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ICC Meeting:

IFAS COMPUTER COORDINATORS (ICC)

MARCH 11th 2016 REGULAR MEETING


A meeting of the ICC was held on Friday, March 11th, 2016 in the UF/IFAS Communications Building. The meeting was chaired and called to order by Jimmy Anuszewski at about 10:00 am.

PRESENT: At least 28 members participated.

Remote participants: DeWayne Hyatt, Wei Cao, Dan Christophy, Angelo Daniels, Donna McCraw, Earl Sloan, Brian Hurt, Al Ibanez, Kevin Hill, Phil Lazenby, Chris Leopold, Adam Lishawa, John Macias, Marion Douglas, Marvin Newman, Ian McLean, Karen Porter, Scott Owens, Spencer Young.

On-site participants:
Jimmy Anuszewski, Wendy Williams, Frances Gerguson, Winnie Lante, Santos Soler, Dennis Brown, Dan Cromer, James Moore, John Wyncoop.

STREAMING AUDIO: The audio will available here.

Recorded Video: Video will be available here.


NOTES:

Winnie Lante, Karen Porter and Dennis Brown should be commended for their food/drink accomodations.


Report from the chairman

Member news: John Wyncoop was introduced.

Recap since last meeting:

As per his usual procedure, Jimmy pointed folks to the notes of the last meeting, without going into any details.

Details about this meeting:

I've deleted a lot of the old anchors that were in the minutes due to lack of updates. I suggest searching the ICC site for information that you may be looking for.


Security: (previous discussion)

UF Security implemented a second factor of authentiation for account creation and password changes. Additionally, the new system will notify users by both business and personal e-mail addresses of any account events and changes, which will aid in early detection of any attempts to compromise accounts.

In order to effectively implement this change, members of the UF community will need to ensure their identity registry information - specifically date of birth, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses (personal and UF business) - is current. We are requesting your assistance in preparing for this transition by working with your users to update and correct these fields as needed in myUFL, additional information on registry fields can be found here.

Authentication codes will be delivered via the contact method selected by the user, and will be required to proceed with account creation and password resets. Users will need to validate against their information in the Registry, so accurate data is essential.

As we get closer to transitioning to the new system, we will schedule a series of town hall meetings to showcase the new GLAM system.

Please send any questions to Warren Curry or Tina Velez.

Patching updates... (previous discussion)

Microsoft

March's Microsoft patches are listed in the link. Current risk assessments can be found here.

Adobe

Flash, Acrobat, Reader, Connect, along with several other Adobe products, have updates here. Acrobat and Acrobat Reader were both recently updated as recently as 3/8/16.

Java

Java updates were in December for Java 8U74. Java 8U73 for Mac was released on February 5, 2016 and is available here.

Apple

There have been several Apple updates, including a new system update, security updates and printer driver updates. As a side note, there was a malware attack on Mac's that were downloading and installing the latest Transmission (torrent) software. Version 2.90 was injected with the KeRanger ransomware. It was blocked by Apple within 24 hours and a new version of Transmission was made available. For more information, please see this.

SAS

SAS University Edition recently had an update. Please visit this link.

Other

Updates as available...


Videoconferencing and WAN discussion

Videoconferencing topics (previous discussion)

Acano released update R1.8.27 March 8th. This is their latest release. Updates and changes can be found in their change logs on the download page. Some important things to note: Fixed app crashes when logging out, fixed app crashes when changing networks, fixed link translations and on the Mac side, reporting packet loss when all packets were arriving.

 

Updates as available...


End-user Scheduling (previous discussion)

Updates as available...

Lync updates (previous discussion)

Skype for Business for Mac will be available in 2016. Until then, Lync for Mac 2011 is included with your Office 365 or Skype for Business Online plan for you to download and install. It works with Office 2016. For more information, click here.

Updates as available...

WAN (previous discussion)

Updates as available...


Wireless printers (previous discussion)

Any updates to this?

 


Policy


Content Management System (CMS) for UF: Entering preparation phase (previous discussion)

This is not CMS info, per say, but it does have to do with IFAS Web Designers. The orange used online has changed hex codes. The old orange was #ff4a00, the new orange is #fa4616. This change was made to make things more consistent across the online spectrum (this change took place after the powers in charge of the www changed the orange tint). You can stay up to day with branding color at UF at this link. If you would like to really stay on top of news, changes and IT content that has a growing community, I encourage everyone to check out Yammer.

