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ICC Meeting:

IFAS COMPUTER COORDINATORS (ICC)

DECEMBER 9th 2016 REGULAR MEETING


A meeting of the ICC was held on Friday, December 9th, 2016 in the UF/IFAS Communications Building. The meeting was chaired and called to order by Jimmy Anuszewski at about 10:00 am.

PRESENT: Twenty-seven members participated.

Remote participants: Wei Cao, Andrew Cary, Jonathon Chirino, Daniel Christophy, Dan Cromer, Angelo Daniels, David Depatie, Haracio Elman, Javier Herrera, DeWayne Hyatt, Kevin Hill, Brian Hurt, Al Ibanez (and group), John Macias, Donna McCraw, Marvin Newman, Scott Owens, Joel Parlin, Angel Perez, Javier Real, Lawrence Treadaway, Philip Lazenby.

On-site participants:
Spencer Young, Dennis Brown, Winnie Lante, Karen Porter, Jimmy Anuszewski.

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: Welcome Daniel Solano  @  Food Science and Human Nutrition.

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)

UPDATE: The security profiles that we have discussed in the past that would make sure all staff and faculty have to take classes for has been put into a "beta" phase and several people have taken the classes that are in a testing phase. After feedback is given, they will come out with the next stage, which could be the final product.

Update as needed.

Patching updates... (previous discussion)

Microsoft

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

There were several Microsoft Office updates to the Apple version. Please run AutoUpdater to install those updates.

Adobe

Flash, Acrobat, Reader, Connect, along with several other Adobe products, have updates here.

Java

Java updates were in October for Java 8U111/112. This includes a critical patch. Java 8U111 for Mac was released in October, 2016 and is available here. Next updates will be in January.

Apple

There have been several Apple updates, including a new system update, security updates and printer driver updates. There is still an issue with SMB server connectivity. I am finding that if you use the IP address, you have a more consistent connection then using the named server.

SAS

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

JMP

JMP 13 is still in the works. As soon as it is released, I will let everyone know. JMP is now being handled by the software department, so please have your software liason provide the JMP software to you, as needed.

Other

Email phishing attempts are gettig more common (as if that was possible). Please continue to monitor and report this situation and keep your users aware of this continuing annoyance.

Also, Cherwell has been adopted by Shared Services and seems to be having a lot of problems. Recommended end client hardware is a quad core and 4GB of RAM. This seems to either be wrong or the software is being implemented incorrectly. Adding $1000 computers to the bill doesn't seem to be the correct solution, especially when most end users have more then enough computing power. Hopefully, this will get resolved but I won't hold my breath. (This is from our previous meeting and STILL holds true).


Videoconferencing and WAN discussion

Videoconferencing topics (previous discussion)

Acano latest release is still update R1.8.36 from October 27th. This is their latest release. Updates and changes can be found in their change logs on the download page.

Skype Business for Mac is now official. There are still problems with it, but I suppose Microsoft was in a hurry to make it an official product.

 

Updates as available...


End-user Scheduling (previous discussion)

Updates as available...

WAN (previous discussion)

Updates as available...


Wireless printers (previous discussion)

Any updates to this?

 


Policy


Content Management System (CMS) (previous discussion)

T4 is still migrating in IFAS while other colleges in UF are hesitant on making the change. So far, IFAS is the only college to make it mandatory.

 

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)

Updated as needed...

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

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)

For those that need instructions on Mac domain"ing" and server connections: https://wiki.it.ufl.edu/index.php?title=Apple_OS_X

There is currently a UF Mac committee that is being chaired by our own Wendy Williams. The objective is to find a better way to integrate Macs into our Windows environment and also provide support. If you have any input or ideas, please feel free to email Wendy.

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/

 


Projects


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

Would be really nice if more people could contribute to this. Could be changes coming soon! Keep an eye out on the mail list for that announcement!! New content has been added!

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)

DeWayne is currently looking at Microsoft Teams to become our official ICC and IFAS utility for group messaging, FAQ's, sharing, etc. DeWayne can fill us in on what stage this is at right now.

McCarty Shared Services and Fifield Shared Services has moved, along with Dan Cromer and the software development team.

 

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 ) has been updated to permit installation on Windows 8.1 AND Windows 10 for 32 or 64 bit machines. I still have .NET Framework 3.5 issues.

 

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

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 was held September 23rd and information can be found here.

 

Yammer

If you haven't checked out Yammer, I highly encourage you to do so. Joe Gasper does an amazing job of keeping news and tools updated, along with a host of other people. There is a lot of info that is shared there, including a nice update to the Office 365 package, which includes a video hosting platform, much like YouTube. John Macias has more information.

 

Telephones

Phillip Lazenby was kind enough to share this link for those of you that need to modify the telephone you are using. Works pretty well. You can find the link here. Russell Hunter also provided a nice word document that has been added to the ICC Wiki.

 

 


That's All Folks!

The meeting was adjourned at 10:35 and the next meeting will take place January 13th...2017. Have a wonderful Christmas or Holiday and see everyone in 2017!