ICC Meeting:

IFAS COMPUTER COORDINATORS (ICC)

OCTOBER....FRIDAY THE 13th 2017 REGULAR MEETING

A meeting of the ICC was held on Friday, October the 13th, 2017 in the IFAS Administration building, 89, Room 109. The meeting was chaired and called to order by Jimmy Anuszewski at about 10:01 am.

PRESENT: Twenty-three members participated.

Remote participants: Phil Lazenby, Dewayne Hyatt, Angelo Daniels, Raichel White, David Depatie, Al Ibanez, Andrew Carey, Jonathan Chirino, Kevin Hill, Horacio Elman, John Macias, Wayne Hyde, Joel Parlin, Scott Owens, Lee Thrasher, Joe Gasper, Angel Perez (Rivera), Bill Black, Marvin Newman, Wei Cao, Lawrence Treadaway, Javier G. Herrera, Javier Real, Daniel Solano, Chris Leopold, Brian Hurt.

On-site participants: Jimmy Anuszewski, Gaurav Sinah, Wendy Williams, Francis Ferguson, Karen Porter, Alan Yang, Michael Marrow, Marcus Dilorenzo, Megz Keathley, Dennis Brown, Dan Cromer

STREAMING AUDIO: The audio will available here.

Recorded Video: Video will be available here. A new feature with the use of Zoom is the saving of the chat dialog, available here.

NOTES:

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

Report from the chairman

Member news: The ICC would like to welcome Alan Yang to Hort Science and Marcus Dilorenzo to ABE. Also, congrats to Angel Perez for his new position with Entomology.

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. Be on the lookout for a new site within the coming months.

Patching updates... (previous discussion)

Microsoft

July, August and October's Microsoft patches are still listed in the link. Current risk assessments can be found here. I've seen a lot of activity recently on the list with people pointing out Windows update problems and reporting them to Dewayne. Keep up the good work.

There were several Microsoft Office updates to the Apple version, as recently as 10/10/17. Please run AutoUpdater to install those updates.

Adobe

Flash, Acrobat, Reader, Connect, along with several other Adobe products, have updates here. Last updates were in September.

Java

Java updates were in July for Java 8U144. Release notes can be found here. This includes a critical patch. Java 8U144 for Mac was released in July, 2017 and is available here. Java 9 is now available. You can download it here.

Apple

There have been several Apple updates (October), including a new system update, security updates and printer driver updates. This includes High Sierra, in case your users haven't upgraded yet.

SAS

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

JMP

JMP 13 is now available through the UF Software Licensing Division.

Videoconferencing and WAN discussion

Videoconferencing topics (previous discussion)

I'm sad to report that Abraham Turrell has left us. He took a position with the VA across from campus. The position has not be filled yet.

Skype Business for Mac has updates that should install using your Microsoft Autoupdater.

Policy

Content Management System (CMS) (previous discussion)

Currently, within IFAS, no new Wordpress sites are being permitted. Static and T4 are the only options. So far, IFAS is the only college on campus to implement this.

Updates as available.

Last month's IT@UF Meeting Notes

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

A topic that Andrew Carey would like to touch on from the meetings: 2 Factor Authentication implementation.

Possible target date of Sept 2018, of course dependent on roll out strategy.

ITSA Policy and UF IT Policy

I've found it difficult to find the ITSA Computing Policy and the UF IT Policies, so I will provide the links here and keep them here.

ITSA - http://imm.ifas.ufl.edu

UF IT - http://www.it.ufl.edu/policies/

There will now be an ICC Policy Page that will keep track of policy and guidelines. These are not strict rules meant to dictate what must be done, but instead, a page of policies that are meant to help keep things running smoothly for each department and ITSA. You can find it here.

Jimmy wanted to propose a policy recommendation to the ITPAC group in regards to mandated software, in the instance that said software has shortcomings in required features. Such examples would be Big Fix, Zoom, etc. The policy recommended can be found on the ICC policy page and is up for discussion and a vote.

Kevin Hill asked who has mandated software and Jimmy gave Big Fix and Terminal 4 as the most recent examples. Dan Cromer stated that if believes if Dr.Payne mandates something, that you can either retire, resign or die. (I actually believe this is the type of fear that UF is trying to extinguish from the work atmosphere and even conducted a survey over the Summer about this type of problem on campus). Jimmy stated we're not questioning a mandate, we're trying to make sure that we, as IT, can do our jobs to make our customers happy. He pointed out that Elias is the one that states Business should drive Tech and not the other way around (I had it backwards, thanks to Dan and Wendy for pointing this out). Jimmy voiced a concern that if someone is not informed of the problems with the mandated software, maybe this would help to educate them on why alternatives should exist. This is not to say that the mandated software couldn't be used by the majority, but there are situations when the software simply doesn't work for the situation at hand. He also pointed out this proposed policy would not allow just any alternative software to be used and that everything would have to go through ITSA and be supported by them. Please watch the video, starting at the 12 minute mark, if you would like to hear the full discussion. (I strongly encourage everyone to listen to the discussion, I believe it is educational in the way that shows miscommunication and misunderstandings can lead to problems).

The proposed policy was passed with only 3 total nay's opposing it (2 on the poll, 1 in person). The policy will now go before the ITPAC members.

Andrew Carey would like to discuss service account use and naming scheme, per UF and IFAS policy.

Projects

We are currently working on a new ICC site and integration of Yammer. Stay Tuned! The new site is planning on using Microsoft Teams, pending the outcome of the software policy exception being brought forth to the ITPAC members.

Operations

IFAS IT Updates (previous discussion)

Andrew would like to give an update in regards to the UF End Point Management Committee.

Dewayne has been working on LTE integration at remote locations and has an amazing chart of progress.

We would like to start a Windows Insiders Series for the ICC. We hope to have instructional video and demos available after the new site is online. With that said, we do have some discussion in regards to the future of Windows in IFAS.

This Configuration Manager Dashboard shows a nice display of the OS deployment and other vital stats. ITSA would like to discuss Windows 7 end of life, client count, update count, infected machines, etc. You can check the dashboard report option that is in Yammer (right side, and IE only). Dan recommended a policy be presented to ITPAC to officially require the end of life to W7 and the move to W10. Jimmy stated that he would start a discussion on the ICC list or Yammer group with a rough draft of a policy.

Joe Gasper has updates regarding Web Server migration & updated SSL Cert deployment.