ACO Meeting Minutes September 8, 2016

Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on September 8, 2016

Present:  D. Keenan, R. Park, S. Hartung, K. McGowan, H. Balagtas, S. Speers, N. Bromley, S. Paterson, J. Schildroth, T. Marshall-Taylor

Co-ops:   J. Brown, M. Mambo, E. Tam

Regrets: L. Tomalty, C. Wallace

  • Dawn
    • Potential use of OneDrive by staff and faculty as part of Office 365 campus license is under investigation by IST. Two areas of focus are possible migration of N drives to OneDrive and storing of sensitive data.
    • Work on the Arts IT audit will continue throughout the Fall term. Server moves, the highest priority item from the audit report, are complete. In September there will be significant work on change management and user access review.
  • Bob
    • A retreat will be held in Fed Hall on Friday, Sept 9th for all Chairs in Arts. Discussion will be around the new revenue model. Would like to discuss the resources we get from IST and determine if we are getting good value for money spent. ACO’s budget comes directly from Arts and is not included under the IST revenue umbrella.
  • Sherry
    • Course evaluation result envelopes were picked up Sept 7th for delivery. Online course evaluation results are available to all participating instructors.
    • Gathering information for Sessional computers. Have identified a dozen computers that could be replaced, but actual numbers are not yet available.
  • Ethan
    • Attended two days of technical training. Also working through the Survival Guide for further training.
    • Working on resolving tickets from previous term that had been stalled awaiting responses or setting up appointments.
    • Researching how to monitor the environment (temperature and humidity) in the server room.
  • Jackson
    • Training is progressing well. Have read through the Survival Guide. Learning the basics of wiping a computer and setting up printers.
    • Awaiting responses from Kate Henne and Loula Abd-elrazak to deploy rollover machines.
    • Will be deploying David Rozotto’s new computer today.
  • Murielle
    • Attended two days of technical training and completed the SEW 099 (Content Maintainers) WCMS course.
    • Getting familiar with the ACO SharePoint documents.
    • Worked on one ticket item which has been submitted for review to Dawn and Scott.
    • When opening PAS 1237 today, found one of the chairs is missing. Will look for it today.
  • Keith
    • Set up four iMacs for Fine Arts Grad Lab in space vacated by Finance in ECH. Set up new Munki manifest to be able to push out same software to them as to other labs.
    • New Fine Arts Grad Lab set up on different subnet. ACO staff have access to the subnet and switches for the new area. Existing DNS registrations for Purchasing in this subnet need updates and cleanup. Those parts of Fine Arts moving to the new space and to the new 129.97.5/24 subnet which will require DNS changes.
    • Worked on file recovery for Geoff Fong. Hard drive had failed and not been backed up. Received external drive from Psychology and recovered what was available. It is now ready for Dale in CampusTech to replace the hard drive.
    • John Ravenhill’s (Director of Balsillie School) computer had a system failure and could not boot. Swapped out hard drive to a similar one from supply. Failed hard drive to be checked and serviced under warranty.
    • Had replaced motor in History’s colour printer but it is still not working. Determined it is not repairable, so will get co-ops to remove printer for surplus.
    • Removed Symantec from dkirton laptop as software is end of life. IST has tried to identify laptops and home computers running this out of date software but is running into problems due to most remaining clients being home computers without meaningful host names or user names.
  • Herbert
    • Completed previous term’s co-ops final evaluations.
    • Reimaged MacBook for Grit Liebscher (GSS) and installed Office 2016.
    • Stephanie Lluis (ECON) found that Chrome was running slow and sometimes crashes. C:\temp folder had been missing.
    • Had to reset password for Clive Forrester (ENGL). Also experienced a problem with administrator account. Need to ensure login testing is included in deployment check list. Co-ops will do a practice Mac image to ensure all of these steps are done.
    • Bruce Dadey (ENGL) had printing issues, needing to use neuxs\{username} to connect to department printer. Issue happened after he upgraded to El Capitan. Will include this information in documentation for future occurrences. Use of printer packages through Munki should reduce the need for manual configuration.
    • Joel Blit (ECON) reported that he's still having issues with Office 2016, which started after he installed Silverlight, Tableau and Stata. Had laptop working with no problems prior to these installs. In order to troubleshoot these intermittent issues further, we need access to the laptop in its failing state (close cover to sleep and bring to ACO).
