Minutes for Admin Computer Support Meeting - February 17, 2004

Location and Time:

NH 3001; 2:00pm - 3:30pm

Attendees:

Victor Lufer (AV), Ildiko Denes (Disabled Students), Judy Richardson (DCE), Pat Moore (Faculty Assoc), Michele Sguigna (Food Services), Cathy Jardine (Graduate Office), Chris Strome (HS), Jim Howard (HR), Sheila Hurley (Safety Office), Sam Schmidt and Michelle Banic (IAP), Koorus Bookan (LT3), Monica Wielonda (Plant Ops), Lauri MacLeod (Retail Services), Karen Jack (Secretariat), Verna Keller (TRACE), Peter Robinson and Ian Turner and Cathy Cooper (ODAA), Ann Simpson (Turnkey Desk), Michael Jack (WATCARD), Donna Schell (Assoc Prov Bus. Opers, Student Services), Lynn Snider (Athletics&Recreation), Corban Riley (Canadian Water Network), Karen Gallant (CBET), Rick Digby (Housing), Christine Kuehl (office of Research), Maria LeBlanc (President's Office), Mike Gaspic (Registrar's Office).

IST Attendees:

Sandy Laughlin (Presenter), Bob Hicks (Presenter), Pat Lafranier (Chair), Jason Greatrex, Heather Wey, Phil Knipe, Reg Leland, Rob Yawney, Lisa Tomalty.

Agenda:

Welcome (Pat Lafranier)
IST-Liaison Changes (Pat)
Bits and Bytes of Info (Pat)
Admmail (Pat)
Spam (Pat)
Software and Virus Protection Update (Sandy Laughlin)
Registrar's Office (Mike Gaspic)
Food Services (Michele Sguigna)
IST Helpdesk Survey Feedback (Bob Hicks)
SUS (Pat)
Accounts (Pat)
Wrap-up (Pat)
PowerPoint Slide Presentation

Minutes (post meeting note: minutes are additional info to the PowerPoint slide presentation link above)

