AC/HD Meeting Minutes

August 18th, 2011

August 16, 2011

Agenda Items

  1. Final decision on layout of Tier 2 Help Desk
  2. Tier 2 Help Desk coverage (next two weeks)
  3. Changes to ANGEL access due to implementation of myCanisius portal
  4. Office 2010 installation requests

Discussions

  1. The help desk layout for tier 2 staff is not yet finalized. The decision has been made to NOT use the work bench and use a standard height table. The table will be placed BEHIND Jessie and not in front of her. A larger table will be looked for to accommodate a request for a second monitor for those who bring their laptops with them. An additional suggestion was made to use the current table and a chair as a workstation for student or faculty laptops needing work. A suggestion has also been made to replace the desktop computer with a laptop for those who do not bring a laptop with them. This will provide a little more room for those who need it.  Dave Koenig and Kathy will work together this week to finalize an arrangement. A final decision is hoped for by the end of this week.
  2. Dave Baldo is serving on the Grand Jury until September 8. He is scheduled for Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Help Desk coverage has been requested to assist on those days. If anyone can help, please contact Kathy Nowicki at x8341 or through e-mail.
  3. The implementation of myCanisius now allows access to the ANGEL homepage and by-passes the login page all together. In doing so, the browser checks that were created to assure compatibility are no longer effective. Many students are now using Chrome as their default browser and Mac users may use Safari both of which cause issues within the e-mail system of ANGEL. If people report a problem to the Help Desk or elsewhere, ask which browser they are using or to check their browser compatibility with the link located on the bottom of EVERY webpage in ANGEL. The problem that exists with the two mentioned browsers is that although they may be able to read and reply to messages sent to them, they cannot initiate or send a new message. Browsers that have been tested and are compatible with ANGEL include Mozilla Firefox to version 5 and Internet Explorer to version 9.
  4. Requests for updating from Office 2007 to Office 2010 are anticipated to skyrocket when the new semester begins. Faculty will probably be the first to request the updates when they realize that all public computers will have been updated. New computers that are now being issued will have Windows 7 or Mac OS X and Office 2010 or 2011 respectively.

A suggestion was made to give students access to Hogan however concerns over giving students access to that drive is not in the best interest of security. Instead, Andy put an executable for Office 2010 on \\filer\canpub which should be available to most faculty via the W: drive. He also suggested that he could push an icon out. A decision is not yet made for the latter.

If requests are made to either the Help Desk or to anyone in Academic Computing they should be entered into Footprints for Kathy, Dave, or Jessie. Students still can be the front line but this can also be done in other ways such as TeamViewer or even over the phone. Mark Hammersmith will be both the “go to guy” and the student trainer if they are to be involved.

Follow-up Actions

  • Dave Koenig and Kathy Nowicki will meet this week to finalize the arrangement for the tier 2 staff.
  • People are asked to contact Kathy Nowicki with offers of availability to cover for Dave Baldo while on jury duty until September 8th  on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.
  • Decision needs to be made for pushing an icon out to people for update to Office 2010.

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AC/HD Meeting

January 4th, 2011

Minutes of meeting on January 4, 2011

Help Desk during the Semester Break: Because the Library will close at 4:30 pm this week and next, all Tier 1 staff will be available during the day.  Tier2 staff should call during their normal shifts to see if they are needed in the Library and to let Tier 1 know how they can be reached, if needed.

ANGEL updates: Two updates to ANGEL will be applied during the break, one at 2 pm on Friday, January 7; the other at 2 pm on Tuesday, January 11.  ANGEL courses will be visible to students on Friday, January 14.

End of Semester Course Surveys: A message will be sent out to faculty who had their students submit course evaluations online for the fall semester.  It will call the reports “end of semester surveys” and will direct them to a link on the Faculty/Staff page where they will be able to get their reports.  Leah reminded everyone that those faculty who teach online, web or hybrid courses may have chosen a different survey instrument; if they did, they have already received their reports.  The Mac computers that were set up at the Help Desk to accommodate the online course evaluations were not heavily used.  We will review this for next semester to see if it is worth the effort.

