September 18, 2009 Minutes
Information Technology
MEETING MINUTES
Friday, September 18, 2009
10:00 am T-12
Members Present: Adrian Agundez, Bill Devine, Clarissa Espino, Rick Garcia, Mark Gibson, Dick Holden, Richard Hudson, Brian Jean, Ruby Payne, Tiffany Rowden, Rob Teel
Recorder: Michaela Young
Meeting start: 10:05 am
- Approval of minutes from ITC Meeting on March 20, 2009.
Minutes were approved unanimously.
- Do We Need to Change Time/Day of Meetings?
Adrian will send out an e-mail to everyone to see if the meeting times/dates need to be changed.
- Summer Classroom Update
Adrian advised they have been working on the G-buildings. Tech Arts classrooms have been moved except for T-10; G-8 still needs a projector. AV was added to the Science building. There is still some equipment to be moved around and more wireless is needed. IT wants to set up select zones for better bandwidth. Brian said he has had some issues with the wireless working in the Administration building Tiffany added that when they change rooms or turn a computer on, they most often have to repair the connection. Adrian said he was not aware of any issues but will check into that.
- Equipment Updates
Adrian said they have had some revisions with some of the equipment in Science but have made big improvements. Short throw projectors and push button controllers were installed. He suggests using the same when Tech Arts is being remodeled. Ruby commended IT for the very user-friendly setup in Science. She said everything works really well.
- Discussion Items: Big Brother Software (webpage monitor)
Brian and Val have been putting this project together and provided the funding for this project. Adrian said Mark is still working on it. He presented a diagram showing the different connections; the software looks at different aspects of the server and shows errors depicted by a light changing from green to red or purple. He will break up and then group error notifications as the current setup floods his email with notifications. The webpage monitor can be viewed by anyone. (http:\\www.taftcollege.edu/bbl/)
Rob asked if any tools can be run from there. The page provides a quick look of errors coded by colors. Mark said it tells him when to take a look at it; Moodle is always yellow because it is not a default page. Brian asked if Mark had the SMS application running. Mark said he did not. Rob asked how specific the system is. Mark explained that the error indicator opens up with details when you click on it. The history can be looked at also. Brian asked if the system shows explanations on what the errors really mean. Mark replied that the error would have to be looked up. Brian asked who was currently on the list for email notifications. Mark said that currently he is the only one. Brian asked when groups will be set up and when SMS will be up and running. Mark said he would have to talk with tech support again. Adrian asked that Mark check into the possibility of creating a new conference to enable others to see errors by maybe putting a link on the web page. Mark said that he will have to put the client on the quicktime server as it is outside the network. Brian noted that he did not see the Mac server on the diagram. Mark explained that he did not put every website down that runs on it; he will need to break it down more.
- 09-10 Projects
Adrian will have a new equipment list going out. 09-10 projects include:
- Video surveillance at the G building, the parking lot, Tech Arts and TIL buildings once they are put in.
- Banner HR Go-live is coming up in January; TC will have to start printing its own checks; there will be a new level of technology and compliance with PCI-DSS (credit card purchases protection – encryption) Bill asked about a certain bit of encryption. Adrian explained data will be sent to Touchnet – they will run it through their safeguards. “Red Flag” deals with identity theft. Tiffany brought up the issue of masking SSN’s in Banner. They have had a program from other colleges to help mask it in Banner. Adrian said they will bring someone in to help with that instead of trying to spend a lot of time trying to teach everyone.
- E-mail archiving is another compliance issue: every in/outgoing e-mail has to be recorded; this issue has been dealt with in the past but there are presently no provisions to archive e-mail for 10-15 years. Adrian said he is in favor of going with G-mail or Microsoft.edu; Cisco allows unified voice messaging which is very mobile and saves time and money; he thinks the campus needs to look at outsourcing solutions. Tiffany said that the loss of history of conference functions is the only major drawback; conferencing could be replaced with list serves. She asked if all folders would transfer. Mark said it can be done. They could do it or train staff how to do it if they wanted to do it themselves. Tiffany asked if IT would still handle new accounts. Mark said they would.
- Emergency System
Adrian was asked to work with John Griffith on developing a universal key card for VP’s to lock/unlock
buildings; they are also looking at a phone number to call to let everyone know to vacate in case of
emergency. There are plans to install more code blue’s; they are also exploring the idea of a text messaging server. Brian brought up the idea of a TC Twitter account. Mark suggested bringing the idea up at the next Public Information Committee meeting. Brian explained that you can use 140 characters or less; a student could control if they would want to receive a text message or have a message sent to their Twitter account; the student would have to take the initiative to set up the account. It would be free and easy to use.
Adrian advised that the next meeting is scheduled for October 16, 2009; he asked if there were any items for discussion for the upcoming meeting. Rich said they are looking at Edison Company for power management from the server side to save energy. They have sent the white papers. Rob asked what would happen if machines needed to run on weekends. Rich explained that it would be customizable and they are looking mainly at labs right now. Brian asked about client software Rich said it had server client software. Brian then asked about the status on IssueTrak which they have been talking about for two years and the phone number that exists for people to call to inquire on issue statuses. He said the number needed to be available to everyone and everyone needed to know how to use it. Rich explained the IssueTrak procedure and said it needed to be set up with an active directory to make it work efficiently. Adrian advised it was an on-going process and Rich will do a presentation at the next meeting. Rich added that at present IT staff are the only ones using it. Brian requested an action item for the next meeting on what is going on with the phone message notification system. He would like to know if there is a process in place and who was in charge of the system. He thinks that Mark and Rob should be part of it and other staff members who are in charge of equipment which could go down; students should know about how to use the system also. Messages on the status on servers should be available also. Adrian noted that he would like to tie it into “Big Brother” Brian said that “Big Brother” might not be easily understood by regular users.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:10 am