IT support arrangements during Start of Year
08 Sep 2020
As you may expect, IT support arrangements will look slightly different during 2020’s welcome period.
During the campus closures, we’ve had IT support staff onsite to assist with remote desktop access issues, network queries and to help with IT support in labs. As the campus starts to re-open more widely, we will be expanding our support availability.
The main point of IT support information will be IT Services’ help and support page, which will contain the latest information about support services available:
We’ll continue to operate the 24/7 support centre telephone lines as normal, with many of our staff answering calls from home during working hours. During the summer break, we have recruited an additional six staff to take calls on the new services we’ve been offering such as Microsoft 365 and Teams.
Staff support
Our desk-side support staff will be situated onsite across north and south campus from 9am-6pm Monday to Friday.
Some IT staff will be assigned to specific important pieces of work, for example supporting student registration.
We’re continuing to operate a laptop delivery and collection service for those colleagues who are working from home. To find out more, first log into the IT Support Portal, then after doing that, click this link to fill in the “Request a laptop or return IT equipment” form. Colleagues can use the same form for returning laptops or reporting broken ones.
Student support
Students can contact the Library for remote IT Support using the Library Chat and Library Help service. The Library's Digital Support Services team provide a wide range of support for students, including connecting to email and other University services, support for personal devices and help with Microsoft 365.
Limitations
At the time of publication, there are some limitations to the services we can provide.
- The Kilburn Building walk-up support desk will not be open. Due to the limited amount of space in the room, it’s not possible to adhere to social distancing guidelines.
- Our deskside support staff won’t be able to attend to urgent individual cases immediately (for example, if one colleague’s computer has stopped working)
- Limited visits to University buildings, based on impact and severity, and during core hours only.
In all urgent cases, please telephone 0161 306 5544.
Future considerations
The above support arrangements will be reviewed regularly, and in the meantime, we are looking at how we provide a quick response for teaching emergencies that may happen in teaching PC clusters, in line with the University’s extended teaching hours.
More information
For all IT support and advice: