Guidelines for IT Support

These guidelines (last updated on 30th October 2009) contain information relating to issues of IT support in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (FAHSS).

Types of User Support

Faculty Computing (FC) provides IT support to staff and students in FAHSS for work and study-related activities. Due to high demand and limited support resources, all users in FAHSS are asked to work within the systems and solutions that are recommended by FC staff. The following points may be of use to FAHSS staff with regard to issues of support:

FC advice should be sought before purchasing any new hardware or software products (see ‘Guidelines for Hardware and Software Purchasing’)
product age should be monitored closely and replacements purchased appropriately (support costs increase as products age, aim to replace products approximately every three years)
all products need to be able to work without any negative impact on other users

If a user acts contrary to the advice of FC, the level of support provided to that user may be reduced. It is also important to realise that acting outside FC advice can occasionally have a detrimental affect on other users.

Support Prioritisation

There are a number of different types of FAHSS users provided with support by FC:

full-time and part-time staff
sessional staff
research students
students
honorary and visiting staff

Support for non-staff, non-students and non-FAHSS equipment is not carried out by FC.

All support requests received by FC from the above users are issued tracking numbers. Each request is individually assessed and responded to based on a combination of the following factors:

impact on FAHSS service provision
impact on the responsibilities of FAHSS
impact on legislative and good governance issues
number of people who are impacted by the issue
urgency of a fix or solution
time to fix or build a suitable solution to the issue
availability of support staff skills required
affect on future workloads if the fix or solution is delayed
other support requests outstanding

These factors are not listed in any particular order. FC staff review each support request separately and respond based on its impact on the above-mentioned factors.

At the completion of the support task, the user will typically be contacted for feedback.

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CRICOS Provider Code: 00126G
Last updated 30 Oct 2009 13:59
Location: http://www.fc.arts.uwa.edu.au/page/48928
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