User support for access to online resources
Posted by admin on July 27th, 2007
As institutions are beginning to implement federated access management software, questions have been raised about who users should contact for support and how they should contact these people. The following suggestions have been collated through the jisc-shibboleth@jiscmail.ac.uk discussion list.
Institutions should nominate dedicated support contact(s) for users with queries about access to online resources. In smaller institutions, this may be the same person as the technical and/or administrative contact. The main contacts for these roles need to also be registered with the UK Access Management Federation, see www.ukfederation.org.uk/content/Documents/RegisterIdP. The support contact can also be a generic contact eg. access-enquiry@institution.ac.uk to allow for better support coverage.
A web form for access enquiries could be set up where users need only to enter their login username and details of the enquiry. The user’s department and other details can be looked up in the LDAP directory and an email is routed to a “queue” for the relevant subject team. They can then route the enquiry to other queues if they can’t answer the query themselves. The response and further correspondence is by email.
A generic email could also be set up for access support enquiries eg. access-enquiry@institution.ac.uk.