Pat welcomed everyone and introduced herself and noted that the meeting time has increased to 1.5 hours, 2-3:30 pm.
Pat pointed out the handout and reviewed the agenda. The handout and minutes will be online within one week. She noted that new to the agenda was the addition of talks from department computer support reps discussing computing within their departments. She would like 2 volunteers for the next meeting.
Pat noted that everyone should feel free to ask questions and asked if anyone had anything to add to the agenda. No additions to the agenda were made.
Everyone introduced themselves and said which department they were from.
The IST-Liaison changes were reviewed as per PowerPoint slide presentation.
Everyone was reminded that they can also call the CHIP for assistance, X4357, and submit requests, preferably through the web form, for work that needs to be done. The web form is preferable because it reminds you of what information is needed. Some people responded that sending email to request@ist was just easier than the web form.
Pat asked which departments were using watserv1. Not many were. TRACE does and only 1-2 others. People in most admin areas and faculties are being asked to move off of watserv1 and to admmail or their faculty server. Pat offered a 'heads up' in case anyone in the admin areas approached their support reps regarding this. IST appreciates any help you can provide to people in your area who need to move from watserv1 to admmail.
The new radio station, Country 95.3, downloads an Active X plug-in that uses the PC as a 'jukebox' to feed others with the station. Phil Knipe and Reg Leland have seen it and say it makes the PC appear compromised. If anyone in the admin areas has done this, Phil can provide help in removing the plug-in. It's not a straightforward process.
Pat discussed the problem with Macromedia products (e.g. Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver) making ADS profiles too large and people cannot logoff. A setting can be changed to *not* save Macromedia product information in the profiles for a whole department as has happened in DCE, Registrar's Office, Graphics. This would help fix this problem, but DreamWeaver site (for example) information would not be available and have to be reconfigured again if the user changes machines. (post meeting: due to feedback, all IST and academic-support departments now have Macromedia products turned off in their profiles)
Pat thanked everyone who moved from the 'admfile' server to the 'jam' server. No disruptions were reported.
Some departments reported that they use the S: drive (ODAA, Food Services, Registrar's Office, Athletics, Retail Services.). When this drive goes away, there will be alternatives and all reported that they would be comfortable mapping a new drive when this happens.
Moves from Windows 2000 to XP: Sam Schmidt and Michelle Banic's area, IAP, did this via an upgrade and reported that it went smoothly once they ironed out a few details.(The main issues were with MS Access, Oracle.) It took ~1.5 hours/PC and they have a lot of software. Pat thanked them for their feedback.
Cathy Cooper from ODAA asked if the roaming profiles were kept in tact when upgrading from Windows 2000 to XP. Michelle Banic reported that they were OK and Jason Greatrex also reported that they were OK, except for Netscape users.
For machines that may be compromised, emails are sent to the person whose name is in the DNS database for that PC. Mail is also sent to the IST person who supports that area, the main admin computer support person for that area and their backup. Sending email to all of these people is new. Sometimes the immediate solution is remove the PC from the network(unplug cable from network) and follow up with the IST support person. Everyone seemed fine with this solution.
Normal log offs are taking a while, especially at 4:30 pm. Sometimes as long as 45 minutes. There have been some complaints about this in Heath Services, Food Services and some other areas. Some people just log off and go home without noticing how long it is taking. Phil Knipe reported that a new server has been ordered to help with this problem and that logging ON during this time is also very slow. It may be a while before this is fixed. (post meeting: server should be in place <6 months)
95% of the people at the meeting use admmail. Security will be increased on admmail. The IST server has already had this done and is usually used as a test server before other servers are changed. SSH will need to be used instead of NetTerm and WS-FTP. SSH information is available on line at http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/SSH.html Note the section called 'In the ADS Domain'. Admin Computer Support Reps will receive an email from Pat regarding accessing admmail using SSH. Pat noted that it is not difficult to use and has a nicer interface than NetTerm.
There are some issues with SSH Secure File Transfer (WS-FTP's replacement) because of the menu on admmail. This needs to be worked out. When asked, not many people said they used FTP anyways.
The large inboxes on admmail are still an issue. For most people, their mail program just needs to be set up to not leave mail on the server for too long. The IST imaged PC has Eudora set up to leave mail on server, so that those trying out Eudora do not have all their mail downloaded and then deleted from the server. This would cause a problem if they switched back to their previous mail program.
Pat reminded everyone that if Eudora is slow, to clean out the in, out, and trash mailboxes and to keep the number of messages in these boxes to 100 or less. If clients don't have time to sort them out, they can simply move them to a new folder. They may need the computer support rep's help in doing this.
Q: Ian Turner from ODAA asked if IMAP would be OK.
R: Pat explained the difference between IMAP and POP. IMAP is the direction we're moving toward, but if all admmail users (~1500 accounts) moved to IMAP at once it wouldn't be good. At the same time, if individual people would like to move to IMAP, that is fine, since the trend is to go to IMAP. Cathy Cooper from ODAA explained that she uses both POP and IMAP from within Outlook and that it works well for her.
An IST co-op student will be putting together a table with information on IST- supported email programs, although we tend to not push Netscape.
Q: Koorus Bookan from LT3 asked why.
R: Pat noted that it creates a huge profile on managed PCs.(post meeting: Carol Vogt, who uses Netscape but doesn't recommend it, says it's also difficult and confusing to configure) But, Pat explained that we support it to the best of our ability.
A new addition to the agenda is the termination of names@uwaterloo.ca. As of March 1st (post meeting: date is now March 8), firstname.lastname@uwaterloo.ca and nickname@uwaterloo.ca will no longer work.
Q: Michelle Banic asked why.
R: Pat explained that it causes problems when there are multiple nicknames or fullnames in uwdir, and that this has never been 100% reliable. People have always been warned in the UWDIR online documentation that this ability may go away.(post meeting: see web page:http://www.ist.uwaterloo.ca/isthome/feb18_04whatsnew.html for more information)
SPAM was discussed. Everyone agrees that spam is a problem.Spammers are getting smarter. IST is doing its best to battle this ongoing problem.
Q: Michelle Banic asked about vacation messages replying to spam.
R: Pat explained that a script was written last summer to stop vacation messages from being sent out as a response to emails marked as spam. Unfortunately, if an email is not flagged as spam, then the vacation message would be sent to the sender.
Q: Mike Gaspic asked about sending email to 15 people and having the message being marked as spam.
R: Pat suggested using Bcc: for the email addresses rather than To: or Cc:
Q: Michelle Banic asked if mail could be sent with no email address in the To: field
R: Pat responded, "Yes".
Sandy Laughlin showed the http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/admin/licensed.html page which lists the licensed software products. She tries to include the costs on this page as well. At the bottom of the page, there is a Software Inquiries link which goes to Sandy. She can look into your inquiry and get back to you.
Q: Sandy asked if the support reps would like to be notified when new software arrives.
R: Most responded, "Yes".
Sandy informed us that Flash and Fireworks 2004 have arrived.
Office 2003 is not on the image. IST does not have enough experience with it. If you need it, ask your IST support person.
Sandy has added the admin computer support reps to the email list of those receiving virus alerts (FYI and for at home use).
Q: Koorus asked about the software called OneNote 2003.
R: Sandy responded that it is available through MSDN for teaching and research and can be obtained from the CHIP for this purpose.
The Home and Security CD was updated on Feb. 5, 2004 and is still available in the CHIP for $5.00. Sandy can be contacted if there are any concerns.
Mike Gaspic, who is new to campus and works in the Registrar's Office, gave an overview of computing in his area. Details can be found in the PowerPoint Slide Presentation online. Additional information to his slides are as follows:

