Committee meeting - October 27, 2016

Darren Bondy
Secretary to the Committee
October 31, 2016

Present: 

Bruce Campbell (Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Trevor Bain, Colin Bell, Steven Bourque, Andrea Chappell, Don Duff-McCracken, Lawrence Folland, Bob Hicks, Robyn Landers, Paul Miskovsky, Carl Nagel

Guests:

Pavol Chvala, Andrew McAlorum, Stephen Sempson, Barb Yantha

Regrets:

Erick Engelke, Dawn Keenan, Dave Kibble, Sati Singh, Jason Testart

Agenda

  1. Waterloo Photos demonstration (Barb Yantha) [15 min.]
  2. Portal demonstration (Andrew McAlorum, Pavol Chvala) [20 min.]
  3. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  4. Approval of the minutes of the meeting of October 13, 2016 [5 min.]
  5. Other Business [10 min.]
  6. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  1. Next CTSC Meeting

[Will be held Thursday, November 24, 2016, at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 111.]

Waterloo Photos (Barb Yantha)

Barb Yantha provided a demonstration of Waterloo Photos. Topics included:

  • Overview
  • Features and functionality
  • Pilot groups and launch to campus
  • Requesting access to Waterloo Photos
  • Access and demonstration

View the full presentation on Waterloo Photos (PDF).

Comments & discussion

  • What is the ultimate purpose of this tool?
    • It is meant to be a resource to communication officers on campus to use for publications and communications. It provides photos for staff to use when creating content.
    • It is not meant to be an archival tool.
  • For those interested in archival storage of historical images, the Library is currently looking at using Islandora for collections and archives.
  • Is it open for anyone?
    • It is available to use for staff/faculty who are wanting to share images (not just browse what is available).
  • If you are interested in getting access, submit an RT.

Portal Demonstration (Andrew McAlorum, Pavol)

Andrew McAlorum and Pavol Chvala provided an overview and demonstration of the Portal application

  • Requirements
    • Functional
    • Non-functional
    • Usability
  • Technology stack
  • Risks
  • Methodology
  • Timelines
  • Demonstration

View the full presentation on the Portal (PDF).

Comments & discussion

  • One solution to the calendar request would be to integrate with the Office 365 calendar.
    • We are pursuing that currently.
  • Students have also been requesting that it be integrated with Office 365 email.
  • Anyone with WatIAM credentials can download and login to the app.
  • Currently working on integrating with LEARN’s OAuth model.
  • Discussion that was held at the last Student Technology Council meeting focused on having a tool (Portal was mentioned) that could provide a common  front end for services that students are using daily like Quest, LEARN etc.  The suggestion being that more of the data students view regularly be visible in the Portal, with links into the authoritative tools, with single sign on, to make the experience seamless.
  • Have you tried adding it to the Amazon app store?
    • Yes, however there are some issues that we need to figure out before we can add it.

Chair’s Remarks

  • None.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

The minutes from the previous meeting were accepted as distributed.

Other business

Blacklisting issue

  • Last week the University was placed on a blacklist by Microsoft and Backscatter.
  • We have since been removed from the Backscatter list but remain blacklisted by Microsoft, however a workaround is in place so there should be no remaining service impact.
  • Part of the issue appears to be two mass emails sent by the University last week (Gender neutral bathrooms and the Notice and Notice copyright emails) which made it appear that we were spamming email accounts.
  • This became an issue because of the amount of students who forward their email to other accounts.
  • We will continue the dialogue with Microsoft to be removed from list and further communication will be shared when this issue has been resolved.

Roundtable Report

Instructional Technologies and Multimedia Services (Andrea Chappell)

  • We have discussed micro credentials and badges here in the past; there is a tremendous amount of interest in it. Will compile use cases and interest then bring it to Mario Coniglio for next steps.
  • The Teaching and Learning steering committee will be conducting a survey to ask students and professors about good classrooms, bad classrooms etc.

Environment (Don Duff-McCracken)

  • Will be having a power outage at the end of this summer in EV1; will follow up with Robyn and Steven regarding the recent power outage in MC.

Computer Science (Lawrence Folland)

  • Power outage went fairly well from our perspective; thank you to IST and MFCF for their work in making sure everything went smoothly.
  • Will be hosting an event next Friday on IBM Power CPU architecture; mostly of interest to research computing but if you are interested let Lawrence know.

Math (Robyn Landers)

  • The power outage didn’t go as well as Plant Ops had hoped; thankfully our UPS batteries were good enough to keep up the very few selected things that need to stay up.
  • We are well prepared with checklists if we need to go through this process again.
  • Math is going to get acquainted with Scinage; will touch base with Paul Miskovsky about seeing the product.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be held on November 24, 2016 at 1:30pm, in EC2 111.