Support for eReaders: It is uncertain how many new eReaders will show up on campus when the students return.  There was a lengthy discussion of the support we can and should provide for these devices.   The consensus is that we will help with WiFi connectivity for the majority of the popular devices and recommend that email be browser-based; we will do a best effort on other devices.  Although it won’t be feasible to purchase one of each kind of reader, if we find we need to actually work with a popular model, we will order one.  A web page will be created with instructions, similar to the one for Smartphones.  Users will be directed to their user manual for other eReader operations.

Labs and ITCs: The Mac labs and ITCs will be re-imaged during the break for the spring semester.  The image will include Office 2011, iLife and some new DMA software.  An iOS development course will be taught in LY-122 and students in the course will be given administrator rights on specific computers.  The Mac login issues are not resolved; although Apple believes they know what is causing the problems there is not a work-around yet.  Students who see a purple screen on login will need to reboot.  The PCs in the Windows labs and ITCs will be updated, but not re-imaged.

Book Club: Kelly has designed a “book club” for discussing issues of social media in the classroom.  Faculty will be invited to a brown bag lunch to discuss readings on specific topics.  The sessions will be offered four times during the Spring semester.

Adjunct Faculty Newsletter: Marie is working on a newsletter for adjunct faculty.  She solicited ideas for formatting and distribution.

Copyright: Steve will be working on refinements to the Copyright web pages during the break.  Look for the enhancements at:  http://www.canisius.edu/copyright/

Exchange update: Some problems still exist after the Exchange server update from last weekend.  There is a work-around for now to the individual mailbox problems; Andy has turned on OWA light at the request of users who called the Help Desk.  The default “conversation” mode has been a source of confusion for users; to turn it off, click on “conversations by date” at the top of the Message list, and “uncheck” conversations.

Computer Replacements: The installation of all desktop computers that were ordered in the fall for replacements will be completed by the end of this week.

Printers: Tom will be touring the campus again with ComDoc in the next two weeks.  We will be ordering new printers from them; they will be providing onsite support three days per week.

Orientation: Dave B will be giving the ITS orientation to our new international students next week.  Please let him know of specific topics you would like to have added to the presentation.

Windows7: Mark is working on a new image for laptops which will upgrade them from Windows7 Professional to the Enterprise Edition.  This will allow us to take advantage of better security for laptop data.

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AC/HD Meeting

December 9th, 2010

Minutes of meeting on December 7, 2010

Wireless in the Residence Halls: Joel and Estelle met with the  USA Technology committee last week.  The students asked about the reported problems of slow connections or lack of connectivity.  For now, we are addressing individual problems as they arise.  Students who call the Help Desk should give very specific information on the location of the problem as well as their contact information so we can open a ticket for Matt and Mike.  They may also want to bring their laptop to the Help Desk to have their configuration checked.  If needed, we can give them a network cable for wired access.

Student Workshops: The technology committee also reported that many students don’t know how to take advantage of some of the technology we offer because they don’t know that it’s available.  For instance, the ability to print from a personal computer, the ability to access network storage from off-campus on a personal computer, and what to use for anti-virus software – these are often simple things that students don’t remember from orientation sessions.  Estelle offered workshop sessions, led by our interns, in the Residence Halls or in the Library if USA, the Residence or Commuter associations would help by scheduling and publicizing them.

Mac labs and ITCs: Scott asked for opinions on installing Office 2011 on Mac lab and ITC computers for the spring semester.  There are no file format problems and it is very much like Office 2007 on the Windows computers.  Faculty are beginning to use it on their own computers now because it includes Outlook for email.  Although there was one vote of caution about textbook compatibility, most in attendance were for the change.

VOIP phones: The Help Desk phones and the phones in WTC-101 will be converted to VOIP in January.

OLC (Online Learning Community), Readiness, Elluminate, and Softchalk resources:  The email contact address on these web pages has been changed to helpdesk@canisius.edu.  If calls are received at the Help Desk about these resources, they should be referred to the FacTS Center (as a rule, Chris for Elluminate and Leah for the others; however, all in the FacTS Center should be able to help on these calls)

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AC/HD Minutes

November 10th, 2010

Minutes of meeting on November 2, 2010

In order to accommodate another meeting of some of the participants, the meeting time for this group was changed to 1:00-2:00 pm on the first and third Tuesday of the month.

