We present the full results of a survey sent to all employees of D-PHYS/IGP/FIRST to evaluate the satisfaction with our IT services. You may also view the results of our similar survey in 2015.

The questions were sent to 750+ employees and we were happy to receive 168 completed surveys, corresponding to a response rate of 22%. Many questions involved rating a given service on a scale between 1 (worst) to 5 (best). Theses ratings are shown as histograms with the count of answers displayed along the vertical axis. Each bar is annotated with the corresponding percentage. The additional line in magenta shows the average rating.

For full transparency, we include all posted comments, although sometimes at a different location, in order to group similar posts. We also tried to answer many questions by adding a small comment that can be clicked on:

• like here!

In some occasions we took the liberty of redacting the exact wording [marked with angular brackets] in order to anonymize or clarify the comment.

Overall Satisfaction

How do you rate the overall quality
of ISG's IT services in D-PHYS?

How do you rate the overall stability / availability
of ISG's IT services in D-PHYS?

How do you rate the @phys email services?
(availability, spam filter, unlimited quota, mailing lists)

How do you rate access to computing resources?
(student computer lab, login.phys)

How do you rate storage?
(home, groupshares) (availability, speed, capacity)

How do you rate backups?
(home, groupshares, BackupBox, BackupPC)

How do you rate our documentation?
(readme.phys.ethz.ch)

How do you rate the overall quality
of individual IT support in D-PHYS?

Comments on your overall satisfaction with ISG's services

Wireless network:

• WLAN im HPF ist schlecht
• schwaches WLAN im HPF
• [...] bad internet connection in my office (in HPF)
• the WLAN stability is jack shit. really. sometimes it just won't work for days, i.e. it will just disconnect every 2 minutes. but i guess that's not your realm.
• Yes!! Wifi is horrible everywhere, I randomly get kicked out and can't log in anymore (this is how I'm finding the time to fill out this survey now), the certificates are always out of date and sometimes there's no connection, sometimes it's super slow - When I have my cellphone nearby I tend to use a personal hotspot because I'm unable to get internet from ETH Wifi. And it's particularly sad because this has been going on for years. The one biggest wish that students have been having throughout the years is to have a working Wifi at ETH. Very very frustrating.
• The stability of the wirelesss connection in HPF, in particular in my office, but also in other locations in the building.
• Einzig das WLan im HPF D stock ist unterirdisch schlecht. Die einzige zuverlässige verbindung hat man mit einem Laptop. Tablet, Natel (Android / iOS) sind schrecklich. Wenn man ein meeting haben will und nicht 30% der zeit offline sein will, muss man leider nach hause gehen.
• wifi availability and stability could use an improvement.
• Bad Wifi at ETH
• Wifi is not great.
• Wi-fi can sometimes be a bit sketchy.
• Wifi is terrible. It is basically impossible to use it on any computers. We use computers to go to meeting rooms and need to connect to the network during meetings. The Wifi does not work. Zoom calls also sometimes are necessary in other rooms or from the labs but there computers do not connect well to the Wifi, they loose the connection consistently

Wired network:

• Compared to other universities, the IT services are not functioning well. The support is great and friendly, but some policies are not designed to help researchers to work efficiently, rather contrary - they are a burden. The main issues are:
  • Disabling of the sockets. Labs are full of sockets and it is hard to find one working. Lab work is very dynamic and one cannot wait for the sockets to be enabled upon request. It is so inconvenient! Imagine people who work over more than 3-4 labs, and sockets get disabled from time to time.
  • One devices disabled on a switch disables whole switch! Crazy again! Imagine complex lab equipment with 8 devices and no internet question suddenly for not any clear reason. It takes hours to find the cause and if that happens during outside normal working hours then it cannot be reactivated.
  • Disabling MACs from the network every [45] days. This is a terrible idea. Imagine someone who needs to work with 10-20 different computers in different labs. Some of computers get not used for [45] days and they when they are needed, they have no network access. This is a continuously repeatable problem. We are forced to keep computer ON all the time, just to avoid this inconvenience. We waste a lot of time getting all devices on the network. And that is the network management issue. There are better ways to ensure security than disabling devices
• A kind of a general firewall/port blocking by default, so that you have to enable external connections first and maybe also in steps like (1. http / https 2. ssh 3. all ports open). I think many people are not aware, that machines on the dphys network are directly connected to the web.
• Expand IPv6 support within the DPHYS domain (so I can VPN from the office to my home network when needed).

Group shares:

