MyPC Back but at Risk

Over the past 24 hours or so, we have managed to make some good progress on fixing MyPC. We have identified the cause and taken steps to prevent it from occurring. 

As a result of this work and some successful testing we have made the MyPC booking service available once more. However, the ability to book PCs should be considered at risk for the time being. When making a booking you should ensure that you tick the box to receive an email confirmation of your booking, incase you cannot get in later to check the details.

As part of the work done the Quick Book method for booking PCs has been disabled. If you use this method for booking PCs  you will now need to use the standard booking method.

We hope that this work will go a considerable way to fixing the problem we've been having and will continue to monitor the system. Thank you once again for your patience as we work through this. Finger crossed...

Text Message Alerts During Major University Incidents

The University has a service that lets us text students en masse in the event of a major incident.

This service is now being extended to staff.

If you would like to receive a text in the event of a major incident causing significant disruption or risk you only need to provide your mobile phone number. To do this:

1. Log into MUSE and go to the Staff Applications tab
2. Click the myJob/myTeam/eRecruitment link
3. Click the Personal Profile link.
4. Click the Mobile Phone button within the Communication section
5. Provide your personal mobile phone number
6. Click the Save and Back button

This will only be used in the event of a major incident if deemed appropriate by the major incident team. Providing your personal mobile number is entirely voluntary, however, staff with mobile phones provided by the University will have their numbers added automatically. Any future ideas for using text messaging for any other purpose would be subject to further consultation and would be an opt-in service.

Future developments of the University texting service for students will include the ability to text academic information to pre-defined groups, for example all students in a specific year on a specific course. A further development will be the ability to send targeted texts to students in groups created on an ad-hoc basis.

Further details including guidance over how this system will be used are available from the following website.

www.shef.ac.uk/cics/text

More information and updates about the text messaging service will be published as the project progresses.

Increasing number of students caught pirating software

We've recently received several complaints regarding student use of pirated software applications so they can work on their own computers.

What's especially concerning about the recent complaints is that the software applications being pirated are very specialist software applications normally used in industry or to support teaching. The licensing and use of specialist software is closely monitored by software producers and publishers and they are much more likely to investigate potential misuse and pursue legal action (up to ten years imprisonment and an unlimited fine!).

The University endeavours to make required software applications available to members of the University, either on the student computing service (www.shef.ac.uk/cics/studentcomputing) or through local provisioning. There are also various discount schemes available to members of the University who would like to run software on their own computer (http://www.shef.ac.uk/cics/buying/softwarenotsold).

So, if you are set a piece of work that requires the use specialist software applications first check to see if the application is available on our student computing service. If it isn't then please talk to your tutor or the person setting the work.

Software piracy is a type of copyright infringement where software is used or shared without permission from the copyright holder; for example the software is downloaded using BitTorrent and then cracked. Copyright infringement is not acceptable under any circumstances and the University has a policy that explains what will happen in the event of us receiving an accusation of copyright infringement (www.shef.ac.uk/copyright). 

The aim of this blog post is to help you find the software needed to do your work without getting you into trouble!

MyPC Switched Off

MyPC has become so unreliable we are switching it off. Instead, all of the PCs in the Information Commons, St Georges Library and Western Bank library will be available on a walk up basis. We are also making 50 laptops bookable in advance from the Information Commons, 20 of which will be available out of hours on a self-service basis.

We will continue to try to get this resolved, and may evaluate other products, but PC bookings are effectively gone until we have a permanent solution. We're very disappointed at this outcome but want to put an end to the frustration and uncertainty being experienced by students.

We will have an update for you on Monday afternoon, to let you know what the situation is.

More information.

Student Filestore

Over recent weeks we have seen a rise in the number of problems for students using uni computers. Student filestore has been quite unstable, giving students problems signing in to computers and saving work.

During the last week, we have done some work which we hope will fix the problem, allowing you to use student computers as normal. The early signs are good, but we will keep an eye out for further problems. Hopefully we won't see any.

Online Programme Management System (OPMS) Project

The OPMS project aims to deliver a new online system and changes to processes for managing information about programmes, enabling academic departments to edit this information in one central location and other services to re-use it. Using agile development, the first phase of the project will deliver a web-based front-end to CIS covering professional accreditation data and launch it to departments this summer. This article aims to explain the purpose of this and where we are up to with the development work.

If a programme is formally accredited or informally recognised by a professional body this increases its status and makes it far more attractive to prospective students relative to similar courses at other institutions. For student recruitment purposes, the accreditation should be mentioned in the prospectus. It must be included in the Key Information Set (KIS), and the details will also appear in students’ Higher Education Achievement Reports (HEARs) - both major drivers for the whole OPMS project.

The online system will enable staff in academic departments to easily record this information, and also to manage their relationships with accrediting bodies. It will for example record dates when the body is due to visit the department to renew the arrangement. It will also help LeTS who need to keep up-to-date with accreditation renewals. Users will be able to access and extract the centrally-stored information via the web, instead of it being hidden away in inaccessible locations and formats. Academic departments will retain ownership of the data, while LeTS will oversee the process of maintaining it.

The OPMS accreditation working group has pulled together the user requirements and a CiCS Developer is developing the screens. The project is using an agile development approach whereby the group regularly reviews the screens that the CiCS Developer produces and members offer their feedback. Recently, some departmental and LeTS users from outside the project kindly participated in a workshop designed to gather feedback from a wider group. The workshop went well and the feedback (which the users supplied via a Google spreadsheet while in a computer suite reviewing the system) is now being implemented. It is essential that the live system is ready for the KIS data to be extracted in May, and departments will be able to use it for the first time to review their data later this year.

Accessing networked filestore from your Windows computer

A new problem has arisen affecting people using personal, or non managed Windows computers to access files on networked filestore. Where previously a box would ask for a username and password, this no longer appears meaning files can’t be accessed.

If you are having this problem, you can fix it by mapping a networked drive, to your networked filestore. This will create a permanent and stable connection to you shared area. This is a simple process which can be carried out by following the instructions on this CiCS webpages.

Map a network drive