Accomplishments
Ideafest and Moving Trans History Forward kept our Media Services team extremely busy in March. All requests for equipment and support were delivered very succesfully. Great job!
The Data Centre Services team worked closely with the Identity and Access Management team to deploy a new system for provisioning and authenticating UNIX and student email accounts. This new system replaces a legacy home-grown approach with an industry-standard LDAP-based system, which should provide better reliability and scalability in our data centre. Additional management tools for the Computer Help Desk and Desktop Support Services teams were also provided as part of this project.
This month, Desktop Support Services welcomes The Centre for Studies in Religion and Society as a new department under the Humanities faculty umbrella. With DSS now in effect as of March 14th, 2016, the department is already getting up to speed with 4 standard managed windows desktop PCs deployed within the department. The department is excited to have dedicated DSS support and we’re happy to have them on board.
Microsoft announced that beginning January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will receive technical support and security updates. Internet Explorer 11 is the last version of Internet Explorer, and will continue to receive security updates, compatibility fixes, and technical support on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10. In order to ensure the security of University computers, Windows 7 computers running older versions of Internet Explorer needed to be upgraded to continue to receive critical security updates and compatibility fixes. Internet Explorer 11 is the recommended browser for use with UVic Enterprise websites. DSS implemented Group Policy changes to enable the automatic delivery of IE11 through automatic updates which will allow most computers to update to the new version automatically. The majority of computers running older versions of IE have now been upgraded to IE11.
It’s Fiscal Year End (FYE)! The General Office staff have been busy following-up with vendors and clients on all outstanding orders and invoices in order to submit necessary paperwork before Accounting fiscal year end deadlines.
The PC0601-JW Player Upgrade project is nearing completion. We’ve installed the new versions of JW Player and the Akamai plugin on the UVic site, rebuilt our Player Wizard and updated our help centre web pages.
Living Our Values
On March 11, we enjoyed a rock and roll coffee and doughnut break in our favourite rock band t-shirts. Photo Credit: Colin Newell
The next Women in Leadership interview with Nicole Greengoe, University of Victoria Registrar is scheduled for Thursday April 21 at 10:00 in DSB C116, please RVSP to Skye Champagne swilk@uvic.ca if you are interested in attending.
Prospect Healing Arts, customized chair massage therapist Laurie Williams will be making her next visit to campus May 17 & 19. Email Vincent Connor if you are interested in either booking of finding out more information zzconnor@uvic.ca.
John Foxgord took some of us on a tour of our Enterprise Data Centre. Very cool! Photo Credit: Vincent Connor and Elissa Boyd McGee
Training and Certifications
Marc Thoma is furthering his knowledge and expertise in the Apple world by successfully completing Apple’s Mac Integration Basics 10.11 course.
Jenn Cara and Faye Hoffman both became Certified ScrumMasters this month.
We are firing up the Project Managers Learning from Project Managers series. More information about upcoming sessions is available on the PMO Training site!
Check out the Living Values Staff Accomplishments list for more information about our team and individual accomplishments!