Committee meeting - October 31, 2019

Natasha Jennings
Acting Secretary to the Committee
October 31, 2019

Present: Jason Testart, Trevor Bain, Bill Baer, Don Duff-McCracken, Andrea Chappell, Robyn Landers, David Gawley, Paul Miskovsky, Lori Paniak, Adam Savage, Steven Bourque, Natasha Jennings (Acting Secretary)

Regrets: Erick Engelke, Andrew McAlorum, Daryl Dore, Greg Smith, Dave Kibble

Agenda

  1. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes of the meetings of Thursday October 3, 2019 [5 min.]
  3. Questions about communicating major IT changes via email (Don Duff-McCracken) [5 min.]
  4. Other Business [10 min.]
  5. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  6. CANHEIT experience and insight (Robyn Landers) [15 min.]
  7. Next CTSC Meeting
    [Will be held Thursday November 14 at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 1021.]

Chair's remarks (Steven Bourque)

  • Faculty consultations for Office 365 employee email investigation in progress
  • Staff consultation dates were recently announced
  • Mac client for new WatSAFE desktop notification tool scheduled to be released on Monday, November 4, 2019

Comments and discussion

  • Trevor commented he would have liked to have known about AHS Faculty meeting
  • Don also didn’t realize “faculty” session (for Faculty members) was/would be separate from “employee” session (for staff)

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

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

Questions about communicating major IT changes via email (Don Duff-McCracken)

  • Why don’t we use/can’t we use mass messaging for some IT communications?
    • Request for mass email notifications process clarified
    • IST leverages established channels and also relies on IT committees and representatives to further disseminate messages to their areas
    • Concern from Science regarding inclusion of links in recent voicemail system migration message to TeamDynamix (TDX not known and potential phishing concerns)
      • TDX articles do include “uwaterloo” in domain and pages are appropriately branded

Other business

  • No other business

Roundtable

Math (Robyn)

  • What do others do for password management?
    • Secret Server is an available “point-and-click” service
    • Some CTSC members have experience using it
    • Contact Julio (IST) for more information and support

Science (Paul)

  • Working on new survey tool, EvaluLite
  • Soft launch (for specific users) scheduled for November 15; more general release to be scheduled

Arts (Bill)

  • What is the status of Wi-Fi in DC lecture halls?
    • Rom was not designed for high-density use
      • TIS has a plan to upgrade equipment, just waiting for conduit to be installed
    • Library has also submitted Wi-Fi review for high density areas
      • TIS is finalizing campus wireless refresh business plan, including high density areas
  • Arts completed negotiation with Adobe for more cost-effective licensing; other faculties can access and purchase licenses under this new model and will be invoiced directly (no intermediary role for Arts)
    • Don appreciates the work that was done to accomplish this
    • Comments from multiple members regarding the need to review and improve access/cost/sharing of other campus software
    • Suggestion to invite IST Software Coordinator to future meeting to review processes

Technology Integrated Services, IST (Steve)

  • Two-factor authentication will be added to VPN

AHS (Trevor)

  • Thank you to IST and Psychology staff for helping create shared subnet in TBJ for AHS

Computer Science (Dave)

  • Lawrence Folland is beginning sabbatical with Staff Association
  • Lori Paniak will take over duties of Technical Manager and will also now be the CS-CTSC representative
  • Question regarding replacing Apache module for Linux to connect to ADFS
    • TIS is aware and is investigating

Environment (Don)

  • Apple representative will be on campus to help with the move from Volume Purchasing Program to the “Apps and Books” component of Apple School Manager

CANHEIT experience and insight (Robyn Landers)

  • Presentation on conference experience
    • Some comments and information sharing regarding data visualization tools, tri-agency research data storage, CUCCIO special interest groups (SIG)