Software Administration

The Law:

Each installation or use of a particular software product must be properly licensed.

Policy

For each application used in the School:

1. The application must be declared using the School's "Software Definition Form" ("Form 1") to record the supplier, licensing, costs and the academic responsible (ie who pays all the bills and who to ask for help).
2. Each "instance of deployment" (eg a course or project lab) a form declaring where, when and by whom it is used.
   Separate versions of "Form 2" are available for declaring use in class teaching, project use research and admin work.
3. The ``instance of deployment'' forms should be renewed annually.
4. Academic staff are responsible for ensuring that PGs, RAs and UG project students in their charge adhere to this policy.

Requests for application installation

If you identify a software application that you wish to use, or an upgrade to an existing package, please follow this check list:

For each Windows-XP application:

Please ascertain if the MS-Windows application is already available within the School, or has been requested. If not please complete the steps in this section:

1. Please ascertain from the vendor that the product meets the basic technical requirements for acceptance for mounting in the School.
2. Please complete FORM-1: Software Audit, Request and Authorisation.
   [This allows us to maintain financial commitment and management information. The form contains help links which will give you more guidance.]
   You should submit FORM-1 immediately for approval.
3. In response to Form-1, if you are asked to do so by the IT team[*], you may need to complete the
   DST "Application Repackaging Request Form"
   
4. For purchased packages, when we are ready, you will be asked to provide:
   • media (CD/DVD etc), and
   • installation instructions provided by the vendor.

For each Unix/Linux Application:

Please check whether we already have the application available for Solaris, or has been requested or packaged for LCFG Linux. If not please complete the steps in this section:

1. Please complete FORM-1: Software Audit, Request and Authorisation.
   [This allows us to maintain financial commitment and management information.]

Final Step:

Please complete the necessary number of "Form 2s" to describe all instances where the product will be used. These can be augmented when appropriate and should be renewed annually.

• FORM-2a: Instance of deployment for Teaching.
• FORM-2b: Instance of deployment for Research.

When you have completed the above documents, gathered the media and vendor instructions, these should be handed to the IT team for approval.

Timescales: Software for use in Teaching (including project work)

In addition to the general procedure described above, strict time scales are imposed on the School by the Central Services when requesting changes to software that can be used in University and School managed laboratories.

Thus, academic staff are required to have good foresight, potentially up to 18 months ahead of the game in the case of MSc projects:

• 25th March Any change to the EUCS core applications (for example, inclusion of additional MS_Office modules beyond the base three) must be requested by this date.
• 25th April Any other software, eg CAD upgrades to existing cad packages.

This latter is also the timescale for re-confirming continued use of existing packages for the the following sessions.

Timescales: Software for use in Research and Admin

Requests for use of applications in research and admin can be made at any time. They will be processed in the normal job load of the team. Linux and Solaris apps are usually a matter of days. Although the packaging of Windows applications involves less work for research than for teaching (ie for use in Microlabs) it will take time to establish a broad repository. It is essential that you provide a full set of information at the outset.

Footnotes

• Currently, all the forms are printed documents (pdf) and need to be completed by hand. We hope to convert these to web forms in due course. You will need to be EASE authenticated to access the forms.
• An upgrade is just as much work as a new application. So the approval process needs to be followed in full for each new version of an application.
• In the first instance, approval will be sought from your academic supervisor or PI.

Tracking Requests

Submitting an electronic form-1 will automatically generate a call to SeeSup in your name. Thus, you can progress of your request using the call management system.