Departments, faculty and staff obtaining support from CUIMC IT technicians, whether via phone, remote access or in person, must comply with governing Columbia University Information Technology Policies, CUIMC Information Security Procedures and the following.
Overview
Faculty and staff support includes:
- Postdoctoral fellows/scholars/researchers
- Affiliates or consultants enlisted by a CUIMC department, division, group or school
- Equipment owned by a CUIMC department, division, group or school
See our Contact Us page for details on hours and methods of support.
For support beyond initial troubleshooting from the Service Desk, billing and/or departmental agreement to use CUIMC IT as the Certified IT Group is required in most cases.
Student support is for current students enrolled in a CUIMC program, where they are not supported by another Certified IT Group.
We limit support to specific Operating Systems and Software that have been tested for compatibility with commonly used CUIMC applications.
Administrative rights on computers owned by a department, division, group or school, or managed computers, is only granted after following outlined procedures.
General Requirements
- Users have regularly backed up all data files used for University purposes from their desktop or laptop endpoint (CU Policy III.B.6).
- Backed up data must also be appropriately encrypted, see Approved Encryption for assistance.
- We strongly recommend checking backups (open backed up files/folders periodically) to verify data has not been corrupted.
- CUIMC IT does not keep licenses, keys, installation files or other required materials for non-standard software that may need to be re-installed as per Software and Operating System requirements.
- CUIMC IT cannot be held liable for lost data due to corruption, malware, failure to back up or any other reason.
- An ARC chart string must be provided when requesting support. Desktop support (both in person or remote) is billed at $155 per hour for fiscal year 2022-2023 unless otherwise specified, and is subject to change. Time (including any travel time or time incurred for appointments postponed or canceled without notice) and materials are billed.
Equipment
- Computers must be able to comply with Managed Endpoint procedures including use of approved encryption:
- Windows - must be running Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition. The computer hardware must include TPM 1.2 or higher.
- Macintosh - must be running Macintosh OS 10.15 or higher with FileVault 2.
- Equipment must be within the manufacturer's warranty to be fully supported.
- Dell and Apple websites provide warranty status information via the service tag (found on the Dell computer) or serial number.
- CUIMC IT does not stock parts and spares, but will make efforts to source from equipment manufacturers as needed. Availability is dependent on the inventory and shipping estimates from equipment manufacturers.
Service Locations
168th Street Campus
Buildings listed on the CUIMC Campus Map, and Parker Plaza as outlined below. Any other locations are considered off-site.
Parker Plaza Service
- Service requests are accumulated based on mean time to repair instances in order to provide effective use of support and minimize costs for customers.
- When requests have accumulated a technician will be dispatched with notice.
- Tickets that come in on the same day will be included when possible.
- The technicians travel to Parker Plaza via the shuttle. The shuttle leaves every hour (approximately). Two hours of travel on average is incurred for each trip.
Managed Desktops and Services
CUIMC IT may provide the following types of support for departments or groups when arranged:
Managed Desktops
- Pre-tested computer models and software configurations that meet current security requirements, with commonly used CUIMC programs installed.
- User-specific data, files etc. cannot be saved on the computer's hard drive but are stored on network drive(s) instead, providing automatic backups and ease of access across multiple systems.
- Computer issues can be quickly resolved by swapping with another managed desktop and/or re-installation of the standard configuration and software ("image").
Managed Services
- Operating system and/or standard software updates are released automatically after a testing period with commonly used CUIMC programs, computer models and security compliance.