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ICC Meeting:

IFAS COMPUTER COORDINATORS (ICC)

MAY 13th 2016 REGULAR MEETING


A meeting of the ICC was held on Friday, May 13th, 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-five members participated.

Remote participants: Tom Barnash, DeWayne Hyatt, Tom Barnash, Dan Cromer, Daniel Christophy, Dennis Brown, Donna Mccraw, Earl Sloan, Javier Herrera, Russell Hunter, Wayne Hyde, Alvaro Ibanez, Joel Parlin, John Wells, Kevin Hill, Philip Lazenby, Chris Leopold, Adam Lishawa, Marvin Newman, Ian McLean, Michael Morrow, Angel Perez, Javier Real, Scott Owens, Santos Soler, Lawrence Treadaway, Wei Cao.

On-site participants:
Wendy Williams, Winnie Lante, Karen Porter, John Macias.

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: No new news 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)

Please be aware of malicious emails. Several have popped up over the past month, some with photo attachments or zip file attachments. This also brings up the recent email surveys that look very suspicious but are legitimate. If you are ever worried about it be suspicious, email the sender to verify.

Jimmy has submitted a proposal to ITPAC that would require all faculty and staff to complete the Computer Security Class and have the profile added to their UFID.

Update as needed.

Patching updates... (previous discussion)

Microsoft

May'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. The Flash update is very imperative.

Java

Java updates were in April/Ma for Java 8U91/92. This JRE will expire with the release of the next critical patch update scheduled for July 19, 2016. Java 8U91 for Mac was released on April 19, 2016 and is available here.

Apple

There have been several Apple updates, including a new system update, security updates and printer driver updates.

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 latest release is still update R1.8.29 from April 18th. This is their latest release. Updates and changes can be found in their change logs on the download page. There were some problems recently, related to the spaces (formerly cospaces).

With the aquisition of Acano by Cisco, they are currently working on a mobile, desktop and video conferencing platform that will allow users to participate in video meetings from anywhere in the world, regardless of your network or domain. Look for updates in the near future in regards to this.

Updates as available...


End-user Scheduling (previous discussion)

Updates as available...

Lync updates (previous discussion)

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)

Terminal 4, Version 8 is still not available. The current timetable is 4 weeks out. As of right now, all IFAS departments and REC's are required to move to T4.

There is a Higher Education WordPress conference in Sarasota. Many UF Web Managers/Designers are attending. If you're interested, please find the link here.

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

 


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)

DeWayne has provided several new additions to SCCM.

SCUP (System Center Updates Publisher) will allow 3rd party software updates to be pushed in a similar fashion to Windows Updates. It will detect what software you have and only provide updates to those older versions that you already have installed. This will mean no more remoting to update Acrobat or Flash.

The other luxury added is the installation of .NET Frame 3.5 to the Windows 10 image. This will allow software, such as SAS 9.4, which requires 3.5, to be installed.

Santos has completed the printer renaming scheme. As an example, an Agronomy printer is now named "agr-XeroxCQ8900-A-Clr - Xerox ColorQube 8900X PCL6". He's able to provide a report that lists all printers, location, IP, driver, status, type, model and other important information.

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...

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 will be pushed to the Summer semesters. I will update as I get information. June 17th is the official date for the meet.

Powershell Seminar, held on May 4th, went very well and had a solid turnout. Ed Wilson, the Scripting Guy, presented a two hour seminar. There are more seminars currently being arranged, so be on the lookout for announcements in the near future.

 


That's All Folks!

The meeting was adjourned at 11:06 and the next meeting will take place June 10th. Gator Baseball takes on Vandy, Lady Softball moves to the semifinal round of the SEC Tourney, LAX, after winning the conference championship, takes on the winner of Penn State/Winthrop, Men and Women's Tennis play this weekend in the NCAA Tourney and Track & Field are at the SEC Outdoor Championships! Go Gators!