Some people in the Registrar's Office are also using Remote Desktop.
Student Awards and Financial Services are to be online in the future

Michele Sguigna from Food Services gave an overview of computing in her area. Details can also be found in the PowerPoint Slide Presentation online. Additional information to her slides are as follows:

Michele started in Food Services as an inventory coordinator, became involved with the new software required for inventory and now takes care of much of the computing support for Food Services.
She has noted less crashes and more stability since their move to Windows 2000 ADS and stated that the roaming profiles are very useful to the staff in Food Services.
90% of their software is university standard software. They have one person who uses Netscape as their email client and one who uses Outlook Express; the rest use Eudora.
Before they acquired the Caterese software, the catering department was doing much of their work on paper.
Some of their suppliers are now only doing web based ordering and requiring that all invoices be obtained via the web.
Their blocking software for the new Information Kiosk is a challenge.

Bob Hicks discussed the results of the IST Helpdesk Survey. He gave some background information:
- During the Windows 2000 deployment, IST moved the Senior HelpDesk staff to the deployment project. The staff who worked in the Helpdesk in their absence did their best. When the project was over, IST returned the Senior Helpdesk staff to the Helpdesk.
- In September 2003, a "call centre" in the CHIP's Helpdesk area was created, and a Client Feedback Project was started.
- The call centre is monitored by one of the six Senior Helpdesk staff. The staff person in the call centre answers the phone (x4357) and monitors the request system.
- Ron McCarville of AHS provided great customer service advice to the Client Feedback Project.
- The survey was distributed and there was a 70% response. Bob thanked everyone for the large number of responses.
- Four different suggestions came out of the survey:
- It would have been good to have done a survey before the call centre creation, but time was a factor.
- People also have an opportunity to provide feedback when requests are resolved. When a request is resolved, the requestor is asked to provide feedback via a link to a feeback web form. This feedback is monitored frequently.
Pat discussed the Software Update Services(SUS).Reminded everyone to tell their staff to log off (not power off) because any critical patches get applied overnight. We hope to have a mechanism in place very soon if the computer is powered off to apply patches when powered on.

Only a few problems have been reported. Chris Strome of Health Services stated that they are not experiencing as many problems.
This process has been a saviour in protecting us from security breaches.

Pat reminded everyone to submit a request for accounts to be deleted BEFORE employees leave their departments . This is especially important if you need access to any of their files (you will need their permission for this). She informed everyone of the new web form for adding/removing staff accounts. IST wants to make sure that cleanup happens when employees leave (even co-ops). We rely on you - the support reps - to get this information to IST.
Pat asked if people preferred the room in NH over the room in MC. Yes, was the response.
When asked how often people would like to have this meeting, the response was once a term.
Pat asked for volunteers to highlight their departments for the next meeting. She would like one person from NH (post meeting: Ildiko Denes will highlight the Persons with Disabilities Office) and one from outside of N (post meeting: volunteer??). She pointed out that it is good to learn and share with other departments. She offered to present the information if people would rather not do the speaking. If this is the case, the notes can be sent to Pat Lafranier.
Pat thanked the speakers, greeters, Jason for the T-shirt display, and AV for helping with the remote for the projector.
Pat also introduced Rob Yawney to the group. Rob does image installs and has spoken to many of the support reps over the phone.

Minutes by Lisa Tomalty and Pat Lafranier.

Last updated by Lisa Tomalty, February 18, 2004.

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