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INFORMATION RESOURCE CENTER

Information Technology (IRC-IT)

Contacting IT-Support for Staff

Introduction

“The University’s computer and information network is a continually growing and changing resource that supports hundreds, soon to be thousands of users and systems. These resources are vital for the fulfillment of the academic, research and business needs of the University community.”

- IUB’s General Policy Governing the Appropriate Use of Computer Resources IUB’s “computer and information network” is run by the Information Resource Center, Information Technology department (IRC-IT). It’s task is to enable IUB and it’s users to employ those resources to the users to help them in solving their computer-based work tasks.

To efficiently support IUB’s computer users, it is important to provide well-known means to make use of IRC-IT’s services. This document gives details on how to reach Desktop Support of IRC-IT, what its support services are, and how support requests are handled. This information will make the support for all users faster, enhance effectiveness, and increase quality of service.

Contact Channels

The best way to contact IT support is to

write an email to

[email protected]

.

For follow-up-communication please ensure to always include the unmodified ticket number in the subject line as received in the response (hitting the reply button of any email client automatically does this; writing a new email doesn’t). In cases where you need an immediate answer you can

call 4666 during telephone hours

(see “Support Hours” table below), which is routed to multiple staff members, but not forwarded to mobile phones. In cases requiring face-to-face discussion you can visit the IRC-IT office CC 3-255 (in the Campus Center) during open office hours (see “Support Hours” table below).

Please note:

Technical

Campus.NET

exclusively

[email protected]

.

There is no telephone or walk-in technical support for Campus.NET!

Support Hours

IT support has defined service hours:

Time Monday Tuesday to Friday

09:00-10:00 Not available Telephone Hour 10:00-11:00 Not available Open Office Hour

14:00-15:00 Telephone Hour 15:00-16:00 Open Office Hour

There is no IT support on weekends or during public holidays. The office will stay closed (i.e., there will be no open office hours), if the IRC is closed (typically in the morning during academic breaks).

During telephone hours, highest priority of servicing requests is given to answering the telephone; as much IT staff is servicing the telephone as possible.

During open office hours, the IT support office CC 3-255 is open for ad-hoc or pre-arranged visits.

During all non-telephone hours, the IT support telephone will be redirected to a voice box. If you leave a message, an IT supporter will later listen to that message, will manually type the relevant information into IT support’s ticket system, account the time for typing it in, and then queue that request for action. Please note that by sending the request by email instead of by phone, you can save time and work and allow more time for answering requests.

Please note that the IT support office will stay closed and locked outside the open office hours, including telephone hours. During telephone hours, this is to maximize available support people for answering the telephone. During off-hours, this is to allow work on complex technical issues, including trouble-shooting of support requests as well as infrastructure issues and development which require uninterrupted concentration.

Please also note, due to the fact that IT support staff is also charged with infrastructure tasks, availability of desktop support even during telephone hours or open office hours can not be guaranteed in cases of technical emergencies, though efforts are made to maximize availability.

Usage Notes

IUB’s telephone system does not allow for call center functionality: it is technically not possible to receive a busy tone if all IT support staff are already on the phone answering requests and another call comes in. Hence, receiving a free signal on the phone during telephone hours does NOT mean that people are not there or are not working on the telephone. In such a case the voice box will be available to leave a message which is later processed as described above.

Upon requesting support, please specify the problem and all necessary information as precisely as possible. Especially, state what you did on your computer, what you expected to happen then, and what happened instead of what you expected.

As an example, instead of requesting support by writing “I have a problem with email”, you could write “I sent out an email from my account [email protected] to the account [email protected], that was yesterday at around 14:00. I asked the sender about it by phone, but he/she didn’t receive it. Did the email leave IUB?” The first question cannot be answered in a satisfactory manner and would only result in time unnecessarily spent on inquiry of details. The second question can easily be answered within minutes after having started work on it.

If you bring in equipment, please be sure to carry along all necessary non-standard equipment to make it work, incl. special power cables or add-ons required for operation, to reconstruct the issue.

Ticket System

Please do not send support requests to individual staff members, even not if you know who will most likely service your request. Always use [email protected] as destination address to reach the ticket system. Else, expect to get ignored (unintentionally).

All IT support activities are performed by employing a ticket management system. This allows for sharing workload between IT support staff, for handing over a case to someone else without starting anew, for

reconstructing the case later, and to build up a solution database. It also provides for accounting of service times, for classifying requests by priority, and for assessing the problem area to focus future development activities. It is a vital support tool to employ IUB’s resources as efficiently and effectively as possible. If you sent in an email to [email protected], you will receive an auto-generated message with a ticket number. Please always include the unmodified ticket number in the subject line of emails to allow for easy handling of your request. The auto-response will contain initial parts of the “Subject:” line sent by you; choosing a short and meaningful “Subject.” line in the initial request will later help you to associate responses to the question.

Telephone calls will be typed into the ticket system during the phone call to initiate a support ticket with a ticket number assigned, which will be used in any return emails you might receive due to your phone calls. Please be sure to always send follow-up emails, even when and especially if [email protected] is “only” cc’ed in an email forwarded to someone else, with the ticket number in the subject line as received before; please also follow this, if the ticket was generated by a phone call. This will make responding to your requests easier and, hence, faster.

Upon receipt of a request and creation of a support ticket in IRC-IT, the ticket is assigned to a problem area. Based on responsibilities and current availability, a ticket is at any time worked on by at most one assigned staff member. Therefore, it is very important, that you put only one problem in one support request email. If you experience several problems, please send a support email for each different problem (remember to choose short and descriptive “Subject:”-lines). This opens up several tickets which can be worked on by several people in parallel, based on their availability.

Queuing

Upon receipt of a request in IRC-IT, a ticket is created. As time allows it is then manually assigned a priority and queued in the respective work area. After that, one knowledgeable staff member picks up the ticket as time allows and starts working on it.

The evaluation of the ticket is multi-dimensional. In the following some of the heuristics which are applied are given.

In general, the following priorities for dealing with requests, based on the number of users affected, exist: 1. Issues impeding the whole campus (e.g., hard- or software failure on central routing/switching

engine, new virus spread).

2. Issues impeding a large number of users on campus (e.g., hard- or software failure regarding whole buildings).

3. Issues impeding smaller groups of users (e.g., failure of workgroup server). 4. Issues impeding a single user (e.g., failure of desktop PC).

In general, the following priorities for dealing with requests, based on involved software installations, exist: 1. IUB standard installation (as done by IRC-IT).

2. IUB non-standard installation (as done by IRC-IT).

3. IUB non-standard installation (as done by delegated administrator). 4. IUB user-based installation (as done by user).

5. Non-IUB installations if necessary for IUB-related work and if negotiated with IT support. In general, the following priorities for dealing with requests, based on involved hardware, exist:

1. IUB standard hardware. 2. IUB non-standard hardware.

3. Non-IUB hardware if necessary for IUB-related work and if negotiated with IT support. In general, the following priorities for dealing with requests, based on the severity of the issue, exist:

1. Issues disabling work. 2. Issues hindering work.

3. Consultation regarding implementation of new or maintaining current installations. 4. Inconveniences in operation or use.

5. Items “nice-to-have”, “Goodies”.

In general, the following priorities for dealing with requests, based on the reason for the issue, exist: 1. Errors in hardware or software.

2. Errors of IRC-IT. 3. Required maintenance.

4. Issues induced by user by accident.

5. Issues induced by user due to irresponsibility, laziness, neglected planning or coordination, or by not following standards, guidelines, or procedures.

In general, the following priorities for dealing with requests, based on scheduling, exist: 1. Emergencies (as judged by IRC-IT).

2. Tasks scheduled with users or external people.

3. Unscheduled tasks, especially if they could have been scheduled.

Services

Areas of Responsibility

The general goal is to ensure a working infrastructure. IRC-IT (incl. CLAMV) has a specified area of responsibility and expertise. To enable efficient work, IRC-IT’s activities are limited to these infrastructure services. It is the service of IRC-IT to enable the standard technology for IUB’s members to work with. It is not the task of IRC-IT to immediately provide additional infrastructure, add-on hardware or software technology (aka gadgets and programs). It is also not the task of IRC-IT to provide basic or advanced

education on understanding or using the provided technology. Based on the high profile of IUB, it is assumed that IUB computer users understand and use these tools as appropriate for their task.

IRC-IT’s desktop service is to make IUB-standard things work.

