Support and Consultancy

Research Drive users have unlimited access to support services, helping you make the most of our storage facilities. Online manuals provide information including suggestions for uploading, downloading and sharing data.

You can contact our helpdesk by telephone or email. Or schedule an appointment with one of our employees. Please carefully read the information on this page before submitting a ticket. 

Information needed for efficient support

Please make sure you submit the following information with your support request:

Basic information to submit with your support request

  1. What instance url are you using?
  2. What is your username?
  3. Describe step by step what you do, what is not working, and what error do you receive. Attach screenshots of the error when possible
  4. What is the date and time that the issue happened?
  5. Which browser (incl. version) do you use?
  6. Do you face the same issue if you use another browser?
  7. Do you face the issue in an incognito window?
  8. Does the issue persist after you make the browser cache empty?
  9. Does the problem occurs with one file? or systematically? If it is only with one file, can you let us know the name of the file?

Benodigde informatie bij het indienen van een ondersteuningsvraag

  1. Welke omgeving (url) gebruik je?
  2. Wat is je gebruikersnaam?
  3. Beschrijf stap voor stap wat je doet, en wat er dan niet werkt of welke foutmelding je krijgt. Voeg screenshots toe waar mogelijk .
  4. Wat is de datum en het tijdstip van het issue?
  5. Welke browser (incl. versie) gebruik je?
  6. Is het probleem ook zichtbaar in andere browsers?
  7. Heb je het problem als je het in een incognito window uitvoert?
  8. Bestaat het probleem ook nadat je de browser cache leegt?
  9. Gebeurt het alleen met een bestand, of systematisch? Als het alleen met een bestand voorkomt, kun je ons dan de naam van de bestand laten weten?

Helpdesk

Support for an institutional instance

1. You are a researcher or regular user, consult your data steward at the library, research support or ICT department.

2. You are a data steward or administrator:

This Servicedesk is manned during office hours (from 09:00 until 17:00).

Support for the community instance

For support:

This Servicedesk is manned during office hours (from 09:00 until 17:00).

OwnCloud Manual

Research Drive is using the ownCloud software. OwnCloud provides extensive online documentation on how to use it. You can find it at: Owncloud User Manual.

Supported browsers

For Research Drive, the Edge, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera browsers are supported.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer browser is not supported by Research Drive.
If you are still using Internet Explorer and want to use Research Drive, you will need to use a different browser.

Getting the client logs

If some problem persists while using Research Drive with your OwnCloud client, you might be asked to send the client log.

  1. Open your OwnCloud client by opening the settings window

  2. Hit F12 on your keyboard. Depending on your OS, the log window will open:

    1. Windows
      1. Click 'Save' to store the current logs somewhere on your system


    2. MacOS

      1. Logging needs to be enabled first: click on 'Enable logging to temporary folder'
      2. Close the window and under the three-dots dropdown, click 'Force sync now' to make a synchronisation run
      3. Go back to the log window and click 'Open folder' to find the location of the logs


  3. Attach the log files to your issue in the service desk of SURF, the administrators will know what to do with them.

Trainings

General Trainings

SURF offers a training on "Introduction to Data Management and Research Drive", in which we talk about data management in general and introduce the Research Drive service for sharing, handling and managing your research data. During the training we give a demo of Research Drive with some hands-on and you will get access to our Demo environment to play around with the tool.

The frequency of the course is three time per year (every 4 months). The course is free of costs, but registration is required. For more information about course at SURF, please see Training courses for research. 

Goal: Introduce general concepts in data management, a good understanding of Research Drive usage, roles and permissions, and best practices 

Target audience: Researchers, data stewards, data managers

Onboarding Trainings

We offer an onboarding training for institutions that are using an institutional (branded) instance of Research Drive. This is a one-time training and is part of the the support we deliver for the institutional instance contracts and there is no extra costs involved. For more information and possibilities for arranging the training, please contact SURF by making a request in our service desk portal.  

The onboarding training has 2 sessions, basic and advanced and consists of a theoretical and (optional) hands-on part. The sessions can be given on a single day and to groups of up to around 30 people. 

Below you can find more detail about the contents of the training.

Target audience: (Advanced) researchers, data stewards, data managers, IT support of the organisations

Basic training (1,5 - 2 hours)

Goal: get basic understanding of what Research Drive is and how to use it as an end-user

Topics:

  • Introduction presentation:
    • The Research Drive service and infrastructure
    • Comparison and integration with other services
    • High level overview of functionality and concepts
    • Data ingest and download
    • Apps
  • Hands-on:
    • Accessing the service
    • Inviting users
    • Storing, retrieving, moving, copying files
    • Managing folder permissions and sharing
    • Collaboration
  • Play around!

Advanced training (1,5 - 2 hours)

Goal: get an understanding of account, project folder and contract management, permissions, data sharing and collaboration using Research Drive

Topics:

  • Introduction presentation:
    • Internal concepts in-depth
    • Sharing files internally and externally, permissions, share links
    • External access
  • Hands-on:
    • Creating project folders
    • Setting folder/file permissions
    • Setting up a Project Folder Owner role
    • Creating groups
    • Providing access externally (share links and guest accounts)
    • Setting up WebDAV access

Customization

Sessions can be (partially) adapted to customer's needs based on mutual agreement. On request, specific focus can be given to certain aspects. These requests should come in via Research Drive user group meeting with our users and customers, which is being organised 4 times per year.