Minutes for Admin Computer Support Meeting - June 16th, 2004

Location and Time:

NH 3001; 2pm

Attendees:

Ildiko Denes (Office for Persons with Disabilities), Susan Shifflet (Office for Persons with Disabilities), Catherine Fry (Ethical Behaviour), Jim Howard(HR), Ian Fraser (Safety Office), Cathy Jardine (GSO), Verna Keller (TRACE), Brenda Roach (Research), Maria LeBlanc (President's Office), Lauri MacLeod (Retail Services), Donna McCracken (Plant Ops), Pat Moore (Faculty Assoc), Michelle Banic (IAP), Michele Sguigna (Food Services), Karen Gallant (CBET), Judy Richardson (DE), Ian Read (Marketing & Undergrad Recruitment), Peter Robinson (Office of Development), Ian Turner (Office of Development), Cathy Cooper (Office of Development), Monica Wielonda (Plant Operations), Terry Taylor (Purchasing), Mike Gaspic (Registrar's), Karen Jack (Secretariat), Kevin Paxman (Graphics), Iris Strickler (Graphics).

IST Attendees:

Peggy Day, Tim Farrell (Presenter), Jason Greatrex (minute-taker), Pat Lafranier (Chair), Paul Snyder, Lisa-Tomalty (Presenter), Carol Vogt (Presenter), Heather Wey.

Agenda:

Welcome (Pat)
IST Liaison Changes (Pat)
Bits and Bytes of Info (Pat)
Vacation Time (Pat)
Bookit Update (Carol)
Anti-virus update and software update (Pat for Sandy Laughlin)
Client-Managed PC's (Lisa)
SUS Report, Roaming Profile Server Status (Tim)
Office for Persons with Disabilities - Overview of Computing Environment (Ildiko Denes, Susan Shifflet)
Wrap-Up (Pat)

PowerPoint Slide Presentation (please view)

Minutes:

Pat welcomed everyone and encouraged questions.
IST Liaison Changes: Lisa Tomalty still maintains Housing and DE areas. Phil Knipe has now acquired Food Services and Heather Wey has acquired Human Resources.
Under "Bits and Bytes of Info" Pat asked if people were starting to use SSH.
- Q: Cathy Cooper asked when sftp will be made available on admmail.
- R: Pat Lafranier responded that the numeric menu on admmail is the problem and IST is currently looking to resolve this.
Under "Bits and Bytes of Info" Pat mentioned the termination of Retrospect Backup Service (replaced by Legato--- Mac users please note), and the termination of support for Netscape Mail by August 31, 2004.
Pat discussed merits of using the vacation command at the unix level over the mywaterloo interface.
- Q: Brenda Roach asked why does it seem less email is being caught even when she has dropped the required hit level to 3 rather than the default setting of 5. Also, should we make the hit level lower?
- A: (P.L) responded that many of us are experiencing an increase in SPAM email; unfortunately, Spammers are keeping ahead of us.
- A: Carol Vogt suggested not to lower the hit number below 3 hits.
- Q: (B.R.) Is IST investigating the use of an additional SPAM filtering program; such as the Spamarrest?
- A: Paul Snyder responded that our energy is devoted to front-end clusters machines (Spamassassin and virus scans) which focus on stopping the intrusions at the front door. We will make a note of your concern.
- A: Cathy Cooper suggested individuals could add repetitive keywords in their email filter system to divert Spam to a designated junk mailbox.
- A: (P.L.) cautioned individuals to avoid using mailto tags on webpages because they are typically harvested by spammers.
Pat asked how any individuals use mywaterloo to turn on/off their vacation command. Only 5 people raised their hands. Pat demonstrated using the "divert tagged messages to mail/junkmail" option to avoid receiving bounced back spam emails and cluttering your inbox. (For brief instructions please refer to the handout on slide #6). Pat reminded those who use the mywaterloo interface settings that it will wipe out any previous email filter settings done through the SpamAssassin Configuration webpage (http://admmail.uwaterloo.ca/spam/config.html).
- Q: Michelle Banic asked if this change would be applied to her email account when using both Eudora at work and mywaterloo at home?
- A: (P.L.) responded yes, that if you apply the above setup it will divert spam to the designated junkmail folder and provided a demo.
Carol Vogt discussed Bookit and gave a short demo of the available online training video. She projected that a full campus wide conversion to Bookit will be completed by the end of summer. Carol asked for individuals who want to start using Bookit to send an email to her (cmvogt at ist.uwaterloo dot ca) to have their userids re-instated for Bookit and if and when their departments would like to come online with Bookit.
- Q: Jim Howard asked if IST had a transition plan to assist in moving users mailboxes from Eudora to Outlook.
- A: (P.L.) reply that we do not have a transition plan but departments should submit a request and be in contact with their designated IST Liaison (need to look at workload, training, configurations, ...etc....).
Everyone agreed that Sandy Laughlin's "what's new" email was a good method to keep computer support representatives informed of the latest software updates.
Pat noted two new features were added to http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/download/; the Google toolbar and SpyBot Search and Destroy.
Lisa Tomalty discussed Client-Managed PC's ( more detail and links can be found in the handout on slide #11).
Tim Farrell talked about SUS and the importance of having a small Vanguard test group before pushing the patches out to the rest of the campus environment. He reminded Support Staff to apply the susvan.reg file found at (http://www.istiis.uwaterloo.ca/sus/susvan.reg ) to any rebuilt Vanguard machine and then to reboot the machine.
Tim also encouraged Admin Computer Support to become familiar and use the monitoring tool https://www.susreports.uwaterloo.ca/sus/ for computers in their department. An explanation and demonstration of the tool was given.
Tim emphasized the importance of ensuring that a workstation have the necessary patches applied to avoid network attacks. He recommended the following procedures be done before a new or a rebuilt machine gets powered back on the network:
Tim noted that the SUS service has now been made available for home use; the criteria is that home machines need to have a high speed ISP and to leave their machines on 24/7. He explained the benefits of using a well tested patch from the SUS server versus a newly released patch directly from Microsoft that has not been heavily tested.
Ildiko and Susan gave an overview of the Office for Persons with Disabilities computing environment.
- Q: Ian Fraser asked about the price of the DANA note taker and organizer.
- A: Susan Shifflet responded the price is approximately $500 and individuals are encouraged to stop by their department for hands-on demos.
Wrap-Up - Pat thanked participants and attendees for coming. Have a safe summer. Next meeting will be in NH 3001 during the Fall term. To be announced later.
Any volunteers to discuss their department and computing environment for next meeting; please contact Pat (pllafran at admmail.uwaterloo dot ca).

Minutes by Jason Greatrex.

Last updated by Pat Lafranier, pllafran at uwaterloo.ca, July 7, 2004.

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