• Die Bandbreite für die Gruppenlaufwerke scheint zu Stosszeiten leider manchmal etwas eingeschränkt.
• Virtuelle Laufwerke verlieren immer wieder die Verbindung am iMac z.B.
• Group share access is sometimes slow or unreliable via WiFi (maybe it's just the wifi itself?) I found the documentation a bit hard to navigate at times, but I haven't used it in a while, so maybe it has improved already. I am certainly very satisfied with the matrix documentation. The speed at which you respond to and usually resolve problems is also very nice!
• The main IT-related issue I face on a daily basis is due to the speed of the network shares (our main one is called [...]). We often have to copy very large files (multiple Go) and the speed is quite limited, both on Windows and MacOS (speed tests reveal that my connection is close to 1 Gb/s ). More importantly, when opening directories, it takes very often a few seconds to open, which is a bit frustrating when navigating into different folders. Because of this reason, I personally try to avoid the network shares to work on files locally to then place the files on the server once I'm done editing them. In terms of capacity for the network shares, I never faced any limitation, and I always see that on our main network share, the free capacity is over multiple TB, which is really great.
• the group shares can feel pretty slow on windows at times. It's hard to know why. On linux they feel much faster. On macOS there is a weird indexing issue that causes slowdowns, but this can be fixed by changing an option on the client machine in the terminal.
• The group-shares are a bit slow for direct saving of measurement data. I usually need an extra step of data transfer from local storage to the group share for everything to work smoothly.
• Make network shares faster (using fast SSDs for frequently accessed data, such that data transfer can go faster if some data are used frequently). Another option would be to have one special server running only with SSDs with a more limited capacity, to allow for large temporary files transfer (not permanent storage, but to replace USB sticks when moving large files from one PC/instrument to another).

Home shares:

• The usual question: Is there any chance that you increase the quota of the home directory in the future?
• I feel that my home directory is a bit small. I find it slightly annoying to have to carefully put my current, dynamic files that I actively work on in my home directory, while putting my static / older stuff on the local disc and my home computer, and on top of that having to tell Firefox to clear the cache when it quits.
• For the home shares, ISG should consider whether making them considerably bigger. It is not a very data protecting way to store everything on the group drives which can be read by a large number of people.

Backups:

• For backups, it would be great to have also a service where I can backup data files from by private laptop.
• Overall very happy, Backup system could be working better
• [...] occasional interruptions of [BackupPC] server availability [...]
• better working backupPC
• It would be good to have larger storage. My understanding on backup is that there is one version kept every day, so if I realize e.g. an accidental deletion happened a week/a month ago, I cannot restore that version, just the yesterday one (but I might be wrong about this).

Mail service:

• A better spam filter would be great.
• the spam filter definitely needs some work...
• My only issue with ISG is the email spam filter - over 60% of the emails I receive are spam.
• I personally would like a bit more spam filtering on our emails, I still get a lot of spam.
• The one thing I would really appreciate, is a better spam filter of junk emails as well as solicitation emails stemming from people using our eth addresses.
• I often get obvious spam email and do not understand how this could not have been filtered out.
• With the email service, I found that the greylisting is sometimes really annoying. For example, recently I was signing up for NVIDIA and Amazon AWS. Both times the registration confirmations got delayed by 10-15 min and the confirmation links expired repeatedly.
• Die Spamfilter für dphys Mail sprechen manchmal erst sehr spät an, sodass die ein oder andere für den Menschen offensichtliche Spammail die Filter passiert. Zu guter Recht werden Dateien als Emailanhänge gefiltert, die ausführbaren Code enthalten. Hier wäre es schön wenn man als Absender eine Warnung erhält.
• In general excellent, sometimes it seems that there are issues with the D-PHYS e-mail, some e-mails don't arrive and are not in spam for some reason, I don't know if they get blocked.
• webmail could use an upgrade
• Das Webmail ist unerträglich langsam und nicht benutzerfreundlich.

Misc:

• Viele Dienstleistungen kriegt man erst nachdem man mit "Problemen" and die ISG tritt. Eine grundsätzliche Information, zb. auch zu der Differenzierung zur allg. ETH IT sollte obligatorisch sein bei Eintritt in ein an die ISG angeschlossenes Institution.
• I feel sometimes lost when it comes to learn about new resources and chiefly a large amount of previous knowledge is needed in order to understand the documentation.
• Ich benutze den Mail-Dienst der ETH, v.a. auch wegen des damit verbundenen Kalenders. Die Website um die Mailinglisten zu betreuen sind nicht sehr benutzerfreundlich. Für die Administration brauchen wir möglichst ein "Sorglos-alles-inclusive-Paket", das funktioniert mit den gemanagten Laptops meist gut. Wobei es bei der Software (z.B. Acrobat) teilweise Ausreisser gibt, um die wir uns dann selber kümmern müssen. Eure Responsezeit ist auch in Coronazeiten gut und Elements ist ein gutes Angebot.
• A better assistance in some non-standard cases/situations would be desirable, e.g.: during logical disk resizing, grub recovery, etc. Several issues with printing services - solved, but only after quite some efforts ... On the other hand, the email service is excellent! Similarly, the DPHYS storage service is very good.
• Sehr zufrieden als single Unit - die Kompatibilität mit dem Rest der ETH empfinde ich als äusserst zeitraubend.
• Very good in general. Something like a "light-weight" physics account would be very nice, for collaborators and other external people. Similar to the CERN light weight accounts

Negative feedback:

• Helpful, yes. Courteous: there is room for improvement
• Support is efficient and on point. The staff could be a bit less arrogant and a bit more patient (seems to be a default behavior of IT support)
• Es kommt auf die Person und auf die Laune an, wie gern und schnell man geholfen wird. Meist sind sie aber hilfsbereit.
• Freundlichkeit ist unterschiedlich; Dienstleistungsgedanken fehlt teilweise
• Man fühlt sich manchmal etwas unwillkommen, wenn man eine Anfrage an den Helpdesk oder direkt an MA stellt. Manchmal wenig Verständnis für Fragen, welche nicht von IT-Nerds gestellt werden.
• [ISG Team member] is the most unfriendly person at eth. I am sure you know who is meant
• In der Dokumentation muss ich immer lange suchen bis ich zu einer Antwort gelange. Vielleicht könnte man da etwas besser strukturieren oder eine effiziente Suchmaske implementieren.
• Manchmal sind sie nicht erreichbar. In der Vergangenheit erlebte ich, dass die ISG des Departments eine Support-Anfrage an die ETH IT-Support weitergeleitet und die wiederum an die D-PHYS-ISG weitergeleitet hat. Sind die Verantwortlichkeiten geklärt? Schlechte Erfahrung mit dem Umgang zwischen Arbeitskollegen.
• Generell bin ich sehr zufrieden, jedoch wäre ich froh, wenn wir anrufen oder emailen und um Hilfe beten, dann brauchen wir keine Antwort wie "es gibt ein readme". Denke da könnte man den "Kundendienst" noch etwas ausbauen.
• Teilweise fehlende Kommunikation: z.B. keine klare Info wo die Login-Daten neuer MA während HomeOffice verfügbar sind, da sie nicht mehr auf einem Drucker ausgedruckt werden können

Positive feedback:

• ISG is exceptionally well organized and delivers high-level service I have NEVER EVER experienced anywhere else in the scientific and especially university context.
• 0xFF !
• Awesome!
• Great service! Friendly and quick reply.
• I have never experienced such an effective and friendly IT service anywhere else. Especially not in the university context.
• The individual IT support is amazing.
• Excellent service with excellent user support.
• Always very helpful when approached!
• there is always a fast, professional and understandable solution.
• Ich bin sehr froh um die ISG und finde es besonders gut, dass auch Software unterstützt wird. In userer Gruppe verwenden wir fast ausschliesslich GNU/Linux-Systeme. Ich habe auch schon im Element-Chat Hilfe zu einem nicht-trivialen Routing-Problem erhalten. Die ISG ist äusserst kompetent!
• Bei einem Problem liest man oft nicht im read me nach, weil der Aufwand hierfür zu gross ist. Deshalb Frage an ISG und diese wird oft prompte beantwortet (effizienter).
• danke bin zufrieden. Manchmal wäre ich noch froh, die NL/Readme etc auf deutsch zu haben...
• Insgesamt bin ich sehr zufrieden und die Dienste funktionieren bis auf eine Ausnahme [Webmail] sehr gut. Auch der Support reagiert schnell und kompetent.
• Grundsätzlich läuft alles zuverlässig und gute vorab information wenn ein service gewartet wird.
• colleagues in ISG always quick and friendly in their help
• ISG always answers promptly to problems and the help is always useful, solve the problems quickly. Overall very happy with ISG and its services, thank you all!
• Ich vernehme von Kolleginnen und Kollegen oft Kritik über die vorhandene IT-Infrastruktur; persönlich bin ich damit aber sehr zufrieden. Daran gemessen wie komplex und stark genutzt (manchmal wohl auch etwas unbedacht) sie ist, erachte ich Ihren Dienst als ausserordentlich gut. Am häufigsten kriege ich Probleme mit Verbindungen zu den Druckern, allerdings habe ich hierzu bereits funktionierende Lösungsansätze.
• I'm overall very satisfied with the ISG services, especially on the innovation side (we use the Grafana server, which is really useful because we don't have to back up databases ourselves).
• Very helpful people. Whenever I had an issue, I always got a competent and fast response.
• Excellent services and support.
• very happy with the team!
• Die Unterstützung durch [ISG Mitglied] ist super!!! Schnell und fachkundig, was kann man sich besseres wünschen?
• Unsere Gruppe wird ausgezeichnet betreut durch [ISG Mitglied] und [ISG Mitglied] (z.T. auch von den anderen IT-Mitarbeitern).
• Generally, I am very happy with the ISG services.
• very helpful people for solving specific problems
• Vielen Dank für den freundlichen, kompetenten und zeitnahen Support - das ist nicht selbstverständlich an der ETH :-)

Support

What is your primary source of IT support?

69	ISG
56	Web search
19	Local IT responsible
17	Colleagues
3	Informatikdienste

Comments

• Via elements chat
• Still, the ISG services have been very helpful for me sometimes.
• immer sehr freundlich und effizient!
• I get help from isg when need sudo, otherwise I usually can fix the problems myself
• Thanks to the matrix chat, contacting ISG is in my opinion even more "low threshold" than before
• Bei gewissen Problemen auch die ID (Lehrbetriebsapplikationen sind leider ab und zu eine Problemquelle).
• Ein Spezialist für jedes Problem.
• otherwise of course web search
• I do most stuff myself.
• in case of real problem, I generally try to call ISG or to ping somebody via Element
• I ask quite often:-) and enjoy the great service! Problems are solved very quickly.
• Depends on the problem.
  • for simple things: web search, and those are of course most cases
  • for software issues beyond basic OS and network functions: IT responsible
  • for things (probably) concerning storage, networking and HW: ISG

How often do you contact the ISG helpdesk?

