SDCA Research - IT basics

Warning

🚧 This website and most of its contents are often updated or modified. Many documents are at various stages of completion. 🚧

IT software, services, and hardware are all dependent on your location of employment: Aarhus University or Region Midt. Getting user access is usually done as part of the employment process. Once you have a user ID, here are some basic things you might need from IT.

Specific support can be found on the Guides website or by contacting Aarhus University directly on their contacts page. Their guides are all available in either English or Danish.

WiFi: Accessing internet is done with eduroam. Set up is done through their guide.
VPN: When working remotely, many university and research services are only available by connecting to the university VPN. Use their Setup Guide.
Personal drive: You can connect and access your personal drive from your computer by following these instructions.
Shared drive(s): If you need access to a shared drive that your team or colleagues use, start with first requesting access to it. Once you get it, follow these steps to access it on your computer.
Email and calendar: Setting up or accessing your email and calender is done by going through their Email FAQ Guide.

Unlike Aarhus University, which is quite familiar and used to a diverse set of IT needs and international employees, the Region doesn’t have as well developed and clear documentation for IT related topics. Documentation is also entirely in Danish.

The infrastructure is designed around the user being connected to the regional network and working within a virtual workstation (Citrix), which can be access from any regional computer. While this basic setup is useful for clinicians that need to stay connected to their workflow as they move between physical computers during their daily work, it does not serve the needs of researchers and developers. While you can use Citrix and the software provided there, getting a so-called advanced setup and installing applications locally is most likely a much better choice. The following sections describe a) how to set up a Windows laptop for local use, b) general tips for using Citrix and the IT infrastructure.

“Citrix” is a cloud-based workspace app to access all Region Midt’s IT solutions. You can find IT support and guides on the Regions intranet. Help, support, documents or other services are also almost only available through Citrix.

To access Citrix you need to have a Region ID and log in with your MitID or scan your access card. If you need help with this, please ask Julie Knudsen julie.knudsen@rm.dk.

If you are using a Region Midt computer, all programs need to be opened through the Citrix app. If you are working from another computer, you can get access through https://citrix.rm.dk/.

Printing

To use the Regional cloud printers, follow the guide on Serviceportal. Summary for English speakers:

Click the ‘Start’ button in Windows and go to ‘Enheder og printere’ (EN: Devices and printers).
Click the ‘Tilføj en printer’ (EN: “Add a printer”) button in the top panel
Choose ‘Den printer, jeg søger efter, findes ikke på listen’ (EN: “The printer that I want isn’t listed”) and click ‘Næste’.
Choose ‘Søg efter en printer i kataloget, baseret på placering eller funktion’ and click ‘Næste’ (EN: “Find a printer in the directory, based on location or feature”) and click ‘Næste’.
The names of printers at Aarhus University Hospital are prefixed 1_, so enter 1_ in the ‘Navn’ (EN: Name) field and press Enter to find these. Double-click the printer to install it (e.g. for A4-size prints, add 1_RM_A4_Farve for colour and 1_RM_A4_SH for black and white prints). Click ‘Næste’ and ‘Udført’ to complete the setup.
Now you can send documents to the printers. The document will be physically printed when you log on to one of the Minolta printers around the hospital. At Steno, the Minolta printer is located on the 3rd floor around one of the corners of the office corridor where various office items are also stored. Log on using your Region ID and password or keycard.

How to set up your Windows laptop for local use

First, you need to do some shopping on the Regional Serviceportal - either using the direct links provided in this guide or by clicking the “Jeg mangler noget”-shopping cart icon on the landing page.

Please note that purchases on the Serviceportal will require approval from your supervisor or manager and an EAN number for payments, so make sure to have that sorted out beforehand. In some cases, the software needs to first be approved for your user, and only then can it be remotely installed on your machine by Serviceportal admins. You may be able to shorten this delay by filing a support ticket to remind the admins to install your applications after the first approval.

Request an advanced personal (“avanceret personlig”) work laptop and order it in the Serviceportal
- This will install the Access Director software, which enables you to get administrator privileges to install software locally for 5 minutes at a time.
- Note: The IT department cannot provide support for advanced personal setups.
Search the Serviceportal for any software you might need and request a local installation and access to these (e.g. MS Office, MS Teams, Adobe Acrobat etc.).
- You can also search for and request a VPN installation via the Serviceportal.
You will need to change your browser’s download folder from the default (OneDrive) to a folder located on your local disk (create one, e.g. C:/local_downloads) in order to comfortably download and install programs as you normally wood. Next, you need run Access Director before installing other necessary software locally (e.g. R, RStudio, Git, Python, Conda, etc.). Read the Serviceportals guide to Access Director for details. Furthermore, some installation files will be blocked, such as .msi-installers, and you will need to Shift right-click and choose “install as other user” as described in the Access Director guide to .msi-files. If you still encounter problems with some installers being blocked, see if these can be installed through the Microsoft Store instead.
VPN can be ordered through the Serviceportal for working remotely (requires phone for two-factor authentication).
Linux applications can be run via Windows Subsystems for Linux (WSL1 or WSL2), which can be installed via Powershell as described in the WSL installation guide (after running Access Director). Note that WSL2 will not use the Windows VPN by default (as opposed to WSL1, so setting up a WSL1 environment may provide a fix if you need Linux apps to use the VPN).
To book rooms for meetings, you can simply use Pronestor in the browser, rather than the Citrix link.

With this local setup, you can completely avoid using Citrix and get a much more stable, fast and flexible workstation, similar to those provided to AU employees. Therefore, the next section is less relevant for users using the above local setup.

General tips for Citrix and the regional IT infrastructure

Help, support, and most other documents or services are almost completely only available through the “Citrix” webportal, which you need to log into with your Region ID. Details about how to gain access is found either here (if outside the Region intranet, you will need to follow this guide to activate two-factor authentication codes).

Personal drives: Accessed by searching for “Stifinder” in Citrix. Files saved to the Region personal drive are difficult to access outside of Citrix and can’t easily be shared with others who do not have a Region ID. So we do not recommend using the Region drives unless it is highly sensitive information. Data should instead be saved on shared drives or through other appropriate sources (depends on your research team).
Shared drives: Accessed by searching for “Stifinder Afdeling” in Citrix. Like with the personal drive above, it depends on what kind of information you need to save and share, whether you should use the shared drive or instead use other sources. Like with the personal drive above, unless you need to save and share information that is highly sensitive, we recommend not to use the shared drive and instead use other sources (like GitHub or the Aarhus University shared drives).
Email and calendar: You can open your email and calendar either through Citrix or by using post.rm.dk.

Regardless of which institution is your administrative employer, if you work primarily at SDCA, there are a number of helpful template files and other resources found only in Citrix (by searching for “Stifinder Afdeling”). We hope to slowly make these files more easily available, but until then, you can find relevant ones by asking your colleagues.