Updates as available.

Cloud Services (previous discussion)

Updates as available.

Backups/Server Drives (I'm leaving this here!)

I was asked to add this to the agenda. Some Department and REC IT people are wondering if there's official policy in regards to backups and what some IT people are doing for it. From my understanding, that's why we have server drives, but I'll let the discussion start amongst everyone. During the discussion, it was addressed that the server drives should be used because they are backed up multiple times during the day and can be access through VDI at any time. It was also stated that external hard drives should not be relied on nor should they be purchased using department funds.

Admin rights became a separate topic during this discussion and there was a split amongst the participants about how Admin rights should be dispersed. One side stated that Admin rights should only be granted based upon the situation of the user. An exmample Jimmy gave was field computers that needed to have software installed or updated while away from the IT person or users that are in lab that need to install specific software at a moment's notice. All of this would be LOCAL Admin rights. Others stated that it was too much to try and update every computer at the same time (such as Java updates) or to install the same software on multiple computers. Consensus is do what works for each individual situation but rememeber that ultimately, it comes down to the IT person's responsibility if something should go wrong with that computer.

Updates as available.

UF Exchange updates (previous discussion)

Updates as available.

Notes from last month's SIAC meeting

Notes from past meetings are available here. Last update was from October, 2015.

Last month's IT Directors Meeting Notes

You can now view the notes from each meeting at this link.

PrintSmart initiative (previous discussion)

Santos has created a step-by-step guide for the PrintSmart install. You can find it....on the WIKI! And he's added to it!
Please pay attention to the new models (8870 and 8880), do not move the printer while it is hot. They use an ink that is wax based and could cause problems when bumped or moved.

For those asking about Toner pickup, here is some information from Wendy Williams: If you find that you have ten or more USED toner cartridges that need to be recycled, please contact Recycling Department at 392-7396 to coordinate special pickup before August 3rd .

IP addresses for if-srvv-print will be changing. The new IP is 10.36.24.16. Santos will explain what this means for everyone on campus that has Printsmart(this only affects campus printsmart installs).

There was a long discussion in regards to how to roll out the changes. Chris Leopold suggested that we do a department by department approach so that we could filter out the old drivers, update out of date drivers, etc etc while Santos Soler suggest a quick roll out. There was discussion in regards to which would be better and some of the members present discussed benefits to either option. Jimmy Anuszewski had suggest to table the idea until ITSA could agree with each other but Dan Cromer suggest we handle the issue at the meeting, even though he provided no pro's and con's himself. The group (at least the few that were discussing the topic) agreed that Santos's idea was fine and that we could clean up the other problems after the fact.

Santos has also updated the SMB Setup guide on the ICC Wiki.

Printers that will need to be changed are listed here.

Feel free to contact the PrintSmart team at purchasing@ufl.edu with any questions.

CREC-BUILDING-MAKE-MODEL

AGR-MCCB010-XEROX-7850

New 'Trouble-Ticket' Entry Page for CNS (previous discussion)

How to install the Cherwell myIT client on your local machine.

The MyIT (Cherwell) Client Tool (thick/fat client) can be downloaded from the following link:

https://my.it.ufl.edu/CherwellAutoDeploy/

Update as needed...

KACE (previous discussion)

This has gone the way of the Dodo bird.

Mac's: To Domain or Not to Domain(previous discussion)

Dennis Brown and Jimmy Anuszewski met to discuss the composition of a new policy officially giving Apple computers support through IFAS IT Managers. After much discussion, Jimmy deemed that ITSA is too short handed to accept this step. With the inevitable inclusion of Big Fix or even SCCM on computers, including Mac's, ITSA doesn't have the support staff to take care of this, especially in regards to Big Fix. We felt the best way to take care of this is to table the policy and continue to unoffically support Mac computers within IFAS.

 


Projects


Services Documentation: Is a Wiki the way? (previous discussion)

Would be really nice if more people could contribute to this.

Attention!Attention!Attention!Attention!Attention!

A wiki has been created at https://uflorida.sharepoint.com/sites/ifas/wiki/icc/Pages/Home.aspx. Everyone in the ICC distribution group should be able to add/edit.