63	About once a year
86	About once a month
11	About once a week
4	Never

Comments

• more than once a month, less than once a week
• 2-3 times a year
• ca. alle 3 Monate
• Zumeist aber nicht weil ich persönlich ein IT-Problem habe, sondern im Zusammenhang mit dem Physik-Praktikum
• manchmal auch öfter vor allem beim onboarding von neuem personal
• unterschiedlich, zwischen mehrmals pro Woche bis 1x / Monat
• very helpful people at ISG
• few times a year
• Ich gehe persönlich vorbei.
• whenever I need ISG, I am very happy with the help I receive
• somewhere between month a month and once a year
• kommt auf den Bedarf an
• local IT responsible
• Was für eine Frage? Dann wenn ich sie brauche.
• Manchmal auch etwas mehr ;-)

How often do you consult ISG's documentation?
(readme.phys.ethz.ch)

51	About once a year
78	About once a month
13	About once a week
19	Never

Comments

• Viel zu wenig...
• im Fall von Problemen
• Wenn ich ein Problem habe.
• Die Frage ist ungünstig gestellt. Ich kontaktiere readme immer bei einem Problem bevor ich die Herren persönlich (heim-) aufsuche.
• Etwas zwischen alle 3 Monate. Ist viel übersichtlicher geworde als früher - steht aber immernoch die Helpline Tel-Nr. die wohl eigentlich niemand mehr bedient hier...
• kommt auf den Bedarf an
• Usually when I help new employees set up everything (printing, matrix account, group share access!, etc)

Ease of getting through to the right person in ISG

ISG's staff is courteous and helpful

ISG staff has the knowledge to understand and answer my questions

Getting timely resolution of the IT problems that I am experiencing

How well do you feel informed about the services ISG offers (newsletter, blog)?

How easy do you get access to training or self-help resources that can enable you to become more effective in your use of technology services?

Is there any particular IT training or documentation you would like ISG to offer?

• Not really!
• I would love to learn more about how the infrastructure behind all the ISG services looks like. For example, I run also my own file server, email server, ... at home and I am curious to get more insight into which administrative tools are used by ISG, which hardware and so on.
• I would have to think more about this, but there are probably many things I'd like to learn from ISG.
• ich habe soeben die ID Weiterbildung Smart Working Days besucht - so etwas stände auch der IT-Phys gut an.
• better connection to central IT help. For example, good practices for data storage/file formats for open data policies etc. are explained well on the ETH library pages or the research collection documentation. If one does not know that, ISG could set up links to that on their readme pages to make it easier to have the connection.
• The proper rsync flags to restore files from backup
• Aufsetzen eines internes Netzwerks wäre nützlich (für Labornetzwerke)
• May be mandatory(?) Intro course to Linux for researchers: how to compile stuff from sources, configure environmental variables, gcc
• For students it would be useful to have a course about usage of servers: from basic bash commands, through how to run parallel jobs with python and MPI, and what is good conduct on shared machines (e.g. not use all the cores at once -- how to check how many cores are available). Many students are unfortunately using Windows, so for them it would be useful to get intro about virtual machine options or how to get an x-terminal running on their windows, or how to make their laptops double boot with Ubuntu.
• Teaching my students for basic bash commands and such, would be extremely helpful. For example, none of my new students know how to ssh into a machine! :( I currently have to teach them one by one at the beginning of their project, and I feel this is not part of research. (I cannot comprehend why ETH doesn't teach physics students for such things, I think in almost all physical fields they need that knowledge on how to login to a server/cluster and how to use it...).
• The other day, when I received an e-mail from "Die Post" which looked familiar but was acutally spam, I was thinking it would be nice if IT ETH you would offer a course about security and tips and trick around IT. I did not find such a course on the course homepage.
• [A] course about safety and rules and regulations.
• Aktuelle Trends was die ETH IT plant, weshalb D-PHYS das anders oder gleich sieht. Welche Dienstleistungen der ETH IT genutzt oder mit welchen Workarounds genutzt werden können.
• The last two questions: I don't read the info too closely, I am pretty busy and do not follow up on any offers... Not your fault...
• Research data management
• Introduction to ISG resources like elog, gitlab
• Tipps zum Unterhalt des Macs, Auffrischen, entrümpeln
• Scientist in the 21st century: Using jupyter notebook and "cloud" computing

Do you use an ISG-managed workstation (Windows, Linux or Mac)?

92	No
66	Yes

If you do use a managed workstation, how satisfied are your with the available software?

If you do use a managed workstation, do you see the benefit of having ISG take care of your machine instead of having to do it yourself?

66	Yes
3	No

Comments

• Positive
• I really appreciate this service!
• tägliche Backups; updaten der Software; nur geprüfte Software herunterladen zu können, wo man sicher sein kann, dass sie sauber und empfehlenswert ist, sodass man sich keine Viren holt
• Not having to keep software up to date
• My laptop is a bit of a "Montagsprodukt" and I would not have been able to solve all the issues by myself...
• Erspart mir viel Administrativarbeit und geht viel schneller. Ich bin kein IT-Spezialist und müsste mich in alles einlesen
• Sicher. Ich will möglichst nichts mit dem Computer zu tun haben, ich will daran arbeiten.
• Der Support ist etwa 40 dB besser als wenn ich das selber machte.
• Wunderbar, ich liebe es!
• Negative: missing admin rights
• Nontheless there are drawbacks, when it comes to specific software, where admin rights are necessary for settings.
• However, sometimes it's annoying that I don't have the rights to do things myself, such as update Mathematica.
• in some cases yes. It is often annoying not to have root access to change/modify minor things myself.
• No sudo
• Misc
• Especially Windows machine, I don't have the time to set all the detailed configuration. ISG just brings the computer, boom, it's running as it should. For Linux machines, I rather like to administrate it myself.
• For me, too many specialized softwares - and also an overlap with my private work (I use my private laptop professionally, it is too much hassle to have two different machines)
• not really workstation, but surf kiosks for general use in the lab
• One thing is the fact that sometimes ISG people log into managed [Windows] workstations without prior asking which can be disrupting work. Maybe a quick notification via element beforehand, or an email?