    • Working with Sherry to further understand financial information to be included in CALMS.
    • Wokia Kumase (ECON) is using a sessional machine (econ-sess-8417) and having some issues. That sessional machine has been identified for replacement soon.
  • Sean
    • Met with members of the Arts Research Office to discuss improvements to the Arts Research Database. Implemented a friendly search table view for them, and they are happy with that.
    • Arts Graduate HP printer packaged and added to Munki due to increased Mac users in the Dean’s office.
    • Netbios name causing issues for Macs when not using fully qualified domain name to map drive. Netbios advertisement was disabled on Cygnus, which had been hard coded to respond to requests for Artsfileu.
    • Created a report for Sherry of old Nexus machines showing acquired dates, to make it easier to know when to replace old machines.
    • Set up Claire Prime in Dean's office as Megan Hood's temporary replacement.
    • Set up Julia Roberts with a loaner iMac instead of using Bill Chesney’s PC. During his leave, Bill’s PC will be stored in Sean’s office. Set up a MacBook Air with Windows 10 and AutoCAD for Bill.
  • Nevil
    • Office 2016 has been upgraded in the labs. One user lost their list of recently used files, but was able to recover it.
    • Thomson Reuters software has been configured and tested in HH 280 lab.
    • Set up class list / program security groups for HH 280, ARTS/LS/SOC 280, AFM 202 to allow logins and/or use of remote applications.
    • Set up security group for Mulham to allow visitor access to HH 280.
    • Will be attending the upcoming Microsoft Windows 10 and Office 2016 five day on campus course along with Scott between September 19th and 23rd.
    • Completed SCCM cleanup to address corruption issues that occurred in August.
    • Psychology testing ArtsCleanC in Vanguard Group. This forcibly reboots machines every 14 days and looks for hard drive failures.
  • Scott
    • Office 2016 is in all labs except HH 280 and the MPS systems. It is still available to Arts faculty and staff as an optional upgrade until Sept 19th when it becomes required.
    • Worked on a new device collection for the hh280-manager system for testing new software. Office 2016 and three accounting office plugins were deployed last night. If testing goes well, hope to upgrade the lab Thursday evening in preparation for next week’s classes.
    • Updated Skype, GIMP and Audacity. GIMP appears to require manual intervention to install on some clients.
    • Shana MacDonald's iMac was deployed to her temporary office in ML 241 until Drama rooms are open.
    • Picked up Susan Gow’s system. Both monitors were re-deployed in Fine Arts. Ann Dagg and Bill Abbott still have offices in ECH for an undetermined length of time. Ticket will remain open until removal of those two systems is completed.
    • Still waiting to hear if the Pycharm application is going to be used by Psychology (set for testing Aug 12th).
    • Kathy Hofstetter has left UW and took systems to Colorado. As they are UW property, they should be returned. Hardware recovery will be part of check list being developed for when people leave UW.
  • Jameson
    • Set up and pushed out deployment of Antidote 9. Three computers had installation issues that have been corrected.
    • Krista's Fiolleau's replacement replacement HDD came in. It was successfully imaged. Now working on getting SPSS Amos authorized and working again.
    • Attended meeting with IST’s SCCM managers to discuss SCCM corruption issues and possible resolutions.
    • Imaged a take home computer for Susan Gow from Independent Studies on short notice.
    • Created local login accounts for Dorothy Hadfield as she was given a take home laptop but had no way of logging into it.
    • Continued work on Webcast request from Brigitte Schneebeli to use Skype in October.
    • Troubleshooting Outlook authentication issues with Roy Brouwer who is currently in Germany.
    • Working on documentation for using Kramer (screen sharing) in HH280.
  • Todd
    • RT ticket put in with ITMS for ML101/ML117 PTZ audio visual problems. Edcom had been called in but would have to outsource as their programmer has left company. Daisy chain camera control won’t be needed for this term but will be for Winter 2017.
    • Ongoing ML 101A water problem from skylight in Modern Languages is to be addressed this week.
    • Still hiring for lab assistants and receiving applicantions. Two staff are returning from last term.
    • Renison English Language Centre continues to use the lab. They did not use the space earlier this week when it had been booked for them.
    • Lab info sessions have been given for TAs.

General Items:

Topics for upcoming Professional Development Meetings:

  • September – cancelled
  • October – Nevil / Scott to present information from Microsoft Windows 10 and Office 2016 5-day on campus course
  • November – Jameson to present topic to be determined
  • December – Co-ops to present their term projects