Anti-virus:   There remain some computers whose users still need to be converted to MS Forefront.  Dave has a list and will asking Tier 1 Help Desk staff to make contact with these users and to help, if needed, with the conversions.  If there are problems on a computer, a staff person will be dispatched to make the change.

ITC Calls: Lisa asked for the Help Desk to refer trouble calls in the ITCs to either Bob or her by phone instead of email.  This will ensure that the help gets there quicker.

Blogs: Kelly will be introducing the Canisius Blogs at the ACAC meeting on November 3.  The blog policy is posted on our web pages at  Canisius WordPress Policy.  The instructions for blogging are posted in the  Online Learning Community.  They can be accessed directly at:  http://www.olc.canisiuscampus.net/?page_id=94#blog

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AC/HD Minutes

October 26th, 2010

Minutes of meeting on October 19, 2010

Windows7: There is a computer in the programmers area with the current proposed image for Windows7. All ITS staff is invited to check it out and make suggestions for changes. Joe will offer an Question and Answer session for faculty when we have the final image. Those who are getting new computers this fall as well as those who are teaching in ITCs may be interested in this session.

Confluence: Check it out at wiki.canisius.edu. Chris has started adding information; we have 10 licenses. It may be useful for us to use as a repository for documentation. We can mark some documentation as internal and others we can share with faculty, staff and students. Confluence allows both editing and versioning of documents.

NetBooks: These computers pose a problem for setup, since there is no optical drive included. We need to settle on a netbook we are willing to support, since commercial models can be very different. These current netbooks will be loaners for CTE. Users will need to be shown how to reach their H: drive and set up printers.

Online Workshops: Leah’s current Online Course Development workshop will be finishing up at the end of the week. On October 29th, she will facilitate Mission Softchalk as an online workshop for those who want to create online materials for their courses. Marie is working on a shortened workshop and mentorship for new online instructors in Professional Studies.

Academic Integrity: at the request of the First Year Seminar director, Marie will offer a workshop on Academic Integrity for the faculty who teach in this program.

Office 2011 for the Mac: This Office version is set to be officially released is a week. However, several in our department have it installed and are working with it. It will provide Outlook for Mac users. File formats are compatible with other versions of Office. Both the old and the new versions of Office can be installed on the same computer. Joe will run a workshop for interested faculty and staff.

Mac Admin Issues: Scott is sending data captures to Apple so they can help diagnose the intermittent problems with login issues on the Macs. On occasion Macs will not login to a users home directory.

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AC/HD Minutes

October 5th, 2010

Minutes of the AC/HD meeting on October 4, 2010

Some announcements:

  • The Portal document is posted in the Lismeetingnotes.  Please take a look and feel free to make comments.
  • We are registered for the Online sessions of this year’s Educause Conference, October 13-15.  Please take a look at the Program Schedule and plan to attend those that are of interest to you.  The online sessions will be set up in the ITS Conference Room.
  • The first ACAC meeting of the semester will be tomorrow October 6 at 2 pm in the President’s Board Room
  • There is a problem this afternoon with the master printer in the Library.  For the time being,  students are printing to the color printer and their jobs are being released by the Help Desk.
  • The Smartboard in the President’s room is now working properly

ITS Web Site: Steve continues to refine the web pages on our web site to make them useful to our constituencies.  (See, in particular, the nice changes to the ITS Student Services pages)

Laptops: Steve set up three Media Center laptops  for campus guest speakers. They are “frozen” and will not  connect to the AD domain.

Blogs: Kelly has completed a draft of the Guidelines for the use of the Canisius blogs.  This document will published as a policy and will serve as a foundation for the use of social media on campus.  The draft is in a Google document and can be shared with any AC/HD staff for comments.

Pilot of Confluence for support: Chris has set up, with Larry’s help, a pilot of Confluence, a technical wiki, which can be reached at wiki.canisius.edu.  Confluence will allow us to flag sections for shared or not-shared viewing.  It features an easy-to-use wiki mark-up language and an automatic creation of the table of contents.  It will, perhaps, allow for easier tracking of internal and external documentation as well as current issues.  Suggestions are welcome.