Research-related IT

What is the quality of support and consulting for the IT needs of your research?

What is the quality of help with installation of scientific software or programming tools?

Where do you currently store most of your research data?

88	group share on ISG server
34	local hard disk
11	other
9	third-party cloud (Dropbox etc)
5	home directory on ISG server

Comments

• Polybox [mentioned 4 times]
• Own server [mentioned 2 times]
• Local hd, gdrive, backup hd
• Group Storage
• anderer ETH Server
• My own private NAS, and I back it up from time to time on a group share hosted by ISG
• On separate, dedicated clusters and archival system, not located in D-PHYS.

How do you back up your own computer or laptop containing research data?

43	ISG backup service (BackupBox, BackupPC)
40	external hard disk / TimeMachine / USB drive
22	manually copy data
17	cloud service (Dropbox etc)
16	other
7	not at all

Comments

• Research data is stored only of the group shares
• Gdrive + external hd
• everything is on group share
• Internal RAID, manually copy data to group share, automatic backup to ETH Backup system (SP)
• BackupPC+Manuell kopieren+Eigener Backup Server + Externe NAS Drive mit Backup durch ISG
• My private computer + my NAS + my work computer + network share hosted by ISG
• Onto our Group Storage
• plus ISG server
• Server: Backup der zentralen Informatik
• FreeFileSync to ISG server
• via rsync and cron script
• two synced computers + manual backup
• we do NOT store research data on personal laptops.
• I don't store any data locally.
• Gitlab (programming)
• Alle Forschungsdaten am groupshare, nur temporäre Kopien am eigenen Computer

Would you like to get more consulting / support for storage solutions and data access or transfer?

77	No
51	Yes

Comments

• We are looking in to automating the copying of research data from the measurement PCs to the group share using robocopy.
• Might help. as data grows bigger and bigger
• Home directory is too small to store all my research and teaching data. So I put older/static things on the local drive on my managed work station AND on my local drive at home (for home office purposes). I'm not sure how to efficiently sync these. Until now the effort of figuring out a solution has been bigger than manually transferring the occasional changing file. Perhaps you do have a better solution and I just haven't put in the effort to look for it.
• Some ready-made scripts for common backup scenarios would be useful.
• In fact, I was planning since some time now to investigate about moving my entire laptop disk to a ISG cloud... apparently, you support this?
• People from my group are currently in close contact with [an ISG team member] to figure out our future data storage concept and they are very happy about the professional and friendly support.

Anything else ISG could do to help you with your research?

• Stop disabling computers and sockets or at least let user to re-enable themselves!
• Find a way to give users sudo rights for software installation. Helping others out of office hours
• a "restricted sudo" on Linux, similar to what can be done in Windows, might still be helpful
• It is still a challenge for me to organize research literature together with my own notes and to synchronize this across devices.
• Remote research data access and analyzing tool. That would be a boomer. (I know, it's much. Maybe there's a solution for more than 50% of the groups :))
• it would be neat if there was a way around having to reinstall software regularly. not a huge problem though.
• Not with the research.

Anything else ISG could do to help you use IT more effectively?

• Es werden oft ohne Ankündigung updates oder reboots von Maschinen gemacht. Dabei gehen nicht selten Zwischenergebnisse verloren. Zudem dauert es oft Tage bis die persönliche Software nach einem Update wieder funktionsfähig ist. Während der Corona Pandemie musste ich einmal fast eine Woche auf einen einfachen reboot warten, da niemand am Hönggerberg war.
• Eine gemeinsame Kalenderlösung, die für alle D-PHYS Mitglieder verpflichtend ist, bzw. alle zwingen die ETH-Email zu verwenden.
• Bessere Kompatibilitäts-Optionen mit IT ETH-Systemen/Strategien
• Ich fände es wünschenswert, wenn in Polybox (Owncloud) auch Kontakte und Kalender frei geschaltet würden. EINE Zentrale für Email, Kontakte, Kalender und Clouddienste ist wünschenswert. Owncloud bzw Nextcloud können das.
• please make Polybox work. I've had so many issues, and have thus stopped using it, so I used the (forbidden) dropbox.
  • polybox logs out all the time without a warning, so my files are not backed up
  • polybox has a ridiculously low storage quota, my research data are way bigger than 50GB
  • polybox randomly refuses to syncronize some files, I get synchronization errors that I can't resolve etc
• Bei readme sind nicht alle print screens auf dem neusten Stand.
• Some email problems:
  • Sometimes emails with big attachments don't arrive at the receiver, and I don't get a notification. This caused a few-weeks delay once.
  • I've had several problems with using the dphys email in Microsoft outlook (not synchronizing, losing emails), which were never really solved other than by upgrading Outlook much later.
  • Some emails sent from my Mac, using Apple mail, don't show up in the Sent folder in the browser-based email client or on my other devices.

