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ICC Meeting:

IFAS COMPUTER COORDINATORS (ICC)

FEBRUARY 10th 2017 REGULAR MEETING


A meeting of the ICC was held on Friday, February 10th, 2017 in the IFAS Administration building, 89, Room 109. The meeting was chaired and called to order by Jimmy Anuszewski at about 10:02 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:
Dan Cromer, Wendy Williams, 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: Nothing to report.

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

January's Microsoft patches are still listed in the link, with February, I'm sure, to follow shortly. Current risk assessments can be found here.

There were several Microsoft Office updates to the Apple version, as recently as 2/7/17. Please run AutoUpdater to install those updates.

Adobe

Flash, Acrobat, Reader, Connect, along with several other Adobe products, have updates here. Interesting enough, there have only been 3 updates since 2017 started.

Java

Java updates were in January for Java 8U121/112. Release notes can be found here. This includes a critical patch. Java 8U121 for Mac was released in January, 2017 and is available here. Make sure you double check your Macs for this update as I've seen some not automagically apply it.

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 now available through the UF Software Licensing Division.

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.

We are happy to report that Cherwell has been working since the latest version was installed and since the move from McCarty D to the IFAS Admin building. Thanks to Angel Perez for working on this problem.


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. Pure speculation leads me to believe that with a long duration in between updates that we may be seeing a move to Sparq or something else from Cisco.

Skype Business for Mac has updates that should install using your Microsoft Autoupdater. The latest update (1/31/17) included desktop sharing, usb video device addons and acknowledging some persistent problems and how to work around them.

A problem that I have encountered with Skype for Business (Windows or Mac) is related to the UF Video Bridge and screen sharing and mediasite. Screen sharing does not work in a bridge involved conference. Also, dialing a mediasite folder (TMS) produces an error and doesn't record when being used with SfB. Patrick Pettus said they expect updates to be rolled out in March and hopefully this will correct the problem. As of right now, Acano is a good workaround for this problem.

 

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)

No updates to any T4 fixes. Just a useless (maybe) fact, but as of right now, IFAS is the only college on campus, besides UF Web, using T4. Other colleges on campus are still using Wordpress with no security issues.

 

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)

There have been more people dropping out of the PrintSmart option. Seems that the charges for not printing enough per month is starting to make it a not-too-smart choice. It would be interesting to hear how everyone's experience is going with their PrintSmart printers since it's been online for a couple of years.

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

Update as needed...

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

An update on the UF Mac committee that is being chaired by our own Wendy Williams. Currently in discussion is the End Point Management Committee and their choice for Mac management. JAMF Pro is the leading software for Mac End Point Management and it looks like the committee is leaning that way. I encourage everyone to check out the software. It seems to be the best for Macs to integrate with AD and SCCM.

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)

There is a new governance committee for UF on end point management. Andrew and DeWayne are unofficially on it. Maybe they could give us an update?

Nancy Watson sent this message out to the ICC: We are planning code upgrades to switches in building or area for a UF Treasuary PCI project. This will allow us to be at the code level to add the configuration for these devices the Treasury will install. This will need to go into building 440 and b852 within 2 weeks time, I would like to do the whole IFAS Farm Area this Sunday. This will include building 0057, 0124, 0199, 0805, 0440, 0852, 0116, 0664, 0060.

If this has any effect on you, I suggest contacting her.

 

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. You can have .NET Framework 3.5 installed through Software Center then proceed to install SAS.

 

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 10:50 and the next meeting will take place March 10th. (at which time we'll be preparing for March Madness and for a great Gator Basketball run!)