Academic Support Computer Rep General Meeting

Thursday March 10, 2011

10:00 am - 11:30 am, NH 3001

Minutes

Agenda

• Desktop Rollover Update (Phil Knipe)
• Web Content Management System Update (Heather Wey)
• Phased Web Header (Pat Lafranier)
• SEW Courses (Pat Lafranier)
• Roaming Profiles (Manfred Grisebach)
• IT Security Update (Jason Testart)
• VPN (Jason Testart)
• Monitoring the health of Your workstations (Tim Farrell)
• Office 2010 Deployment (Tim Farrell)
• Email to admmail (Martin Timmerman)
• T-Drive, R-Drive (Martin Timmerman)
• Q&A

Five Key Take Away Items:

1. FTE staff still using a Dell GX620 computer in academic support departments eligible for the desktop rollover program will be getting a new Lenovo M90 before September 2011. Computing support reps in rollover departments should start creating a list of FTE staff using Dell Optiplex 745 computers and submit to Phil Knipe.
2. Laptops containing sensitive data should be encrypted. This is a service that the CHIP offers for free.
3. Become familiar with VPN to make a secure connection to uWaterloo disks.
4. Office 2010 is coming to your desktop soon.
5. Email sent to userid@admmail is not going to be forwarded after April 7th, 2011.

It is important to keep the computing support rep contact sheet up-to-date. A request from someone in an academic support department not listed in the contact sheet will not be acted upon. There were no updates made to the sheet at the meeting.

Minutes:

Desktop Rollover (Phil Knipe)

Work continues on rolling out the 400 M90 Lenovo computers purchased for IOI. 75% of the 400 computers have been deployed. The plan is to have all 400 machines deployed by August 2011. Next machines on the list to be replaced are Dell 745 computers. For those departments eligible for rollover, please submit the number of Dell 745s that you have in your department that are being used by an FTE staff member. Displaced computers can go to other non-FTE staff in your department, surplussed or sent home. Machines sent home need to be re-imaged, and machines sent to surplus need to be wiped. IST does both of these functions.

Web Content Managment System Update (Heather Wey)

Decision to go to Drupal 7. Liam Morland has joined the team. Liam is specializing in accessibility and web forms. Friday morning seminar on March 18th is the pilot demo of new uWaterloo main website. More information.

Phased Web Header (Pat Lafranier)

Work continues on the phased header, which needs to be implemented on uWaterloo websites by March 31, 2011. Also use the ‘W’ favicon on your websites.

SEW Courses

The SEW course offerings for March and April are now available. Lynda.com accounts available for 24/7 web-based training. It was suggested that IST provide more training using Camtasia. (post-meeting: if your department would be interested in viewing some SEW course via web-based training, then contact Pat Lafranier. It takes a lot of time to create training using Camtasia).

IT Security Update (Jason Testart)

Communication and promotion of IT security topics is high on the priority list for IST. The IST Security webpage provides security tips (e.g. Don't give away your data when you give away your handheld device). Security policies, standards and guidelines should be reviewed periodically. There are hundreds of attempts to hack into UW computers every day, from all over the world. This is why there are rules for a secure password. There is a new data encryption solution for laptop hard drives. If you have a laptop that contains senstive data, the hard drive should be encrypted.

VPN (Jason Testart)

Virtual Private Network (VPN) allows you to securely connect to the uWaterloo network. VPN is available for Windows, Macs, and Linux computers. Documentation is currently being prepared and should be ready by the end of March. In the meantime, documentation are available from the slides used in the Friday morning seminar on March 11th. If you are on Windows machine, you can still use remote desktop.

Monitoring the Health of Your Workstations (Tim Farrell)

Symantec EndPoint Projection reports are available for you to monitor the workstations in your department.

Office 2010 Deployment (Tim Farrell)

Office 2010 will be deployed in April or May. There are not a lot of new changes in each application, but Outlook 2010 looks different (now has ribbons) and has more calendar features.

Email to Admmail (Martin Timmerman)

For the past year, email sent to userid@admmail.uwaterloo.ca was forwarded to userid@uwaterloo.ca. Starting on April 8, 2011, that will no longer happen. If you are aware of people sending email to you @admmail, you need to tell them to send to @uwaterloo.

T-Drive, R-Drive (Martin Timmerman)

The T-drive was intended to be used as temporary storage. This is not what is happening, as some data on the T-drive is several years old. Also, some of the data on the T-drive contains sensitive information. A proposal to delete older files was not populuar. It was suggested that departments use sharepoint for files that need to be shared. One problem with this is co-op students leave, but their access to sharepoint sites is not removed. IST will be investigating the use of the T-drive further.