Introducing Connect

02 Oct 2024

The new online IT support portal

What is Connect?

On Tuesday, 8 October IT Services will be launching Connect – the new online portal for colleagues and students to get support from our professional services colleagues including IT support which will replace the existing tool (Ivanti).  Powered by ServiceNow, the new portal offers a single platform for IT service management and other functions.

What is happening next?

Colleagues in IT Services are working on moving the existing Support Portal (Ivanti) over to Connect.  Some IT service management elements started moving over from 1st October, followed by the go live date and portal access to colleagues and students from 8th October.

For a brief introduction to Connect, please visit the StaffNet article.

What do Library staff need to know?

When Connect goes live, Ivanti will remain active in a read-only mode until the end of November after which time Ivanti will be turned off. Support Analysts will continue to work on open tickets you may have raised in Ivanti until they are resolved.

In addition to the introductory StaffNet article, staff can access a range of FAQs about Connect which also includes a small number of "How To" videos for using the colleague portal.  Go to the 'What training is available?' section, followed by Training Resources.

There are a number of 'Service Now Champions' who have undertaken extra training on the new tool, however they will primarily support the analysts who use the back end of the system for their work (responding to tickets, requests, etc).

If you are experiencing issues or have other questions about using the Connect portal, colleagues are encourage to raise these directly with the IT Support Centre.  They will provide first line support to customers and will have direct access to the Connect 'Go Live' Support Hub.

The rollout of the new platform is the first step in a series of changes to improve how our University community accesses services, gains knowledge and engages with professional services colleagues for partnership and support.  Although there are plans to develop Connect and bring other areas of the University onto the Service Now platform for service management functions, this will come at a much later stage.  Our Library Customer Services team will not be part of Connect and will continue to use LibAnswers as its customer service management platform.

To log tickets and raise requests, staff will access https://connect.manchester.ac.uk (note, this will only be live from Tuesday, 8 October).  We will also be updating local Library guidance on our Intranet where necessary.

Please continue to look out for further updates on StaffNet.