Home Office

Since beginning of the home office season in March 2020, how well have ISG's IT services been working for you?

ISG's services worked for me, even from home

If there were problems, ISG could help me remotely

The newly created services (Matrix/Element chat, jitsi videocalls, BackupBox) were helpful

My long-term productivity in homeoffice is not negatively affected by the state of IT affairs and ISG's services

If there were problems, can you tell if they were mainly VPN (service of Informatikdienste) related or caused by ISG services?

40	can't tell
32	VPN
8	ISG services
1	both

Comments

• No problems:
• Gab keine Probleme
• wenn, dann war es ein User - Fehler !
• I had no problems that I did not cause myself.
• for home-office I had no problems.
• VPN:
• As soon as I connect with VPN, my internet connection speed decreases (from ~600Mbps without VPN to ~100Mbps with VPN)
• oft deutlich schlechtere Performance(Zoom, Skype) wenn ich via VPN eingeloggt bin
• VPN connection breaks regularly while other connections like ssh are stable for hours.
• Nicht wirklich schlimm, aber ich die Verbindung bricht regelmässig ab, ich muss einfach regelmässig mich wieder verbinden.
• VPN issues: continuously disconnects and reconnects
• VPN trennt sich in regelmässigen Abständen
• not sure this can be solved, but server access via smb+vpn is a bit slow (despite reasonable bandwidth of the home network)
• Access of shared file servers through VPN remains slow.
• VPN is not supported for a Win10 computer when more than one account is logged onto the PC. VPN by the university is too slow sometimes.
• when I use VPN to access my software or online journals, the bandwidth is sometimes not great, especially during Zoom calls.
• VPN has some interferences with Zoom, e.g. it's hard to be in a meeting and look up a paper at the same time because Zoom crashes when VPN is being used.
• ISG services:
• seltener: group share nicht verfügbar
• Other:
• Es sind ja immer die anderen Schuld ;-))
• lokale Verbindung daheim ergab am ehesten Probleme
• Es ist nicht immer einfach herauszufinden wie man von zu Hause auf ein Netzwerklaufwerk zugreifen kann. Am Arbeitsplatz mach das die Informatikdienste.
• Some troubles with my workstation, which may or may not also have had to do with the electricity work in HIT where cables may or may not have been unplugged and plugged back in incorrectly. So... not really home office related in any case.
• Ohne Laptop war ich infolge Corona gezwungen, meinen privaten PC so einzurichten, dass ich damit 100% arbeiten konnte. Ohne telefonischen Kontakt war das anfänglich sehr mühsam und sehr zeitraubend. Mit Jitsi ging es dann wesentlich besser.
• I had one specific problem in connecting an Arduino to the InfluxDB database. Though ISG was very helpful, it would have been solved much more easily if we could have passed by and debugged in person together.
• Problems with availability of licenses for Comsol. About once every two weeks. It was worse at the beginning of the pandemic
• X forwarding (Xming) ist nicht praktisch, wenn man viele Fenster gleichzeitig öffnen möchte. Oft stürzt es dann ab und alle Fenster werden geschlossen, die gerade geöffnet waren. Die Größe von Fenstern kann nicht immer verstellt werden, was zu Problemen führen kann, wenn das Fenster viel zu groß/klein ist.

Which new or improved services could ISG provide in order to further improve your home office situation?

• Der Element-Chat ist für mich als sehr sporadischen Nutzer etwas "technisch": In die Lobby komme ich gut und da bekommt man auch immer schnell Antworten der ISG. Wenn ich aber mit zB Teammitgliedern kommunizieren möchte, so stellt das nicht-ganz-intuitive Design eine kleine Hürde dar. Das liegt aber vermutlich mehr an mir und der sporadischen Nutzung als am Chat per se. Die Option den Helpdesk via Chat zu haben finde ich grossartig!!!
• Improve the contact to support during Covid. Also, if you use chats for support, announce it well enough exactly where the experts can and should be reached. Not many persons knew about riot, element, etc.
• adding functionality to Element would be great, like screen sharing or group video calls with similar quality as Zoom
• Die Informatikdienste ETH dazu bringen, einen ebenso guten und übersichtlichen Service anzubieten. ;-)
• Home office did not have a negative impact on me in view of IT.
• Vielen Dank, keine weiteren Wünsche.
• VoIP Telephony - ISG Helpdesk in home office:
  • No phone service when enabling/support is needed. For lab work we need quick fixes, else we waste time. But at this times no phone call is possible. A suggested alternative to use [Element] public chat which is not acceptable. Nobody wants to spam everyone in a huge chat and share also details there.
  • Usually I just called ISG on the phone number which now is not possible anymore. However I would guess that a simple phone forwarding would be easy to implement and in my eyes very convenient.
  • Access to ISG help and support was very difficult during Corona times. i.e. e.g. the phone service was not active, or phones re-re-redirected to people off-work or off-shift. This could be improved, such that a call to 3 2668 is swiftly directed to knowledge people on shift.
  • Telefonische Erreichbarkeit wäre auch während den Corona-Massnahmen Hilfreich für einige Probleme, da so direkter geholfen werden kann als über den Helpdesk-Chat
  • Telefonische Erreichbarkeit der Helpdesk Nummer wäre wünschenswert; man kann Telefonnummern auch nach Hause umleiten lassen, wenn man Home-Office macht.
  • Es wäre ab und zu einfacher gewesen, ein Problem telefonisch mit der ISG zu lösen - dies war oder ist erschwert während der Home-Office Situation - sprich telefonische Erreichbarkeit während des Lock downs wäre toll.
• VoIP Telephony - SIP and call redirection in general:
  • VoIP from homeoffice just via SIP
  • Telefonie mit ETH Nummer
  • access ETH phone lines (outgoing) in home office would be useful
  • Ich würde auch gerne von zu Hause mit meiner ETH-Telefonnummer telefonieren können. Habe eine zusätzliche Nummer in meinem SIP Telefon programmiert und leite Anrufe darauf weiter. Wenn ich selber anrufe muss ich selber bezahlen und es erscheint entweder meine private Handynummer oder keine Telefonnummer.

