Research IT update

by | May 28, 2020 | News | 0 comments

Drop-in Session 3 June

If you have a research IT issue you can come along to our virtual drop-in session on Wed 3 June at any time between 2 and 3pm.  Research IT team members will be online to answer your questions about HPC, Cloud, research software, issues with your own code, research data storage, mobile apps, including Research IT in research grant applications and much more!

Find out more

N8 CIR Seminars – Research Software Engineering

If you write research software you may be interested in the N8 CIR seminar on the 4 June.  Career progression can be a challenge for Research Software Engineers, and most of the Universities within the N8 have different protocols for promotion and career progression.  Come along to this seminar / discussion session to find out more.

Research Lifcycle Programme Update

Open workshop: Research networking and collaboration 

Following the first series of workshops in May, the Research Lifecycle Programme (RLP) will be holding an additional workshop on Wednesday 24 June to gather further input from the research community to help shape the future of networking and collaboration at the University. 

The RLP will be investing in systems, tools and support for developing and maintaining engaged research communities both within and connected to The University of Manchester.

The overall aim is to create new research opportunities, enhance connectivity, respond better to multidisciplinary funding calls, maximise the impact of our research, and enhance the University’s profile and reputation.

The programme team are keen to get input from academic staff, early career researchers and PGRs as well as PS staff who support research communities. 

This workshop will take place via Zoom on Wednesday 24 June from 1pm – 3pm. Pre-registration is required and places are limited. 

Developing a service to manage highly restricted data

Lots of research projects make use of restricted data, such as personal medical data or confidential commercially-sensitive data, but accessing and using this data can be challenging. The restricted data project (Project S) from the Research Lifecycle Programme (RLP) is looking at what services and tools researchers need to be able to work securely and more easily with this data. The RLP need to work with researchers to do this. 

RLP’s research so far…

The RLP would like to thank everyone who has got involved in the project so far. The team have interviewed a lot of people from the University’s research community so far and it’s been fascinating to hear about the wide variety of projects, tools and services in use across the University, and to hear about the problems the research community face and opportunities for improvement.

If you’d like to get involved…

We need a variety of different voices and experiences involved so that solutions that work better for researchers and governance can be jointly developed If are new or experienced in using high-risk data or if you avoid doing it because it’s too difficult then the RLP team want to hear from you. The team would also like to hear from you if you support researchers using high-risk data, for example, research support, IG, research governance etc. 

Further interviews will be carried out for another few weeks, and then the team will be looking for people to get involved in co-design workshops later this summer. 

If you’d like to get involved please get in touch with either Rachel or Sarah.

Office 365 – an update on the accelerated approach 

IT Services are working with their strategic delivery partner, HCL Technologies, to transfer all staff and postgraduate research students to Microsoft Office 365. Their revised approach, approved by the University’s Senior Leadership Team, aims to first transfer everyone to Exchange Online – providing colleagues with cloud based email, calendar and storage (OneDrive) – as a prerequisite to the later roll out of Teams, which will enable improved remote working, collaboration and communication.

At that time of writing more than 12,000 staff and PGR mailboxes have been transferred to Office 365 – this is just over half of all mailboxes in scope. While the majority of those transfers have been successful, some colleagues have experienced technical difficulties with issues like setting up their Outlook profile and accessing shared mailboxes. The team are planning to move the majority of individual and shared mailboxes in the next few weeks but there are a number that have known complexities which are undergoing further analysis and their transfer may take a little longer.

How will I know when I’m being transferred?

You will receive an email from the End User Computing (EUC) team a few days before you are scheduled to transfer. You will then get a reminder email on the day of your transfer. Where more information about your computer or setup is needed, the EUC team will contact you. Where possible, transfers are batched by functional area, but this is dependent on complexities around dependencies.

 
Where can I find out more?

You can read more about Office 365 on the Modernising IT website.

The guides and resources page details instructions on what you will need to do after your transfer to get setup and working – such as how to re-add your University email account onto your phone. You’ll be reminded of this in the emails you’ll receive from the EUC team, but you might want to get ahead and read it now, or bookmark it for later.  

 Also on StaffNet there’s a list of frequently asked questions, which are regularly reviewed and updated.

 If you have further questions please email the project team at euc@manchester.ac.uk

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