CERN Accelerating science

Users who have lost their password and users who are short of quota on a central system (and need some urgent help until they can contact their computer group administrator) are used to contact the Computing Helpdesk either by phone call or e-mail. In the coming months this will change and CERN users will be invited to submit such requests via a Web form, where they will have to provide all the mandatory data necessary to perform the change, plus some personal and confidential data for security issues.

Several objectives will be met with this change:

1. avoid over-loading the Helpdesk with trivial requests, and make it more available for other problems,
2. users will not suffer anymore from the "opening hours" of the Helpdesk, or the un-availability of the "User Registration" staff members,
3. speed-up the process as the request will be directly submitted by the users themselves through this form.

"Password Change Request" Web Form

The added value provided by this Web Form will be to force the user to give some confidential data so that a check can be performed. This form will be fairly simple and basically the user will have to provide:

• the name of the service (AFS, Mail Server, NICE or EDMS)
• user loginid
• e-mail address
• some confidential data

As soon as this Web Form is in production, the Helpdesk will reject any "password change" requests that are simply sent by e-mail and do not contain all the data. Users will be prompted to submit their request using the appropriate Web form instead.

Note: "password change" requests by phone will still be valid and the user will be asked to provide all data on the phone. However, in "over-busy" periods at the Helpdesk, users will again be invited to fill in the Web form.

"Quota Increase Request"

As it has been explained in a previous CNL article ("Computer Space Management Policy", in CNL 232) users should contact their "space administrator" to have their quota increased on any central service. However, to answer to "urgent need", the Helpdesk has the possibility to grant space for all Computing Groups but only within pre-established limits, which are:

• Mail Server (MAILSERV): 1MB more of quota,
• AFS (UNIX): 20MB more of quota,
• NICE (PCs): 10MB more than the space currently occupied.

When and where?

This change is foreseen on February, 1st. However news will be issued in the cern.computing newsgroup in due time so that users will be informed and the detailed procedure explained.

This form will be included in the Consult server (see the article "Consult - the User Oriented Entry Point to Computer related Information" in this CNL), as part of the "registration" service, at URL: http://consult/service/registration/