Managed service and liaison

Fairly lengthy posts yesterday, so will keep this short!

Had a meeting to discuss how we might improve our liaison with our customers, particularly with the proposed new Faculty structure. There's a number of different types - strategic, technical, liaison with staff, with students, with academic departments and faculties, and with professional services. Had a good brainstorm about a number of different models, and proposals are being drawn up for further consultation.

The group which considers requests for software to be installed on the managed desktop also met today, and as well as approving software installation requests, discussed a couple of matters of principle. We agreed that we would consider requests from departments to install software previously on departmental machines onto the managed service so that students could make use of the increased opening hours of the Information Commons. We also talked about the best way of supporting students who needed access to particular pieces of software, for example for visually impaired students. This is often difficult to install on the managed service or licence restrictions prohibit it, and we believe that the most appropriate way forward is for students to have the software installed on a laptop provided for them, so that they have access to it at any time.