Activities of Responsibility

Installation, configuration, and maintenance of IUB’s infrastructure, standard hardware and standard software, is within task profile of IRC-IT.

Installing, configuring, maintaining, fixing, or helping in using non-standard hard- or software, is not (if no other prior arrangement was explicitly made with IRC-IT). If you do not feel expert enough for these tasks, please consider contracting specialized support for that product with an external service provider.

Provided Desktop Support Services

MS Windows World

• MS Windows domain management (incl. user/password)

• MS Windows server management (admin/faculty server)

• Standard MS Office, MS Outlook/Exchange installation, configuration, maintenance

• Standard MS Windows and MS Office patches, updates; licenses installation, configuration, maintenance

• Additional standard PC software installation (incl. PC-based anti-virus) installation, configuration, maintenance

• Additional non-standard PC software installation (only after prior consultation; no configuration, no maintenance in any case; lower service priority as defined above)

• MS Windows-based PC user data backup and restore (server-based via roaming profiles and re-installation of standard images only, no additional software re-re-installation or re-configuration)

• Standard PC desktop/laptop hardware installation, configuration for compatibility, maintenance

• Standard network-based printer maintenance

Unix World

• Computer Science Teaching Lab (aka CSTL) maintenance

• Computational Laboratory for Analysis, Modelling and Visualization (aka CLAMV) teaching lab maintenance (via CLAMV)

• Solaris/Linux server maintenance (together with CLAMV)

• Cluster maintenance (via CLAMV)

• Floating licenses (partly via CLAMV)

• Access to high performance computing (via CLAMV)

• Printer access for IUB-managed servers

Network Infrastructure and Basic Services

• Internet access

• Mail infrastructure: mail servers, virus scanning, spam tagging, web interface, standard protocols for mail retrieval, mailing list provisioning (not maintenance)

• Network service infrastructure: DHCP servers, DNS servers, network structuring, firewalls

• Infrastructure planning

Telephony Services

• Telephone and mobile phone provisioning

• “Unified messaging system” (Siemens Hicom Xpressions) for fax and voice box management

• Telephone cabling infrastructure provisioning and management

• Infrastructure planning

Database Services

• Oracle database maintenance of IUB’s central university database

• Technical support of Campus.NET development, deployment, configuration, maintenance (no application support)

Areas of Non-Responsibility

The IRC-IT support team frequently receives support requests which do not belong to our domain of responsibility or expertise. The following table summarizes pertinent points of contact outside IRC-IT for some issues:

Support Request on Entity Contact

Macintosh operating system and

applications No-One! You are on your own! Multimedia equipment (esp.

beamers), presentation technology

Facility Management [email protected], call 4520

Plotter access and use IRC-IR [email protected],

http://www.iu-bremen.de/services/irc/multimedia/

IUB web pages, IUB forum CoCo/Webservices [email protected]

Mailing list moderation Administrator of the list Look at bottom of mailing list info page, reachable from http://lists.iu-bremen.de/mailman/listinfo/

Campus.NET workflows,

procedures, data maintenance The department offering the service Varies, see http://www.iu-bremen.de/directory/ Purchasing procedure, addressee Purchasing dep (Hilke Kobbe) http://www.iu-bremen.de/directory/02970/

Anything, requested by students,

undergraduates and graduates IT Student Support [email protected] 4667, room CC 4-218 ,

Infrastructure Planning and Consultation

IRC-IT is in charge of the computer, network, and telecommunication infrastructure of IUB. Please make sure to contact IRC-IT before planning, purchasing, or in any way manipulating IUB infrastructure. Especially, prior to any of the following, contact IRC-IT:

• Buying and/or installing WLAN access points, routers, switches, computers, printers, telephones, fax machines, network cables.

• Moving around computers, networked or telephone equipment between rooms.

• Changing network connectivity of your equipment, e.g. switching data network wall outlets.

• Construction works.

Doing any of this without involving IRC-IT usually will not work and/or will have adverse effects on the infrastructure, but in any way will result in additional and unnecessary costs and efforts for IUB and induce discontent for you and IRC-IT.

Document Change History

Date Changed by Comment

03.05.2004 TS Initial release

31.01.2005 TS Adaptation of URLs, MD, explanations