Attention!Attention!Attention!Attention!Attention!

Operations


IFAS IT Updates (previous discussion)

The topic of Mr.Admin shall continue. First, let me stress to everyone: NEVER post what your password is on a public or private list. I'd be hestitant to even send it in an email or text.

It seems the consensus is for the local OU to have his/her custom password for the local admin user account while the IFAS Help Desk should have a super-secret username/password, maybe installed by SCCM. I feel this is an excellent option and maybe we can get DeWayne to chime in, along with Chris and Wayne. DeWayne didn't like the idea of a statewide username/password, he suggested Microsoft LAPSE.

In regards to the Print Server Migration, it was completed on Feburary 17th.

DeWayne Eldon Hyatt put together a great presentation on SCCM Training. I strongly encourage everyone to watch the video. This is a vital tool to have and you will use it more then you think. You can find the link here.

New DHCP reservation site created (previous discussion)

Update as needed.

Creating guest GatorLink accounts: singly or in bulk (previous discussion)

Steve had left this on the agenda in case further discussion was deemed warranted. So Jimmy will leave it here.

Wayne's Power Tools (previous discussion)

Updates as available...

Public folder file deletion policies and procedures status (previous discussion)

Updates as available...

 


Other Topics


SAS depot updated

The SAS 9.4 installation depot (\\ad.ufl.edu\ifas\SOFTWARE\SAS\SAS9.4_32bit ) has been updated to permit installation on Windows 8.1 AND to allow installation on 32 bit Windows installs.

FAQs for new hires (should use https://uflorida.sharepoint.com/sites/ifas/wiki/icc/Pages/Home.aspx)

Updates as available...

Adobe licensing (previous discussion)

Updates as available...

Misc.

GatorBox (leaving this here)
Research Computing has launched GatorBox, an enhanced storage option for research. GatorBox features a dropbox-like interface provided by ownCloud software. The new interface offers a convenient and familiar interface as well as desktop and mobile clients, with simple file sync and share functionality. Please contact Research Computing for more information about GatorBox: info@hpc.ufl.edu.

Peer2Peer

Peer 2 Peer is being set for this Spring Semester. As soon as we have a date, the ICC will be notified. Most likely within the first two weeks of April.

Email Policy (left here from last month)

There have been some updates to the UF Email Policy. I have included the email that Dan Cromer had forwarded to the ICC List.

"Faculty and staff have been required to comply with Florida Public Records Retention laws as long as they have been in existence. The laws themselves were designed for paper records, but have been expanded to include electronic records in all forms of storage. What has happened is a change in the UF Exchange email system, along with some explicit language about email in the new policy, which just became effective February 5, 2016. Whereas, until recently, messages in the Inbox and Sent Items folders were automatically deleted after 365 days, a recent configuration change increased the retention period to three years, which is the required retention period for general administrative correspondence. This automatic deletion after 365 days caused people to lose things they didn’t realize would be lost. The generally accepted interpretation of the law says that public record items may be deleted when they no longer retain administrative value. So if you believe messages no longer have any administrative value, they can be deleted immediately. Unless you delete something in the Inbox or Sent Items folder, it will remain there for three years. This also means that, if you want to keep a message for more than three years, it has to be moved to another folder, out of Inbox or Sent Items (and can’t be a sub-folder of either one). This is the best practice, since your folders can be organized by topic and messages will be retained indefinitely, though it does require manual action to delete things that are no longer needed.


An interesting aspect of this policy is that it requires use of a UF-approved email address for all UF business, and prohibits automatic forwarding to a non-UF email account. This was UF/IFAS policy since 2005 (http://imm.ifas.ufl.edu/6_150/6150-4.htm) , but as far as I know, was not in place for other UF units until now. One thing we still have in UF/IFAS but not in the UF policy is a requirement to check email once a day for every day we are at work. A person could theoretically argue that they didn’t know about something because it was sent in email, and they don’t check their email."

 


That's All Folks!

The meeting was adjourned at 11:35 and the next meeting will take place April 8th. Keep supporting the #1 Baseball and Softball teams, #2 Gymnastics and both of our basketball teams, as they continue on to the post season!!! Get out and support them all! Go Gators!

Don't forget! March 25 -