Online Programs: The six-week Online Training Workshop, led by Leah, is currently underway.  In addition, a 2-week workshop, led by Marie, began this week, to accommodate instructors in the Continuing Education School who may be “fast-tracking” introduction of their online courses later this semester.  In addition, Marie is working on documenting information and contact for students in online programs that faculty can incorporate into their syllabus or their course, or both.

Academic Integrity: Marie will be working with a graduate assistant in the Student Affairs office on Academic Integrity issues and information for students.

New Computers and Windows7: The desktops for computer replacement have been received and the laptops have been shipped and are expected soon.  A small group is working to configure the new Windows7 operating system for campus use, and will create the new images.  Anyone who has input should contact the Tier 2 group in WTC-101 with suggestions.  The new replacement Macs for faculty and staff have been either installed or will be installed next week.

New Microfilm Reader: A new microfilm reader with network access and capture capability is now installed and working in the Library.  It is located on by the Windows on the Hughes Street side of the Library.  See Lisa for details.

DMA support: In an effort to relieve the congestion due to movement of large files in the DMA department in Lyons, a small high-speed network is being considered.  This network will be location specific and exclusive to Lyons Hall.

Student Interns: Student intern schedules are now available at  Whentowork.com.  Students are able to upload their schedules and change their shifts themselves.  All staff will have access to see when the interns are expected to be working.

Workshops: The number of Outlook workshops is now decreased as most people have attended and are using it.  The next workshops will be on Scheduling and the Calendar.  These advanced workshops will also be packaged for self-tutorials on the web.

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AC/HD Updates

August 17th, 2010

The Help Desk staff met on 8/16/2010

Orientation: Tom will be taking care of not only computer set-ups, but being available at Orientation/Student Services Fair on Wednesday, August 25.  He’ll be making two presentations that day, at 4:00 pm and 4:30 pm.  He’ll take two student interns with him to help.

Intern Training: Training for our returning student interns will be on Tuesday, August 24 at 5:30.  It should last an hour to an hour and a half.  Although there will be more extensive training later in the semester, this session will cover the big changes, such as printer instructions, wireless configuration, and security essentials, that students will have questions on in the next couple of weeks.  Food will be provided.

Student SLA: Everyone confirmed that student computers will not be “taken in” any longer.  In order to have assistance with a problem computer, students must sit with a staff person while it is being worked on.  If we are unable to fix it in a reasonable amount of time, the student will be given a list of possible places to get help.  Both the SLA and the list of resources are available at the Help Desk.  Anyone who works with a student on a personal computer must remember to enter a call in Footprints, so that they can be tracked.

Other updates:

ANGEL: Thursday, August 19, 8 am to noon, ANGEL will be down for maintenance.  When ANGEL is online again, the new “copyright policy” agreement will be in place.  On first login, at the beginning of each semester, the Course nugget will contain a link to the copyright agreement.  Each instructor and student will need to agree by the policy in order to continue.  Once they click agreement, their course list will be visible in the nugget for the remainder of the semester.

Labs and ITCs: All Windows PCs in ITCs and Labs have been imaged and are ready for start of classes.  On the Macintosh side, all in Lyons Hall are in progress, but all other ITCs and Labs are done.  OM414, the new Education Smart room is still under construction.  The dual-boot Macs are ready to install there when the new furniture arrives.

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HD Minutes

August 2nd, 2010

Minutes of HD meeting on August 2, 2010

Anti-Virus: As we get closer to the expiration date for our current anti-virus software, it appears that in order to push out an uninstall/install icon to college-owned computers, most computers will need Windows and virus definitions pushed out ahead of time.  However, WSUS is not yet in operational, and even if it were, there would be a timing issue.  Therefore, Dave and Mark will alter the uninstall/install script to include definitions and package it for posting on a web page, for download and run.  A message will be sent to the campus community in the next day or two with instructions.

ITC/Labs: A question about the staging of the imaging of the computer labs on campus was raised.  Since there are still classes being held in the labs and because of the shut-down of Novell servers last week, some people are unable to login in those locations.  The Help Desk will check with Lisa to find out the schedule.

