Committee meeting - January 24, 2019

Carol Lu
Secretary to the Committee
January 24, 2019

Present: Steven Bourque (Chair), Trevor Bain, Robyn Landers, Bill Baer, Andrew McAlorum, Marko Dumancic, Lawrence Folland, Adam Savage, Carol Lu (Secretary)

Guests: Matt Harford 

Regrets: Andrea Chappell, Paul Miskovsky, Daryl Dore, Erick Engelke, Greg Smith, David Kibble, Jason Testart

Agenda

  1. Overview of IT advisory board (Matt Harford) [15 min.]
  2. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  3. Approval of the minutes of the meetings of Thursday January 10, 2019 [5 min.]
  4. Other Business [10 min.]
  5. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  6. Next CTSC Meeting [Will be held Thursday February 7, 2019 at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 1021.]

Overview of IT advisory board (ITAB)

Matt Harford attended the meeting to provide an overview of the IST advisory board. View the full presentation on the IT advisory board (PDF).

Comments & Discussion

  • How is the feedback received from the board prioritized for implementation?
    • Low or no cost suggestions can be implemented immediately
    • Feedback regarding services belonging to service owners outside of IST are passed on to the appropriate individual
    • Suggestions that would require a budget must be approved by the CIO
  • Could CTSC help students differentiate IST as a department and understand the department's specific services?
    • ITAB could pass along feedback to different departments to share concerns among all IT groups on campus
  • What is the ITAB budget? 
    • CIO has approved a budget for $100/month for food and drinks for participants
    • Students receive a letter of reference at the end of the term for their participation 
      • Students appreciate receiving this letter as something to include on their resume
  • How does the ITAB acquire participants? 
    • The position is posted on LEADS, posters advertising the position are also posted at the IT service desks
    • ITAB received a satisfactory number of volunteers during its first term running
      • There has been a significant increase in volunteer applications in following terms
      • ITAB meeting attendance decreases during Spring term
    • The Math department runs a similar initiative, but currently struggles to obtain volunteers
      • AHS also has difficulty attracting volunteers for a similar initiative
  • ITAB is currently not a first page search result on Google
  • Posters are only put up for major planned outages or major IT changes
    • Posters are not created for unexpected maintenance
  • CTSC members are interested in obtaining 'How to set up wi-fi' poster assets to promote in respective member departments

Chair’s Remarks (Steven Bourque)

  • Currently working on updating the list of CTSC long-term agenda topics
    • CTSC members to vote on a list of discussion topics in the near future

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

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

Other Business

Nexus employee mapping (Trevor)

  • Looking for clarification in regards to the 'Changes to how employee access is provisioned - December 19' email
    • What action is required? 

Comments & Discussion

  • Contact the IST help desk at helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or contact Workday regarding any issues

  • Check with respective department executive officer to confirm any changes that will be made

     

Vacation and absences on Workday (Robyn)

  • Sent in department's vacation and absence information but information is not reflected in Workday

     

Two-factor authentication in Workday (Robyn)

  • Looking for update on two-factor in Workday

Comments & Discussion

  • Two-factor authentication is currently only required for Workday administrators

     

Tecplot (Robyn)

  • Seeking faculty members who are currently using or would like to use Tecplot

     

Update on guest wi-fi (Steven)

  • Project was put on hold due to wireless upgrade
    • Guest wi-fi is still going to be implemented but the project is delayed
       

Looking for git.uwaterloo status update (Lawrence)

Comments & Discussion

  • Currently preparing for an upgrade but the work has not yet started
     


Nexus employee mapping (Lawrence)

  • What tool should be used to create and manage Nexus groups? 

Comments & Discussion

  • Contact the IST help desk at helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca to inquire about recommended tools
  • The library managers computers, users, and groups with an active directory
    • Uses tools to automatically update groups but can only be used for specific group subsets
       


Communications with Plant Ops (Adam)

  • Unexpected maintenance in the library resulted in temperature dropping to 7 degrees

Comments & Discussion

  • Can IST communications connect with Plant Ops? 
  • Plant Ops should notify departments of larger outages
     


Clarification on Graduate student email accounts (Bill)

  • How should departments advise grad students with email issues? 
    • Where do emails get directed to if a student has both an edu and a connect account?

Comments & Discussion

  • Mail redirects to the connect account
    • Emails should be set up to redirect instead of being forwarded
  • Mail routing is set up automatically for WatIAM
    • Emails sent specifically to a students edu account will not be redirected to their connect account


Desktop rollover program (Bill)

  • Are there changes to the desktop rollover program given upcoming budget constraints? 

Comments & Discussion

  • Budget will remain the same as last year
  • Program will be reviewed as it has not been reviewed in a number of years
  • Visit the IST Desktop rollover program site for more information regarding the program


Clarification on OneNote access with Microsoft Teams (Bill)

Comments & Discussion

  • The Microsoft Teams pilot was set up differently
    • OneNote in Teams is not part of the educational license
    • Initial pilot of Teams was not set up under the educational license
  • OneNote can still be accessed through the desktop or web applications, just not through Teams
     

Roundtable

Math (Robyn)

  • The department may be moving out of current server room into the IST server room in MC
    • Could potentially be a costly project with a big cost being cooling redundancy

CS (Lawrence)

  • The department has licensed Microsoft Imagine for Math teaching and research faculty members
    • License is faculty independent
    • Parties interested in using Microsoft Imagine should contact the CS department
  • SHARCNET is selling off the Orca cluster which consists of 400 machines
    • The CS department has interest in rebuilding it, looking for other interested parties
    • Looking to rebuild the cluster but not looking to relocate it
    • Arts is also interested in this project