Software Support Levels

ITS aim to supply, maintain, and provide support for application software packages as following:

General software: This includes application software in wide use within the College (e.g. Microsoft Office suite of applications, Exchange/Outlook email, Internet Explorer, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, etc).  ITS aim to provide full support, training and documentation on all general application software.   

Specialist software: This includes application software which is in limited use within the College - usually by one or two departments only (e.g. SPSS, Idealist, Minitab, Firefox, Visual C++, etc).  Limited or no support, documentation or training is available on specialist application software with ITS mainly ensuring that the required software is correctly installed and working on the required ITS-maintained workstations.

ITS will aim to provide the most cost-effective licence deal available for the required software based on the usage requirement.  This could take the form of an educational discounted College-wide site licence, include home use, concurrent licence for a set number of users, or a licence pack for a limited number of workstations. 

General Software

The packages listed below are those that are supported by ITS for general use throughout the College. ITS will continue to support older packages that were supported in the past on a 'best effort' basis (such as Microsoft Office 97 and Netscape Messenger). ITS will also install on student workstations specialist packages that are used by Schools for teaching. Schools provide their own training in use of these packages. The ITS Helpdesk will deal with queries concerning the installation of the software on ITS workstations.

Specialist Software

The packages listed below are specialist packages that are used by Schools for teaching. Schools provide their own training in use of these packages. The ITS Helpdesk will deal with queries concerning the installation of the software on ITS workstations.

Packages for Administrative Departments

In addition to the software supported throughout the College, there are a number of packages available for users in Administrative departments, listed below. A variety of software packages are used to produce Statutory Returns (such as RAE & ERASMUS). These are supported as required. In addition a number of software tools and utilities are supported as required.

Administrative computing staff deliver or arrange training and documentation to facilitate use of office applications.