How to provide support remotely

Locales: Data Centers and Campus RC Ohio Supercomputer
1

With most of the staff working remotely due to the coronavirus, what kind of guidance we should provide to our users to get the needed support?

2

I think for our resources, the same email (that goes to a support forum) works for most, and the biggest change is that office hours are now being offered remotely (over Zoom). Aside from that, I can give examples (newly posted https://news.sherlock.stanford.edu/posts/sherlock-joins-the-fight-against-covid-19) for how our cluster is supporting researchers (and relevant research) in light of current events. Here are some high level points / ideas:

  • It’s helpful to stress the importance of following the higher up guidelines, whether from your institution/ university or state / government. So saying something like “We are following x (that you can read about here) and still doing our best to support you.” might be helpful for users that (without thinking clearly) feel that they aren’t being supported like they used to (and would like).
  • There is a use case that isn’t handled by remote office hours - and that is that before someone could easily talk to a person one on one, or maybe even have a support staff stop by a lab. For this case we’ve added online consultation appointments.
  • We are allocating a portion of resources to be especially for COVID-19 projects.
  • We created a portal with updated information along with the blog post above https://srcc.stanford.edu/news/srcc-continuity-support-during-covid-19
  • Very meta - based on the links above you can tell that we also have a page with updated information the user knows he/she can visit, along with being loud about it on social media. Props to @kilian for largely making all of this happen!

And then there is the remote communication between our own staff that still takes getting used to. Perhaps I’m an outlier because I’m already a remote work (and largely work on software) but I can share that we are having fully remote meetings, and surprisingly, they are more fun (Zoom backgrounds!) and it’s easier to see and hear everyone. I think there are still negative impacts for our own working together (for example it’s not easy to reproduce talking to someone in the hallway, getting coffee, drawing on a whiteboard) but I suspect we will get better over time.

So basically, I think staff working remotely still have many ways to engage with users, albeit they are different. The most important thing is communication I think - you can have all these resources but if nobody knows about them, :confused: I don’t know if that answers your question, but I hope that it helps. Keep in mind that this is temporary, even if it’s “longer than we’d want” temporary, I hope that you stay safe, stay the heck inside, and wash yo’ hands! :slight_smile:

3

Thanks a lot for all the tips. Very helpful. I will try to see how to implement it into our own practice and share here.

4

At Georgia Tech PACE, our workshop offerings this week are immediately moving to BlueJeans.

We anticipate moving consulting sessions to a remote offering as well.

-Kevin

PS Research computing is well-equipped for remote workers :slight_smile: