Committee meeting - October 15, 2020

Carol Lu  
Secretary to the Committee  
October 15, 2020  
  
Present: Steven Bourque, Andrew McAlorum, Bill Baer, Don Duff-McCracken, Erick Engelke, Greg Parks, Jason Testart, Lawrence Folland, Lori Paniak, Paul Miskovsky, Pratik Patel, Robyn Landers, Andrea Chappell, Trevor Bain 

Regrets: Greg Smith, Daryl Dore, Adam Savage
  
Agenda 

  1. Chair’s remarks (Steven Bourque) [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes of the meetings of Thursday September 17, 2020 [5 min.]
  3. Jira Service Desk and RT discussion (Andrew McAlorum) [10 min.]
  4. Other Business/Roundtable discussion – all [30 min.]
  5. Next CTSC Meeting [Will be held Thursday October 29 at 1:30 p.m.]

Chair's remarks (Steve Bourque)

  • No remarks.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

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

Jira Service Desk and RT discussion (Andrew McAlorum)

  • Follow up discussion on Jira Service Desk after Matthew Harford's presentation to the committee on August 20
  • IST is working on setting up Atlassian access for users 
    • Had a series of meetings with interested parties; sandbox environments have been created to begin configuring spaces
  • HR is excited to use Jira Service Desk and may move the HR help email and RT queues to Jira Service Desk
    • Additional groups using Jira Service Desk include: Arts Computing Office, Environment's MAD Help Desk, CEE, Renison, Office of Research, IST's Security Operations Committee, and The Centre
  • HR and The Centre are interested in using Atlassian Confluence for their department knowledge base
    • This would make Confluence a prominent knowledge base platform on campus with three central knowledge bases incorporated
  • The IST Service Desk will be migrating from Jira Service Desk on-prem to Jira Service Desk cloud around the end of October
    • Arts Computing Office and other original pilot groups will also be migrated
  • The IST Service Desk will also look at moving the IST Service Desk's client-facing RT queues to Jira Service Desk in November
  • IST will be sending out an email communication to RT admins with an update regarding the Jira Service Desk project soon 
    • Purpose is to inform RT admins that Jira Service Desk is being investigated as a potential replacement for RT
    • More information will be sent to RT admins in the upcoming months; IST will reach out to admins to learn more about their needs and required features in a ticketing system 
    • RT will continue to be fully supported

Comments and discussion 

  • It sounds like the decision to replace RT with Jira Service Desk has already been made based on this discussion and the communication 
    • RT upgrade group has also been disbanded
  • Why aren't we looking at ways to rethink RT workflows instead? 
  • There is no date set to get rid of RT right now
  • RT has a metatag feature that allows issues to be tagged (e.g. Mac issue tagged as 'mac') instead of having queues
  • Renison IT prefers the Jira Service Desk user experience over RT
  • IST will be contacting each RT admin to discuss their ticketing system needs
  • Like RT, Jira Service Desk also has a time tracking feature 
  • Arts Computing Office joined the Jira Service Desk pilot early
    • Wanted service desk to be more client-focused
    • Jira Service Desk allows for easy transfer of tickets between different Jira Service Desk groups (e.g. IST)
    • Does not use RT to track backend requests; change from RT to Jira Service Desk would not impact Arts
  • The communication should explain the business point of view (e.g. how does it affect my job) rather than from a client point of view as most clients will not read this message
  • Computer Science only switched to RT two years ago and now it is possible that there may be a switch to Jira Service Desk
    • There should be more transparency with long-term planning in regards to these changes
  • Some CTSC members feel that clients only read messages from their Deans; messages sent by others are disregarded
    • IST could re-examine the process for delivering client-facing support for departments and faculties

Other Business/Roundtable

Mandatory 2FA on November 3 

  • Will 2FA be mandatory for all Web-based ADFS logins starting November 3rd, or will it still be an opt-in for administrators of the Web sites to choose whether or not to do 2FA? 
  • Token distribution isn’t clear; if you asked (i.e. filled out the form) but then setup DUO no token issued?
  • Is there IT faculty support of 2FA, for those that can’t access a system for legitimate reason (cell phone broken)?
    • There should be promotion of multiple ways to authenticate to reduce the issue of people being unable to log in
  • Jason Testart shared the 2FA enrolment statistics in the CTSC Team

