it.
- Pushed out TaxPrep to SAF Bloomberg lab, but none of the computers received the update. It was discovered that many unrelated SCCM deployments had failed. These issues have been corrected on all Bloomberg lab computers except for two. This may have resulted in recent SSCM issues.
- Found errors pertaining to SPSS Amos in HH 280 and PAS 1098 where the software was prompting for missing files at login. Working on correcting these. PAS 1237 has already been corrected.
- Lisa
- Re-working ACO SharePoint sites and Co-op Survival Guide with Murielle. There will be a single location for all ACO processes including administrative processes. A new sub-site has been created for Rollovers which shows various years, and further division of type of Rollover. Suggestions are welcomed.
- Looking for Lunch Session topic ideas. Will include information about only logging onto one computer at a time and recent phishing emails.
- Working on ACO site:
- Will use Google Analytics to find the most accessed pages and determine if content or navigation needs to be improved.
- Looking at adding a graduate student section to the Students page.
- Todd
- Repair work on the leaking skylight will be starting soon.
- Have received additional requests for Language Lab usage from French Studies. They wish to set up a French writing centre that will be open six hours per week where volunteers help with French writing and grammar. Other language departments have been informed of the availability of the Lab for similar use. Also received a request from Guy Poirier, Chair of French Studies, to use the room for high school students from WCI for about three meetings per term.
- Two new lab assistants have been hired, funded by International Studies Work Placement Program.
- Have been working with Jameson to get Antidote 9 installed and working where it is needed.
- Helping Anne Marie Miraglia remote desktop to her office PC from the classroom to show students how Antidote works.
- Set up RT to get ITMS to correct Crestron programming to enable pan tilt zoom on all cameras in ML 117 and 101B. Can use a physical remote as a work around, but will escalate soon so it is fixed for Winter 2017 term when these functions will be more heavily used.