Student SLA: Kathie introduced the final copy of the list of resources that students can use to have their computer repaired.  It will be posted at the Help Desk along with the new Student SLA as well as on the web.

Intern Training: Our returning student interns will be contacted by snail mail about their availability for work in the week before school starts.  Because there are so many new initiatives this fall, we will schedule a training session for Tuesday, August 24 at 5:30 p.m. to update them before scheduling work shifts.

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HD Minutes

July 26th, 2010

Minutes of HD meeting on 7/26/2010

Anti-virus: The script for uninstalling and reinstalling the campus anti-virus is on hold while Network Services works to make sure the up-to-date virus definitions can also be pushed out. There was a discussion about faculty with College-owned laptops.  Their anti-virus software will run, but won’t be updated until they return to campus.

Provisioning:

  • There are some new students who have registered but who don’t have social security numbers in Banner.  If one of these students calls for password problems, please confirm identity with birthdate and student ID number.  Then contact Admissions to have them update Banner.
  • Students are being converted to Active Directory now.  If they have not reset their password within the last two years, they will have to do so in order to login on the campus computers.  There is a Profile set up for this purpose at the Help Desk.  If students are unable to login, please have them step up to that computer to reset their own password.

Phones: VOIP phones will soon be installed for Tier 1 and 2 staff.  In most locations the network jacks are maxed out, and since they need the jacks they have, there may need to be additional ones installed.  The ROLM phones will remain for a short transition time.  Note that the ANGEL help line number has changed to x3444.

Labs: Tom is looking for locked cabinets in the outlying labs, so that paper can be delivered by staff, and students can be dispatched when the printers need filling.  He will check with Facilities.

Office moves: The Grad Ed/Lyons Hall move was done.  Still on the schedule is KAC (all staff will move out of the Florida Street house) and the President’s Office.

Windows 7: The Tier 1 staff would like a computer that runs Windows 7, since that will be the Windows OS in the labs.  They will check with Scott to see if their Macs can be made dual-boot.

Student SLA: The new Student SLA is posted in the Library.  Because the new policy mandates that students accompany their computer as it is being worked on, we are looking for convenient work areas.  Some possibilities are to use the “high desk” area in front of the Help Desk, or some of the area that has been vacated by Library staff moves.  The Tier 1 staff will work out a convenient plan and determine what furniture might be needed.

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AC/HD Minutes

July 26th, 2010

Minutes of AC/HD Meeting on 7/20/2010

Wireless Access: Network Services has two initiatives regarding wireless access on campus, both of which should be operational by the end of July:

  • WPA security will be implemented on the main campus SSID.  While the non-secure connection will be available, users will be encouraged to change their wireless settings to WPA.
  • Guest Access: a procedure for guest access will be available and we will be notified of instructions for its use

CTE laptops: The current CTE laptops have been imaged and “frozen.”  They will boot directly into the Administrator account.

Copyright Policy: A draft of the new Canisius Copyright Policy has been posted at http://www.canisius.edu/copyright.  There are a couple more pages to add, and there will be tweaks as the committee takes a look at it.

ITC/Labs: There is a bug in the security and control for the Macs.  Apple should be able to have a solution soon.  In the meantime, printing is “up in the air.”  The new Windows PCs for the ITCs are installed and the Library ones are being installed this week.   Lab images will be next with Amherst being the first.

ANGEL: There were multiple woes last week.  However, all but one has been resolved.  There is a problem with the Assessment Identity Management, which has been removed for the time being while the vendor takes a look at the problem.

Softchalk: Softchalk is the new software that was purchased for faculty to easily design and create web pages that can be uploaded to ANGEL.  Quite a number of faculty have signed up for Softchalk training, which will be conducted both online and face-to-face in the next two weeks.  The sessions on campus will be taught by a trainer from Softchalk in the Library Conference Room.

Anti-Virus: ESET is being replaced with MS Forefront.  Within the next week there will be a script pushed to campus users’ desktops to uninstall ESET and install the new software.   Team Viewer will be “pushed” in the same manner.

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