How to get IT support : help@maths.cam.ac.uk

The maths IT helpdesk operates during the core business hours - 9am to 4pm.  

Email - help@maths.cam.ac.uk

Drop in - between 10am to 11am or 2pm to 3pm.    

Office: C1,10 (until early July).    

(While the site refurbs are going on the helpdesk office is in a temporary home.)

In an emergency email:  it-emergency@maths.cam.ac.uk   This goes to everyone on the IT team whether helpdesk staff or not so use it sparingly please.  (What is and is not an emergency)

We aim to reply to email requests within a couple of days; if things are busy, responses to some requests will be delayed. It's reasonable to expect to receive a reply on the same working day as the request if sent in the morning, next day if sent in the afternoon.    

If you prefer to telephone ( extension (7)66100)   please do so during the  helpdesk 'walk in' hours. 

Please do not email the personal email addresses of members of the helpdesk team.  Also please do not send requests by teams to one helpdesk person.   You don't know who is assigned to what each day and emailing someone not on frontline duty will cause a delay to your issue being looked at. 

The person needing assistance should contact the helpdesk themselves if at all possible. Communicating via a middleman makes it harder for IT staff to obtain a clear picture of what is going on. If you do submit a helpdesk ticket on someone else's behalf, please cc them in your email to ensure that they are kept in the loop.

Information to include that will help us help you.

Emails to the it-emergency@maths address are sent to our regular helpdesk system but also emailed to every member of the IT team directly. On average, this means that someone will see your ticket before the next working day's core hours, but we can't guarantee it. While many of the IT team often read their work email during the evenings, they are not compelled to do so, nor to respond to support requests. Any work done out of hours is on a 'best effort' basis.

Other sources of help

• The troubleshooting web page
• ask friends and colleagues. A lot of requests for help can actually be answered by your colleagues or others in your research group. Indeed, they may well know more than IT about the intricacies of certain software.
• training courses (online and offline)
• several of the research groups have a computer systems manager responsible for looking after the specialist software (and hardware) operated by the group. You should normally direct requests for help about group-specific matters to your group computer manager, but please feel free to ask the Computers Officers about general computing matters as we know everything about anything (or can find someone who does).