Committee meeting - April 16, 2020

Carol Lu  
Secretary to the Committee  
April 16, 2020  
  
Present: Steven Bourque, Bill Baer, Erick Engelke, Paul Miskovsky, Trevor Bain, Lori Paniak, Pratik Patel, Andrea Chappell, Adam Savage, Robyn Landers, Jason Testart, Andrew McAlorum, Don Duff-McCracken

Guests: Hari Chotara
  
Regrets: Dave Kibble, Daryl Dore, Greg Smith
  
Agenda  

  1. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes of the meetings of Thursday March 26, 2020 [5 min.]

  3. Student email migration (Steven Bourque) [5 min.]

  4. Using Englab for Remote Desktop (Erick Engelke) [10 min.]
  5. Standardizing link distribution guidelines in emails (Lori Paniak) [5 min.]
  6. The growth of MS Teams – knowing what Teams are in existence (Don Duff-McCracken) [10 min.]
  7. Other Business [10 min.]
  8. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  9. Next CTSC Meeting
    [Will be held Thursday April 30 at 1:30 p.m.]

Chair's Remarks (Steven Bourque)

  • No remarks.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

  • The previous meeting’s minutes were accepted as distributed.  

Student email migration (Steven Bourque)

  • Communications for the Student Email Migration project went out today
  • The work will be done April 25-27
  • All students will be migrated from the @edu tenant to the @uwaterloo tenant
    • The migration will support better collaboration and use of Office 365
    • New emails accounts created after April 27 will be in the cloud
      • Email can be kept on prem by request

Comments and discussion

  • What are the steps in this migration?
    • Students will be migrated first; students are the primary focus
    • Rolling upgrade will be done for staff
  • Will this be complete by September for staff? 
    • There is currently no date set for this timeline
    • Staff will be migrated after students
    • IST will try to accommodate a specific date request for departments 
  • Most Teams functionalities are available without an Office 365 email account

Using Englab for Remote Desktop (Erick Engelke)

  • https://englab.uwaterloo.ca/ (VPN required) connects to various Engineering computer labs
    • Allows you to connect to a specific machine in the lab
    • You can connect to specific applications 
    • If others are interested in using Englab for Remote Desktop, please contact Erick Engelke with a request specifying your faculty and tenant

Comments and discussion

  • What needs to be installed in order to use the Englab Remote Desktop?
    • Can only be used on Windows
  • Registers when people are logged in or logged out
    • Users will get a message notifying them if someone else is logged in to a machine
  • Once set up, you can list which software is on a specific computer
  • This remote desktop service might be useful for MATLAB and Adobe Creative Cloud once the temporary free licenses expire
    • What are the faculty's plans for courses using these softwares once the licenses expire? 
  • Science is using a manual remote desktop solution currently, will explore Englab
    • Also looking at virtualizing labs and the possibility of using Azure for Windows Desktops
      • TIS is investigating the possibility of using Azure

Standardizing link distribution guidelines in emails (Lori Paniak)

  • Are there guidelines that can be followed in order to reinforce best practices when it comes to sending links in emails? 
    • Office of Advancement sent out external links that appeared to be unsafe
    • We should be following guidelines to increase phishing awareness
    • CTSC to make recommendations and pass along to UCIST
      • Jason to investigate if there is any existing documentation to use as reference

Comments and discussion

  • IST has tried to enforce guidelines in the past
    • Difficult to enforce due to the different softwares departments buy; departments may be purchasing cloud-based software with links that do not meet guidelines

The growth of MS Teams – knowing what Teams are in existence (Don Duff-McCracken)

  • There are multiple teams on campus that have been created for the same purpose
  • Is there a centralized directory to see what teams are being created in each faculty? 

Comments and discussion

  • Team owners can configure the team settings to be public
  • It is currently difficult to get a full list of all teams
    • A list for a specific faculty could be compiled based on who the team owner is
  • Private channels were not initially available when Microsoft Teams was launched on campus
    • Has resulted in the creation in a lot of teams that could have been created as private channels
  • In Outlook, you can navigate to 'Browse groups' in the toolbar which lists all teams available
  • IST will investigate creating guidelines on when to create a team vs when to create a private channel
    • Include teams naming conventions in the guidelines
    • A team does not need to be created for 2 people, a private chat or meeting can be used

Other Business

No other business. 

Roundtable

Engineering (Erick)

  • Engineering has been using Zoom, tried moving users to WebEx
  • Users felt Teams was 'too busy' for what they wanted to use it for
  • Have warned users about Zoom security issues and to proceed with caution

Comments and discussion

  • The WebEx user experience feels 'clunky'

    • More setting tweaks are required than with Teams since WebEx is highly customizable

  • Zoom is user-friendly and easy to use but not secure

Client Services, IST (Andrew)

  • Microsoft Stream is scheduled to be launched around May 5
    • Microsoft Stream is a new video management system with autocaptioning, transcriptioning, etc. 
    • Currently migrating data to Canadian hosting
    • University Senate is using Stream for April 20 meeting; Stream will be disabled for 14 days after this 
    • Communications have been sent to Stream users asking them to back up video content they wish to keep 
  • An Arts professor will be piloting the use of Teams in the Spring term for teaching and learning
    • ITMS will be supporting this professor
    • There is no commitment to using Teams for teaching and learning yet for Fall 2020
    • TIS is investigating class list data syncing for Teams

Arts (Bill)

  • Are any faculties/departments offering WFH equipment loans (e.g. laptop, monitors, keyboards)?
    • Arts has ordered supplies from W store but many items are currently on backorder
  • Arts has onsite help 2-3 days a week scheduled by appointment only
    • Are any other departments offering onsite help?

Comments and discussion

  • Math has lent out some equipment to staff and grad students (e.g. Mac minis, spare laptops)
    • Not ordering new equipment to meet demand
  • Science has a computer lab with laptops that have been lent out to admin staff
    • There have been requests for cameras; these have not been supplied
  • Some departments are offering curb side drop off but not onsite help