Remote support: a new policy from IT Services

IT Services is happy to announce a new technical support service which we hope will result in queries to our Help Desk being resolved more quickly than our resources currently allow.

Instead of one of our technicians visiting computers across the campus, they can now use our College network to connect to computers needing attention from their own office within IT Services (known as 'remote access' because they are at a distance from the computer they are supporting). The reduction in time spent traversing the campus will enable them to deal with more queries in the same period. In some instances a visit will still be needed, but we are optimistic that this enhancement to our support service will enable us to respond to queries increasingly promptly.

A policy has been developed in conjunction with staff in the user community and approved by the College's committee system, defining the scope and details of the service including how the technicians will be authorised to access computers remotely.

You will be asked to approve access to your computer before a technician can access it remotely, so you will always be aware when remote access is taking place. The policy sets this out in more detail.

Please note also that the policy restricts the use of this service to technical support by pre-authorised technical staff: monitoring of computer use is not permitted by it.

Download the policy [98KB pdf]