Getting IT Help

The IT Service Desk is the central technical helpline offering help with your IT needs.

You can contact us by phone, email, or by logging your own incident on the self service desk. Our technicians will respond to you, on a ‘first-come, first-served’ basis.

How can we help you?

• We provide support, technical help and advice for all users of our IT, telephony and media facilities
• We aim to answer your queries and resolve technical problems as soon as we can
• We are able to provide remote desktop assistance to you at any networked university computer
• If your query requires specialist or local technical support, we will co-ordinate the resources required to get your query resolved as quickly as possible
• We have a range of Frequently Asked Questions and tips to help you with common queries.

Open hours

Term Time: Monday to Thursday – 8.30 am to 6.00 pm and Friday 8.30-5.00

        Vacation: Monday to Friday 9.00 am to 5.00 pm

Reporting a problem

The Service Desk are here to help. You just need to let us know what we can do for you. Of course, there are established ways for contacting us and we need some details before we start.

Log your own request or incident

You can log your own IT (or facilities) incidents via our Self Service Desk.  You can follow the progress of your incident from submission to completion, and update it if anything changes.  You can log your incidents at any time and from any location by going to https://servicedesk.cumbria.ac.uk/rsdportal

Log on with your network username (student number or staff username).

Contact us by phone

Tel: 01228 888888 (external) 

Contact us by email

Email us on itservicedesk@cumbria.ac.uk. We’ll respond as soon as we can.

Information we need on your problem

We need a description of the problem or fault. Try to explain what you were doing at the time and let us have any error code that appeared or email us a screen shot.

There’s other information we need as well. Here’s a list of the information you need to give us, on the phone or in an email:

• Students: Your name, your Student Number and a contact email address (this might be your university email or it might be a personal one), and/or a contact phone number, if that would be more practical.
• Staff: Your name, your university username, a contact number, a room number and a building name.
• Your availability so we can contact you.
• The application or equipment you were using when the problem occurred.
• The type of device you were using, for example a desktop or a laptop. If you can, give us the version number.
• The operating system and, if relevant, the web browser you use.
• Any other information that you feel relevant, for example a file name and anything other programs being used at the same time.

Checking the status of an existing enquiry

If you have already logged an enquiry with the IT Service Desk, please use the self service help desk to confirm the current status. Sending a new email will start a new enquiry and may delay a resolution or response.

Further contact

For general IT enquiries please contact us by email: itservicedesk@cumbria.ac.uk

Self service help desk: https://servicedesk.cumbria.ac.uk/rsdportal 

Email: itservicedesk@cumbria.ac.uk 

Telephone: 01228 888888 (external) or 8888 (internal)

IMPORTANT: If you have already logged an enquiry with the IT Service Desk, please use the self service help desk to confirm the current status. Sending a new email will start a new enquiry and may delay a resolution or response.

Most of us prefer to get help for ourselves, don’t we? The list below will help you to see some of the ways that you can find help, when you need it.

My.Cumbria

You can start by viewing the sections of this IT Services website to see information about Passwords, Wifi, Printing, Computers & Software, Social Media and so much more.

Self-Service Desk

You can now log your own IT incidents on our new self-service desk. You can follow the progress of your incident from submission to completion, and update it if anything changes. You can log your incidents at any time and from any location by going to www.cumbria.ac.uk/servicedesk and logging on with your network username and password, but please remember that they will only be dealt with during the normal service desk open hours.

Resetting Your Password

You can reset your password at any time using the Microsoft Online Password Reset Tool. No need to register for this as you will automatically have access to the service as part of your Multi Factor Authentication account.

Knowledgebase

We are developing a knowledgebase to help you resolve your own incidents. It can be found with the Self-Service Desk at https://servicedesk.cumbria.ac.uk/rsdportal but it’s currently a bit empty – what would you like to know? What would you find useful? Tell us by emailing servicedesk@cumbria.ac.uk

Website

There is lots of information on the IT pages of the university website and it is changing all the time – be sure to check the latest news as this will tell you if we are planning anything that may affect you www.cumbria.ac.uk/itservices

Using the F1 key

On your keyboard, your favourite keys should be F1 and Undo.

Seriously, pressing F1 on most Windows products, and most other applications, brings up all the online help available.

It’s worth getting to know what it covers. If you’re just learning the application, it’s a good idea to read the related ‘Getting Started’ sections available on F1.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

At the bottom of this page, you will find a number of FAQs. Browse through these questions to familiarise yourself with some common issues that users encounter.

Our FAQs are also Frequent Answers because we’ve concentrated on the things we get asked about most.

Online tutorials

You can join online tutorials for extra help, watching as much of the tutorial as you need, at a speed that suits you.

Visit Digital Capabilities and/or Skills@Cumbria (for non-IT tutorials) to view tutorials in areas such as:

• Using Blackboard
• Turnitin
• Microsoft Office
• Academic Skills
• Referencing

Visit Blackboard for access to the Turnitin Test Area.

In addition, YouTube provide lots of excellent Microsoft help. Go to http://www.youtube.com/user/officevideos to explore.