Committee meeting - June 14, 2018

Darren Bondy
Secretary to the Committee­­­
July 3, 2018

Present: 

Andrew McAlorum (Acting Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Trevor Bain, Colin Bell, Andrea Chappell, Marko Dumancic, Erick Engelke, Robyn Landers, Keith McGowan, Paul Miskovsky, Adam Savage, Jason Testart

Guests:

Matthew Verlis

Regrets:

Steven Bourque (Chair), Daryl Dore, Dave Kibble, Omar Nafees, Greg Smith

Agenda

  1. Guest Wi-fi at UWaterloo (Matthew Verlis) [15 min.]
  2. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  3. Approval of the minutes of the meetings of May 3, 2018 [5 min.]
  4. Knowledgebase project (Andrew McAlorum) [15 min.]
  5. Other Business [10 min.]
  6. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  7. Next CTSC Meeting

[Will be held Thursday, June 28, 2018, at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 1021. CANCELLED]

Guest Wifi at UWaterloo (Matthew Verlis)

Matthew Verlis attended the meeting to discuss guest Wifi on campus. Topics included:

  • Current methods for guest wifi access
  • Notes on current methods
  • Ideas to make things easier
  • Too many SSID’s is a bad thing
  • Commercial alternatives

View the full presentation on Guest WiFi at UWaterloo (PDF).

Comments & discussion

  • Members suggested having an open access SSID but make it heavily restricted.
  • Members are to recommend someone from their departments to work with Matt Verlis on a working group to create recommendations regarding open access SSID and what the restrictions would be.
    • The recommendations will then be brought to this committee for review.
    • A risk assessment will also need to be conducted.

Chair’s Remarks (Andrew McAlorum)

  • Andrew will be away for a couple weeks; will likely cancel the June 28 meeting if no pressing agenda items arise.
    • Will have some good items for first meeting in July.
  • Follow up re: official stance on retired faculty/staff keeping their email
    • There is no official position; when someone retires we remove their email but typically if they ask to keep it we let them.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

The previous meetings minutes were accepted as distributed.

Knowledgebase project (Andrew McAlorum)

Andrew McAlorum discussed the knowledge base project. Topics included:

  • IST website redesign
  • Problem
  • Requirements
  • TBD

View the full presentation on the Knowledgebase project (PDF).

Comments & discussion

  • Is it possible to make TeamDynamix available for other groups to use? The PMG group is happy to have more people use TeamDynamix; contact Connie van Oostveen regarding access.  
  • Was the knowledge base feature of RT considered at all during this process?
    • We considered it but it does not have the functionality we were looking for. It would require too much design work to make it user friendly and presentable.
  • Is there any live content currently in the knowledge base?
    • Yes. Natasha Jennings has been populating it for the past couple months. The entry point will be from our Service Catalogue; there are “how-to” documents linked from there into the knowledge base.

Other Business

Blacklisting

  • Continue to be blacklisted by some open source blacklisting organizations; won’t be unlisted until the amount of spam is reduced (which is difficult to determine when that might happen).
    • The Technology Integrated Systems group has been implementing some measures to mitigate the risk for this; no specific details at this point.

Roundtable Reporting

Math (Robyn Landers)

  • Sounds like the power outage in MC will be for one week in August; starting to make plans for machines we need to keep up during that time.
    • DC and M3 will also have a power outage but only for one day each; do not know which day yet.
  • Will the next iteration of the committee reviewing mail on campus be looking at forwarding?
    • Dave Hinton is leading this project, will need to follow up with him.

IT Security (Jason Testart)  

  • With the new Workday system being implemented in the next 6 or so, it looks like two-factor authentication will be mandatory when accessing the system off-campus (not approved yet).

Client Services, IST (Andrew McAlorum)

  • Peggy Day, Manager, Service Desks, is retiring at the end of the Summer; have been focused on hiring her replacement.

Environment (Marko Dumancic)

  • EV1 will be without power for 3 weeks in August; planning for that.

Science (Paul Miskovsky)

  • Had been dealing with the fires from the past week; setting up temporary work environments for staff.
    • Lots of work ahead for the department re: damage caused.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be held on June 28, 2018 at 1:30pm, in EC2 1021.