General

What is your role at D-PHYS?

62	PhD student
49	technical or admin staff
27	PostDoc, Researcher
21	Professor

What is your institute or Betrieb?

45	Laboratory for Solid State Physics (LFKP)
33	Institute for Quantum Electronics (IQE)
22	Geodesy and Pho­to­gram­metry (IGP/D-BAUG)
20	Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP)
18	Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics (IPA)
15	Betriebe
4	Lab for Ion Beam Physics (LIP)
4	FIRST
1	Other

Are there any IT related obstacles to your daily work that you would like to see disappear in the future?

• Es wäre schön, wenn außer der ISG eine Person in der Gruppe die Rechte für den Reboot der Maschinen hätte.
• The printers are not working for 2/3 of people from our group. The only solution seems to connect VPN even if in ETH building.
• direkter Zugriff auf Backups von Group-Drives (wie Home-Drive)
• Sehr langsames Aufstarten des Laptops und einloggen in alle Systeme.
• LaTeX. I think an online LaTeX editor for groups would help. See for example [...]
• Meine Tastatur ist unbrauchbar.
• Too many passwords:
  • Zu viele verschiedene Passwörter für unterschiedliche Accounts und Netzwerkdienste. Eine Vereinheitlichung mit nur einem einzigen Passwort für alle Dienste, das regelmässig gewechselt werden muss wäre wünschenswert
  • I guess this not something under your control, but the fact that I need three different passwords for different ETH services is a bit annoying, especially when I don't know which password is used where.
• Use of Office 365 Apps
• mail culture
• proprietary software and ETH's affinity to Microsoft... but that's out of your responsibility! ^-^
• Not related with IT
• Not really.
• Benutzerprofile mit Roaming hat gewiss viele Vorteile, besonders fuer Studenten, die z.B. Computerräume nutzen. Fuer uns Angestellte, die eh nur 1 Maschine nutzen, ist es jedoch oft hinderlich. Lange Wartezeiten beim Starten und Herunterfahren, ... Verschiedene Programme (ich denke an Solidworks) haben scheinbar grundsätzliche Probleme damit, dass ihre lokalen Einstellungen zwischen Maschinen roamen. Pfade zu mitgelieferten Bibliotheken werden korrumpiert, Einstellungen verschiedener Benutzer werden gemischt und inkonsistent... Für Solidworks nutze ich mittlerweile nur noch eine ungemanagede Maschine. Ist natürlich weniger ein Fehler von der ISG als von Dassault, aber lästig ist es trotzdem.
• It would be very nice if the Matrix/Element chat solution could also be easily adapted for teaching of classes. I really like this low-effort, real-time communication solution. For me, it would remove communication barriers with the students, which are there e.g. in Moodle (30 min delay of sent messages, no desktop application, routing of messages through e-mail, all assistants get all messages (and not only the ones from their own exercise class) by default).

In your daily work, which are the most helpful service(s) ISG provides?

117	Email
	Phys-Mail Email verkehr main communication medium for me Erstens das zur Verfügung stellen und zweitens der gute Spam-Filter. But spam filtering could be better arbeitsemails empfangen und schreiben klar, das braucht man immer... Reliable access to email via web is very useful in use funktioniert toll wird schnell beantwortet. Ich benutze ausschliesslich den dphys server
88	Storage
	Group-Share (haben alle Dokumente [...] auf dem Share) very useful Damit ich an die Infos des gesamten [...] rankomme, auch wenn [...] etwas ablegt. Critical to our shared work. Gruppenlaufwerk storage of lecture recordings on our DPHYS streaming server funktioniert toll Group shares Group share ständig benutzt Ich arbeite entweder auf dem group share oder auf dem home Verzeichnis I store all data and important documents on the group or personal drive.
51	Support
	thank you! getting quick and competent advice on software, hardware etc. Nicht täglich, aber SEHR geschätzt wenn nötig Hilfe ist schnell da. Netzwerk Probleme Ansprechpartner für auftauchende Probleme wenn man einmal ein Problem hat, bekommt man meistens schnell Hilfe Direct discussions with an expert is/was the most effective support. great and friendly
50	Matrix / Element
	It is nice to finally have a chat with most of DPHYS I often have questions about the ethernet connection of lab workstations Ersatz für Telefon innerhalb D-PHYS täglich in Verwendung, sehr unkompliziert und praktisch extremely useful ISG-Help Desk <3
46	Backup
	Gibt Sicherheit... helpful and safe ...ist durch Punkt [Storage] gewährleistet
29	Managed Workstation
	s. Backup Allgemeine Hardware und Software Probleme Updates werden regelmässig gemacht. Unbedingt notwendig nutze ich nicht hauptsächlich, nur teilweise; hierfür ist es umso praktischer, wenn ich mich nicht darum kümmern muss wonderful
19	InfluxDB / Grafana
	Very valuable for logging cryostat performance in a way which is visible to the whole group. extremely useful falls das die db ist auf der unsere Daten gespeicher werden ist ihre 24/7 Verfügbarkeit essentiell! Temp logs der cryos Überwachung der Infrastruktur We monitor lab conditions using InfluxDB/grafana
18	Web Hosting
	Falls die www[...]-Shares gemeint sind: Die benutze ich fast täglich.
17	Groupware / Calendar
	Group shares Kalender, who?
17	Documentation
	thank you! Ist tolle Sache und "helpfull" finde ich sehr informativ, daher brauche ich den Helpdesk nur selten

