Committee meeting - August 25, 2022

Sarah McKone  
Secretary to the Committee     
August 25, 2022 
    
Present:  Steven Bourque (chair), Adam Savage, Andrew McAlorum, Don Duff-McCracken, Erick Engelke, Greg Parks, Jason Testart, Lori Paniak, Nick Springate, Pam Fluttert, Pratik Patel, Robyn Landers, Trevor Bain 


Regrets: Bill Baer, Paul Miskovsky 

 
Agenda   

  1. Chair’s Remarks 

  2. Approval of the minutes from Thursday, June 30, 2022 [5 min.] 

  3. Discuss post doc email extensions [5 min.] 

  4. Discuss Adobe Acrobat Pro licensing [5 min.] 

  5. Discuss asset Management project [5 min.] 

  6. Discuss endpoint Management project 

  7. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.] 

  8. Next CTSC Meeting [Will be held Thursday, September 8, at 1:30 p.m.] 

Chair's remarks 

  • None. 

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting  

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

Discuss post-doc email extensions 

  • Currently, post-docs are categorized as contract employees in Workday, and lose access when their contract is complete. IST will be implementing the alumni model to post –docs. Post-docs will maintain an A3 license for 16 months at which point it will switch to an A1 mail-only license indefinitely. This will be retroactively enabled for post-docs up to 1 year ago. Other post-docs who reach out will be allowed to join this model. It appears this will likely conclude by mid-September, with communications for post-doc appreciation day on September 17. 

Discuss Adobe Acrobat Pro licensing 

  • The contract, which is signed by all parties, is being finalized and is now with SoftChoice. IST will need to do the installation, and connect to out authentication, at which point the software will become available for FTEs to download.  
  • IST has inquired about edge cases and have not yet received an answer. There will likely be an answer when the contract is finalized, and an Adobe expert reaches out.  
  • Adobe provides pro-rated refunds (with not cancellation fees) when you move to an ETLA. 
  • Can licenses existing through the VIP program be prorated? It appears to be seamless to slide those into ETLA, but billing is a different thing. It appears this may not be a possibility. 
  • Reassess demand for Adobe sign next year 
  • Health has drafted an email for Adobe users set to expire next week. This will encourage them to renew if they require the full suite, but to hold off or purchase a term package from the W store if they only require Acrobat.  
  • Communications like these are appropriate to send given the current state of the contract. 
  • Have yet to announce the launch date as there may be issues with authentication but the contract start date is the second week of September 

Discuss asset management project 

  • A project will begin to understand what the current state of asset management is, what are the use cases, and what people want in the future and to develop a service management plan. 
  • IST is looking to support Insight Asset Management, which is integrated with Jira Service Management. 
  • Andrew to share the charter with the CTSC mailing list, please provide feedback.  
  • The lack of support for friendly addresses is a pain point within Jira Service Management. 

Discuss endpoint management project 

  • This project is looking to review endpoint management in general, complete consultation on what degree this wanted, and then facilitate an implementation phase. 
  • Currently developing a charter 
  • Some of this has become clearer as part of the Microsoft Intune project 
  • Any feedback on the session offered by Microsoft regarding Intune 
  • Expectations were higher on what would be reviewed in these. Focused on laptops, devices, and marketing. 
  • Touched on a lot of MacOS devices. 
  • Support and retire was a good session worth reviewing.  
  • Interested to see how SCCM can be expanded upon. 
  • WUSA discovered features they were unaware of, as they are currently utilizing Intune. 
  • JAMF works well for Mac iOS and should be considered for a campus-wide solution 

Other Business/Roundtable 

IST, Andrew 

  • IT Review 
  • Kick-off is the end of September, there are 8 themes. Each theme will be comprised of Academic support, an IT director, and a department co-lead. 

Environment, Don 

  • Common AVD project 
  • This project grew organically, and there is a feeling that this project is effectively architecting what could become the new student computing environment. At some point, we need to have reflective direction on how this evolves. 
  • September feels like a quick turnaround, health is going ahead with it, but they are virtualizing and not utilizing the desktop. 
  • If a project manager is needed in the future, please contact Andrew. 
  • Power outage notices 
  • Health fell off the notifications mailing list. Trevor will be meeting with Jonathan Hyde about this. The mailing list should not be solely relied upon for major interruptions.  

Health, Trevor 

  • NVivo QSR Is changing licensing from FTE count to a volume license. Arts, Environment, and Health met with IST to go over usage, as well as tracing numbers from the hub and webstore. If you have additional numbers that may not be captured, please submit them to Trevor to be considered as part of this. 

IST, Pam 

  • Koorus discussed video meeting management at a previous CTSC meeting. All feedback from UCIST for the project has been positive. Looking to get a charter and discuss with procurement the best way to move forward.  
  • Prior to going out for RFP there is a desire to have a sandbox environment. Pam is looking for names to either provide updates to or actively participate.  
  • The learning management review, kick-off for the campus is happening on September 22. The week of September 26 there will be a campus-wide survey launched as well as focus groups. 
  • The new EdTech hub website will launch soon, this will provide more information on the technologies that are currently supported. https://uwaterloo.ca/educational-technology-hub/ 
  • Please review the website and provide feedback to Pam 

Math, Robyn 

  • Robyn and Lori are willing to provide a demonstration of JAMF.  
  • Don, Trevor, and Steven would be interested but likely closer to when the project gets started. 
  • Andrew will schedule a demo of JAMF and include the Intune demonstration group (~30) 

Arts, Bill 

  • Interested in looking at the surface laptop, does anyone have experience with these devices? 
  • Health has surface tablets, when they break, they break and there is not much to do to fix them 
  • Microsoft has a 4-year inclusive warranty from start to finish. 
  • Lenovo has a warranty service worth considering.  
  • Ensure to investigate what Wi-Fi adapters are available on the device. 
  • The latest is X, currently, IST does not support 6E  
  • Is there a URL to point to that departments could share with students? If it exists Steve will share this, if not one can be created.