Comments and discussion

  • Tokens have not arrived yet due to shipping delays
  • A message will be sent to all YubiKey requestors to acknowledge the delay
  • May have to delay the mandatory 2FA date from November 3 if token delay continues
  • May be able to opt-out of 2FA if there is a legitimate reason 
  • 2FA is for a user's account, not for the service the user is logging into
  • Decommissioning Shibboleth and CAS is part of the move to ADFS/Single Sign On
  • Would be ideal to move all campus applications to ADFS
  • If you sign into one Office 365 application you will receive a 2FA prompt; logging into additional apps will not trigger additional 2FA prompts
  • A soft launch (e.g. deferring the Nov 3 date but not announcing this change) might be an option instead of moving the Nov 3 date for everyone
    • Could also keep the Nov 3 date for everyone, except for users who ordered YubiKeys
  • Will workstations require YubiKeys? 
    • Some groups are already using YubiKeys for workstations (e.g. Police Services, Registrar, Finance); this is opt-in 
  • The need for 2FA for service accounts or generic accounts will be assessed on a case-by-case basis
    • You can have multiple tokens associated with multiple accounts
    • Accounts used for systems that do not need 2FA should not be affected (e.g. generic account for a fax machine)
  • Azure multi-factor authentication is not mature enough yet; needs proper U2F/FIDO2 support
    • YubiKey is beneficial since it does not require the use of a vendor-specific token

Wireless Upgrade

  • Installing new APs
  • Backend configuration is complete, doing final testing
  • Will start planning campus migration after testing in EC2 is complete
     

ITMS updates (Andrea)

  • There are several Teaching and Learning surveys being conducted on campus
    • In-person instructors survey (closes Oct 19)
      • Asking about experience with streaming/recording in classrooms and how well adapted teaching methods worked
      • Also asks instructors if they brought their own equipment
        • Registrar is getting requests for rooms with built-in stream/record functionality; currently only 4/17 Registrar rooms have this
        • Please contact Andrea if you are aware of any other Teaching and Learning related surveys
    • In-person students survey (close date TBD)
      • Survey initiated by Science with IAP, ideas for parallel questions have been sent to in-person instructors
    • Online students survey (close date TBD)
      • Survey initiated by WUSA with IAP
      • Keep Learning Team has been asked for input/feedback
    • International student access to edtech ('Alibaba' survey)
      • Possibly running a second time to reach more students (e.g. beyond students living in China)
      • Purpose is to learn which Chinese provinces have more internet/access issues
    • Microsoft Teams instructor survey
      • Asking instructors what they use their Team for, whether rosters were a critical feature, etc. 
  • No broad instructor survey planned for this term by the Keep Learning team 
    • Interested in conducting an end of Fall 2020 survey for final exams (e.g. what was the traditional exam, what was the Fall 2020 plan, what was the experience, lessons learned, etc.)
  • There are 375 online final exams scheduled; there are usually 900 in a 'regular' term 
    • Registrar is scheduling exams but only a few are timed/synchronous; most exams are to be completed within a 24+ hour window
    • There are 7 in-person exams scheduled
    • Support is complicated as many exams may be in LEARN (quizzes), Mobius, Crowdmark, Akindi
      • Mobius, Crowdmark and Akindi all have integrations with LEARN
      • There are a few exams using live proctoring
  • ITMS, Centre for Extended Learning, Centre for Teaching Excellence, and the Registrar's Office are looking to provide best practices and guidance to avoid any issues during exam delivery
    • E.g. Instructors should have a dry run using the same technologies they will be using during the exam so students know what to expect
  • The same set of Registrar classrooms will be in use next term with the same constraints on numbers, spacing, etc.
    • Feedback from survey may provide additional info on needs
  • Office 365 and Teaching & Learning
    • Meeting with other institutions to learn more about their roll out (including Teaching & Learning) 
    • Investigating Stream for storage/delivery 
      • Meeting next week with IST support areas as a starting point