Committee meeting - May 5, 2022

Sarah McKone

Secretary to the Committee    
May 5, 2022
   
Present: Andrew McAlorum, Bill Baer, Don Duff-McCracken, Daryl Dore, Erick Engelke, Lawrence Folland, Nick Springate, O Nafees, Pratik Patel, Robyn Landers, Trevor Bain
Regrets: Adam Savage, Greg Parks, Greg Smith, Jason Testart, Lori Paniak, Pam Fluttert, Paul Miskovsky, Steven Bourque

Agenda 

  1. Approval of the minutes from Thursday, April 7, 2022 [5 min.] 

  2. Next CTSC Meeting [Will be held Thursday, May 19, at 1:30 p.m.] 

  3. Other business and roundtable discussion – all [20 min.] 

Chair's remarks

  • None.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting 

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

Other Business/Roundtable

IST, Andrew McAlorum

  • Green IT Committee held their first meeting on May 5. The group has good representation across campus and appears excited about the work. 

  • Jira Software on-premises will be completing a bulk migration to cloud in mid-June. An email was sent out the previous week to all Jira Software on-premises project owners.  

    • Client Services is working with a representative from Atlassian and using their migration tool to complete this. 

  • Atlassian recently integrated Insight Asset Management with Jira Service Management. There are 3-4 groups across campus already utilizing this. The Service Desk is piloting the use of Insight Asset Management to sign out equipment such as cables, adapters, and mobile devices to start. 

    • Andrew to request Matt Harford to provide a demonstration at a future CTSC meeting.  

    • ACO would like a meeting to discuss use further as they are currently utilizing multiple asset management tools; CALMS, Asset Panda, and WebCheckout

    • Mindville’s YouTube videos can be a useful resource

    • CS is utilizing an inventory system which could also be evaluated for asset management purposes. 

  • Update on R Drive migration- Last year, personal N drives were migrated to OneDrive and now IST is looking to do the same with departmental drives to SharePoint/Teams. 

    • This will start as a pilot within IST to prepare for the role out in other academic support units. Tentatively the pilot would start in August with a roll out to academic support units in the fall. 

  • The Software Licensing Coordinator vacancy has now been filled by Jamie.  

    • Jamie to be invited to a future CTSC meeting to discuss software licensing. 

    • Role-based email: ist-swpu@uwaterloo.ca. 

    • Andrew will arrange a meeting between Lawrence and Jamie to discuss faculty on campus requesting VMware. 

    • Desire to see a managed catalogue of known software statuses on-campus 

    • App inventory should have some of this information currently 

    • Andrew to investigate the Policy 1 change regarding software procurement and reporting. 

  • Hybrid meeting rooms- Looking to develop a recommendation of technology for employee meeting rooms. Andrew will share this with CTSC this is widely published. 

Arts, Bill Baer

  • Bill and Robyn met to discuss on-boarding and offboarding (managing assertions). They are looking for information on where specific access decisions were made and why. 

    • Lawrence will schedule a meeting with Jason’s team, Trevor, Bill, and Nevil  

    • The conversation regarding postdoctoral email extension was initiated by GSPA and occurred between GSPA, HR, IST, and OR.  

      • Officially post-doc students will receive a 16-month grace period for an A3 license after graduation, after this point they will receive an alumni A1 mail-only license.

    • Dormant account: Jason could speak to this better, Andrew will ask Jason to respond 

Environment, Don Duff-McCracken 

  • Migration from WCMS 2 to WCMS 3 will progress quickly during the spring term. Currently, reviewing the WCMS 2 content type sites to see what sites can migrate, even if they are not top tier sits.  

    • Some sites are currently being help back due to features such as bibliography/citation content types and drop-down menus. 

    • WUSA has opted to utilize WordPress but would like a one-page WCMS 3 site. WUSA will ensure that the branding is unified. 

  • Desire to review computer lab usage and will be utilizing the LabStats license to monitor usage over the next year. 

    • AHS saw an increase in lab usage with the O365 migration, but this has tailed off a bit since. AHS will be surveying the undergraduate community to see how they would like the space to be utilized (ex. Docking stations). 

    • Arts has hub monitors in computer labs. Thus far faculty feedback is positive. 

    • WUSA has found that moving to Teams has made it easier for students to log into a lab and have access to all necessary content.  

Math, Robyn Landers

  • Looking for suggestions of technology to use in a tutorial center. The intent is to provide mix-modes of in-person and virtual participation.  

    • Meeting owls are an option, but there are limitations with the screen quality which is a messaging platform issue not the owl’s camera quality 

    • Health has utilized a Bose speaker, video camera, microphone, and speakers bolted down to a moveable cart. 

    • Logitech rally bar, the audio has limitation depending on the size of the room 

    • A professor in math has a Dell touch screen tv with a speaker, camera, and soundbar that may be effective for a virtual whiteboard.