Are there any missing services that should be implemented in the future?

• Der aktuelle Website-Editor der ETH ist ganz mühsam [...]. [Wir] basteln das mit HTML nach (danke für das Bereitstellen der inc-Files!). Allerdings wäre da eine bessere Lösung schön. Ich denke aber, das müsste ETH-weit gelöst werden, und dass ihr von der ISG wenig ausrichten könnt. Bzw. der Aufwand ein "Zwischen-Tool" zu bauen, um die Bedienerfreundlichkeit zu steigern, ist zu gross.
• May be code review services would be nice to have
• ZFS for the group shares would be cool so we could do ZFS send/receive from snapshots.
• hilfreiche wären Schulungen/Mails über Neuerungen, wie z.B. Element Chat etc.
• group video calls on Element + screen sharing
• A kind of basic computer security course (online a few slides regarding passwords, mail attachments and so on) together with a few questions in the end. Something that every new employee or student has to pass.
• Another "course" with a few slides for everybody who is responsible for machines on the network, with basics things he or she should know (e.g. on linux setup something like fail2ban, firewalls, software updates, etc.)
• Shared Password Manager:
  • Bitwarden
  • A shared password manager. We have very often group accounts e.g. to order stuff from various webshops. It would be great if there is an easy way to securely share the logins, of course self-hosted ;) 1Password (as a commercial service) has very great features in that respect. However, this is not self-hosted. I saw that there is Bitwarden. Maybe that would be an option. Or maybe Enpass which just needs a WebDAV-Share.
• D-PHYS VPN:
  • It would be nice to have our own D-PHYS VPN
  • Wireguard VPN tunnels would be great!
  • ISG-owened VPN Access which works better under Linux. The Cisco stuff is really a nightmare...
• Graphical remote access:
  • X2Go Terminal Server please
  • Please allow RDP connection to computers and servers.
  • allow RDP connection to Linux
  • RDP connection (to Linux computers)
  • we mostly work with ssh -x which does not really work well for complex GUI or in case you need to open and browse through many windows.
• Stratum 0 NTP Server
• An easy way to host own docker containers.
• tasks, to do tool, project planning tool, notes tool
• Das Gitlab CI/CD sollte das Hochladen von Kompilat und Artefakten erlauben.
• Allenfalls mehr Platz für Projekte auf dem Gitlab-Server (wir verwenden Gitlab für fast alles: Papers, Software-Entwicklung, Hardware-Projekte, Vorlesungsunterlagen...
• It would be great if there could be Linux systems equipped with NViDIA Tesla GPUs which also support CUDA with FP64 with appropriate speed.

Anything else you would like to let D-PHYS or ISG know?

• Keep the excellent level, and thanks for the top service!
• You are great, thank you for your work!
• Ihr macht einen guten Job und konntet bis jetzt bei jedem Problem helfen! Danke :)
• Danke für eure gute Arbeit und die sehr gut funktionierende Infrastruktur!
• Danke
• Danke für Eure Hilfe. Für alle, die keine grosse Ahnung von IT haben, seid Ihr Gold wert.
• You're doing a great job! General thing (and I can understand it's difficult): your staff gender balance could be better...
• Immer freundlich und hilfreich! Vielen Dank für die tolle Arbeit!
• Danke!
• Ich bin sehr dankbar für die tolle Unterstützung und ich hoffe das Team bleibt konstant(er). Keep up the good work!
• You're doing a fantastic job! Calling/emailing, and answers follow immediately. Thank you all!
• Danke für den Einsatz und den erfolgreichen Übergang ins Home Office
• [...] Vielen Dank für die hervorragende Arbeit!
• [...] Best wishes to you all [...]
• Kunde glücklich mit ISG. Aber der Fragebogen hier ist unterirdisch.
• thanks for the good service!
• Thank you for your great service!
• Very grateful for your help!
• Thanks for patience, support and help even with the dumbest questions! This prompted me to fill out this rather long (!) survey.
• Since I will also graduate in the near-mid future: It would be great if there could be more ways to keep access to some of the fantastic services for alumni :) is there a chance to establish maybe a new account type for alumni?
• Die Mitarbeitenden sind immer sehr freundlich und hilfsbereit und lösungsorientiert - tolles Team.
• thank you!
• Compared to other departments at ETH, I really like the department-wide IT infrastructure which reduces the IT burden on the individual research groups a lot.
• Thank you for the great work and support!