Committee meeting - June 9, 2016

Darren Bondy
Secretary to the Committee
June 20, 2016

Present: 

Bruce Campbell (Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Trevor Bain, Andrea Chappell, Erick Engelke, Dave Gawley, Bob Hicks, Dawn Keenan, Robyn Landers, Paul Miskovsky, Jason Testart

Guests:

Stephen Carr

Regrets:

Colin Bell, Steven Bourque, Marko Dumancic, Dave Kibble, Carl Nagel, Sati Singh

Agenda

[Will be held Thursday, June 23, 2016, at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 111.]

Digital Signage project recommendations

Steve Carr attended the meeting discuss the Digital Signage project and made reference to the current Plant Operations guidelines for interior building space.

Comments & discussion

• Some things have changed since the project closed:
  • Previously had been using Visibull on the back end for digital signage but we no longer have contracts with them.
  • Science Computing has created an alternative to use called Scinage which is currently being used by numerous groups on campus.
  • The hardware has improved quite a bit since the project closed; Chrome devices and Raspberry Pi are being used on campus.
• Some things have stayed the same since the project:
  • Plant Operations guidelines for interior building space have not changed at all to reflect the recommendations (i.e. 5sqft size limit for displays and only 2 installations per building, among other things).
  • Plant Operations controls the entire process as it currently stands based on the guidelines.
• Bruce Campbell will meet with the new Executive Director of Plant Operations, Harry Bakker to discuss some potential changes to the guidelines; will also meet with Beth Jewkes regarding digital signage.

Chair’s Remarks

• Bruce Campbell distributed an email regarding a ransomware attack that happened at the University of Calgary; there was an article in the Record about it today.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

The minutes from the previous meeting were accepted as distributed.

Emailing students from systems with LDAP lookup

• Starting in the Fall of 2017, new students will be getting the edu.uwaterloo.ca email address.
• If you currently have a system in place that does an automatic lookup of email addresses you will need to use an LDAP lookup.

Promoting greater campus deployment of Skype for Business (lite)

The lite version of Skype for Business has been rolled out to a few different areas on campus; we are hoping to have greater deployment as time goes on.

• In approximately 5 years, the campus PBX will be up for renewal and Skype for Business seems like the natural evolution of the phone system on campus.
• IST is encouraging greater use of the lite version at this time.
• At a later time we can implement a self-activating tool so people can try it out.
• Extension numbers would change with use of the full version but not the lite version.
• This can be discussed in more detail at a future meeting.

Other business

Links from uwaterloo.ca web space to pages that don’t look like WCMS pages:

• Math requested a specific alias for a conference site they are building but were denied because it did not meet all of the requirements for the recommended use guidelines.
  • The alias would redirect to a site that is not in the WMCS and does not look anything like a UW branded site.
• A sub-group of WAC created these guidelines; the Math representative at WAC will bring forward this issue at the next WAC meeting.
• Using the newly released conference theme template within the WCMS may resolve this issue; Robyn Landers will look into this option with IST. 

Roundtable Reporting

Engineering (Erick Engelke)

• As previously stated in email, Engineering is willing to share OwnCloud if people are interested in using it; subject to our own conditions (availability to fix, backups etc.)
  • Shawn Winnington-Ball will attend a future CTSC meeting to discuss the project’s progress; IST will not be providing an on premise cloud solution immediately so this seems like the right solution at this time.
• We are working to get faculty more interested in doing backups for their data.
  • We have the tools available but we are struggling to get Faculty buy in.
  • Will need to place more emphasis on the importance of backups and share stories that put the risk into perspective.
    • Jason Testart and Erick will meet offline to discuss further.

Computer Science (Dave Gawley)

• We have decided we need a large scale distributed file service; will be building a 400TB server and it will be ready for the fall.
  • Will be encouraging everyone in the Math faculty to participate in that.

Client Services, IST (Bob Hicks)

• Prepared a new SEW course to inform employees on campus about the IT environment at UW.
  • Bob will teach the first offering of it in October 2016 and then pass it off to someone else for future courses.
  • HR is aware of this course and will be promoting it in their orientation sessions for new employees.
  • Bob will distribute the slides for the course to this group and would appreciate feedback.

Math (Robyn Landers)

• In talks with Lisa Tomalty regarding moving to the RT system; figuring out what tweaks need to be made so that it works for us.

Science (Paul Miskovsky)

• Had our first meeting for the campus evaluation group last week regarding eValuate; some concerns from areas about on-going and continuous support but we have reassured them that it will be business as usual unless we are directed at the top level to change things.

IT Security (Jason Testart)

• Will officially announce soon that we have chosen SailPoint for the IDAM project.
• We are using Trend Micro for email security gateway; currently piloting in the dev environment with some staff in IST.
  • The goal is to have it in production by the end of July.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be held on June 23, 2016 at 2:00pm, in EC2 111.