Committee meeting - July 9, 2020

Carol Lu  
Secretary to the Committee  
July 9, 2020  
  
Present: Dave Kibble, Erick Engelke, Lori Paniak, Paul Miskovsky, Steven Bourque, Trevor Bain, Greg Smith, Bill Baer, Andrea Chappell, Andrew McAlorum, Robyn Landers, Pratik Patel

Regrets: Adam Savage, Daryl Dore, Don Duff-McCracken, Jason Testart
  
Agenda  

  1. Roundtable discussion – all [60 min.]
  2. Next CTSC Meeting
    [Will be held Thursday July 23 at 1:30 p.m. via Teams Meeting]

 Roundtable

AHS (Trevor)

  • Investigating the use of Labstat for remote access
    • Some interest in using remote desktop for Matlab and other software
    • Looking at on-prem instead of cloud; easier to collect data for information risk assessment
  • Moving ahead with soft phone migration
    • Appreciates the W Store's headset/handset recommendations
  • Trying to convince people to start using 2FA to get familiar with it before it becomes mandatory

Comments and discussion

  • Arts may have Labstat licenses available to share

Technology Integrated Services, IST (Steve)

  • W Store has mentioned soft phone hardware purchases can be made on department P-cards
    • 30 cents of every dollar spent gets funded back to University student services
    • W Store also provides support and warranties for hardware purchased
  • As of July 2, Network Services is back on campus to continue with the wired switch and router refresh
    • Hardware for the wireless refresh has been ordered, currently waiting for hardware to arrive

Arts (Bill)

  • Currently working on getting lab access for grad courses
    • One option to take lab offline and give students access for the whole term
      • Pursuing this for Fine Arts
    • Another option to use a designated room for a lab
      • Looking at doing this for Psychology
  • Using Labstat to track physical usage 
  • Working with IST to set up Azure Lab Services
  • Working with Retail Services to offer Adobe Creative Cloud to students

Comments and discussion

  • Adobe Creative Cloud does not work using remote desktop
    • Test with Labstat showed high latency; cannot render or use Adobe Premiere 

Strategic Consultant, IST (Dave Kibble)

  • The Safety Office and Space Planning Office are reviewing campus social distancing rules
  • Any follow-up comments to the student lab discussion?
    • Some members of Math have some concerns regarding the Student Labs committee's suggestions
    • Please contact Dave if you have any additional feedback or comments

Client Services, IST (Andrew)

  • Follow up on email conversation re: Bomgar and Teams
    • Teams can be used for basic remote IT support but does not have access to elevated admin privileges required for installing applications on a user's computer (e.g. Cisco AnyConnect VPN)
    • Bomgar is needed for remote IT support that requires elevated admin privileges
    • Bomgar is relatively expensive and IST has fewer user licenses available
  • Office 365 email migrations are going well
    • Started migrating 150 users at a time; will be increasing to 300 users per migration, then 500 users per migration until all Academic Support units have moved
  • Continuing to plan for the Skype telephony project 
  • Looking for feedback regarding the removal of the Skype meeting option in Outlook - thoughts? 
    • There is currently a Skype meeting option and Teams meeting option enabled in Outlook
    • IST would like to focus on using Skype infrastructure for external calling and Teams as the main online meeting tool 

Comments and discussion

  • There is support from CTSC members to remove the Skype meeting option in Outlook; no members have objected to this change
  • Teams has replaced the need to use Skype for most functionalities
  • Inviting users to Teams meetings is easier than inviting users to Skype meetings (e.g. You needed to know someone's user id to invite them to a Skype meeting)
  • Regarding RFP consultation: it would be helpful to have academic support representation outside of IST involved in the RFP process
    • Not necessarily required for all RFPs, but would be beneficial for new systems that would affect Academic Support staff on a university-wide scale
    • Faculties should be made aware of potential system changes before they happen (e.g. implementation of e-signatures; support staff get questions but are not informed of the changes)
    • This should be a future discussion for CTSC

Instructional Technologies and Media Services, IST (Andrea)

  • E-classroom team will be returning to campus as they are considered essential staff for the Fall term
  • Placed an order for streaming and recording equipment for large classrooms
    • New technology that is not installed anywhere on campus yet; would be ideal for a hybrid environment
  • Exams and proctoring announcement should be available soon 
    • Investigating use of Proctortrack and ProctorU
  • Investigating the use of Cisco Hands-on Lab
    • Allows you to map a set of physical machines as a lab
    • Requires installation on the lab machine
    • Contact Andrea Chappell for more information about Cisco Hands-on Lab
  • Teams roster loading was discussed in a recent Office 365 committee meeting
    • There will be development work done for this; no timeline available yet
  • Survey sent to instructors and students is complete; responses can be circulated once report is compiled

Math (Robyn)

  • Department has selected NetApps as a storage solution; will be installed on July 24
  • Any update on the addition of new CTSC members? 
    • Currently being discussed among UCIST members

Engineering (Erick)

  • Englab remote access can be configured to only allow a user to add a lab computer if they are on the class roster