Committee meeting - January 14, 2021

Carol Lu   
Secretary to the Committee   
January 14, 2021
   
Present: Steven Bourque, Erick Engelke, Paul Miskovsky, Pratik Patel, Greg Parks, Don Duff-McCracken, Andrea Chappell, Trevor Bain, Jason Testart, Andrew McAlorum, Lori Paniak, Robyn Landers, Bill Baer

Regrets:  Adam Savage, Daryl Dore, Greg Smith
 
Agenda   

  1. Chair’s remarks (Steven Bourque) [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes from Thursday November 26, 2020 [5 min.]

  3. Spam - Tag & Deliver (Steven Bourque) [5 min.]

  4. Teams support discussion (Don Duff-McCracken) [10 min.]
  5. Mass Email Management Project (Andrew McAlorum) [15 min.]
  6. O365 Change Management (Andrew McAlorum) [15 min.]
  7. Other business and roundtable discussion – all [30 min.]
  8. Next CTSC Meeting [Will be held Thursday January 28 at 1:30 p.m.]

Chair's remarks

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting 

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

Spam - Tag & Deliver (Steven Bourque)

  • Cutover date is at the end of the month
  • Currently conducting a pilot; not a lot of risk involved with this change
    • In the process of sorting out user preferences and working out bugs
    • Contact Steve or Simon Dinney, or submit an RT with user ids if you are interested in joining the pilot
  • This will be enabled for students as well

Comments and discussion 

  •  This change will no longer require users to log in to a spam quarantine
    • There is a virus quarantine that is not accessible for users
  • The welcome email for the pilot includes instructions that can be viewed before this goes live for everyone
  • The pilot is open to all groups (instructors and students included)

Teams support discussion (Don Duff-McCracken)

  • Many instructors are using Teams but there does not seem to be a lot of guidelines/resources available on how to use Teams for teaching and learning (e.g. instructors hitting limits for private channel creation)
  • How supported is Teams currently for teaching and learning? 

Comments and discussion 

  • A pilot for Class Teams conducted with a few instructors in Spring 2020
  • IST is not ready to start using Microsoft School Data Sync to populate Class Teams yet
  • An in-house roster sync was built and used for Fall 2020
    • Over 350 roster synced Teams created
    • A survey was conducted at the end of the term; there was overall positive feedback from instructors
  • There should be more clarity provided on when Teams should be used for teaching and learning 
  • Keep Learning site's tool comparison should be more visible/accessible
  • There is confusion surrounding which tools are supported by University IT 
  • There is Zoom integration with D2L; tool has limited functionality

Mass Email Management Project (Andrew McAlorum)

  • Project is in the starting phase of gathering information, consultations, and RFP
    • Phase will likely be ~6 months
    • Governance to be set up 
    • Project is led by University Relations
  • University Relations has done two separate audits for student communications and internal communications
    • Project will focus on these two types of communication but the RFP selection will be applicable for a wider range of communication types (e.g. external communications)

Comments and discussion

  • Who will have the authority to decide who can send mass emails? 
    • This is something to be discussed further through the governance group that will be created
  • University Relations, Registrar, Student Success Office, and HR are currently involved in the project
    • Committee members for the governance group will likely be mostly from academic support units
  • There will likely be segmented lists rather than one large mailing list (e.g. one mailing list of all first-year students)
  • Mailman may not be needed in the future if the selected tool can provide the same functionality
  • Mass email will be for sending information out to the necessary groups, not for back-and-forth correspondence via email
  • University Relations is looking to standardize the brand and look & feel of mass emails
  • Users will be able to unsubscribe to some emails; there are some important emails that users cannot opt-out of

O365 Change Management (Andrew McAlorum)

  • More information has been shared with CTSC via email 
  • Would like to create a similar governance to Duo 2FA change champions for O365
  • Project team to start reaching out to ask for reps from each group

Other Business/Roundtable 

Information Security Services (IST), Jason

  • Invitation to participate in the Vulnerability Scanning RFP has been sent to CTSC
    • Nick Springate from the Library will be participating in the evaluation and selection process
    • RFP has now been posted

AHS, Trevor

  • AHS has rebranded as the Faculty of Health; any tips on how to easily transition from an IT perspective? 
    • Can work with Sean Mason to create dynamic Grouper groups 

Technology Integrated Services (IST), Steve

  • For CAS deprovisioning, any sites missed can be whitelisted
    • IST will continue to work with groups to migrate; not a hard deadline
    • List of sites from the CAS logs has been shared

Arts, Bill

  • Arts faculty has one of the smallest expenditures for Zoom
    • Approximately one third of faculty and staff are using Zoom 
    • McMaster and Laurier are also using Zoom 
    • Will be looking to support Zooom in the near future