Committee meeting - February 25, 2021

Carol Lu   
Secretary to the Committee   
February 25, 2021
   
Present: Andrew McAlorum, Adam Savage, Bill Baer, Don Duff-McCracken, Erick Engelke, Greg Parks, Jason Testart, Lawrence Folland, Paul Miskovsky, Pratik Patel, Robyn Landers, Trevor Bain

Regrets:  Steven Bourque, Andrea Chappell, Daryl Dore, Greg Smith
 
Agenda   

  1. Chair’s remarks (Andrew McAlorum) [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes from Thursday February 11, 2021 [5 min.]
  3. ISO date formats (Lawrence Folland) [10 min.]
  4. Clarification on software and hardware purchase authorizations (Erick Engelke) [10 min.]
  5. Qualtrics licensing for undergrads (Bill Baer) [10 min.]
  6. Other business and roundtable discussion – all [5 min.]
  7. Next CTSC Meeting [Will be held Thursday February 25 at 1:30 p.m.]

Chair's remarks

  • No remarks.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting 

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

ISO date formats (Lawrence Folland)

  • This date format should be used across the University
  • There is currently confusion with inconsistent date conventions between different systems
  • All new systems being implemented going forward should use ISO date format
    • Would like an official proposal from CTSC to implement this going forward; Lawrence to start putting together a draft

Comments and discussion 

  • Engineering has already made this a standard
  • ISO date format is the official standard of the Government of Canada
  • This change was previously proposed by a former Associate Dean of Computing for Math
    • Proposal was brought to UCIST but no changes ended up being made
  • IST to reach out to ERP and WCMS groups for more information on the date formats they use for systems
  • Standardizing this date format should be feasible for most systems unless there is a technical reason why this can't be implemented

Clarification on software and hardware purchase authorizations (Erick Engelke)

Qualtrics licensing for undergrads (Bill Baer)

  • Is it possible to get a Qualtrics undergrad site license? 

    • It would be more cost efficient to purchase a Qualtrics undergrad site license than to purchase individual student licenses

  • NVivo has offered to allow 10% of undergrad students to access the software at no additional cost
    • Capacity would have to remain below 10% of undergrad students
  • Fourth year Psychology students require a Qualtrics license to conduct course research

Comments and discussion

  • IST is requesting a quote for a Qualtrics undergrad license
  • The cost of Qualtrics licensing has increased significantly over the years
  • Undergrads can use generic accounts for Qualtrics only if they are employees of the University (e.g. working with a faculty member as a research assistant or a co-op student employed on campus)
  • AHS has been transferring Qualtrics content from one account to another in between terms whenever there is a new co-op student
    • Process is not very efficient
  • More information regarding licensing will be provided in a future meeting once available

Other Business/Roundtable 

Computer Science, Lawrence

  • CSCF will be doing a PDAG seminar
    • Recommends other faculty computing groups volunteer to do a PDAG seminar to provide an update on faculty computing related projects

Arts, Bill

  • Surpassed target number of Adobe Creative Cloud licenses sold in the W Store
  • Is it possible to provision VPN access for retirees automatically? 
    • IST has limited information about employee statuses; systems only show retirees as being 'Retired'
    • As part of the ongoing retiree email life cycle project, a statement could be included in the Workday email notifications to retirees (e.g. inform retirees of systems where access will be revoked)
    • WatIAM does not have advanced knowledge of when someone is retiring