Remote Access to IT Services

This page aims to list the most common forms of remote access to different services within the department with links to further information as required. The listings are typically in order of ease of use, the first being the easiest although the other options may have different benefits at the expense of some ease.

Email

To access your email remotely options include:

• Access via a web browser - easy to do, requires just a web browser and no special setup
• IMAPS and SMTP connection - uses a normal mail client, e.g. Thunderbird, Outlook, pine etc and can give you more functionality than a web only interface
• Use a graphical or text based session as listed for applications below

Telephony + Video Conferencing

(Only if you have a dedicated office phone, not a shared one, then) to access your phone and phone settings, call history and voicemail remotely you can use the Chorus Web Portal and Softphones (for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and Linux)

The university provides Microsoft Teams for chat, audio and video conferencing, see further below for more information, as well as the more detailed FAQ on chat, audio and video conferencing.

Applications

Note this is typically a full remote session in which you can run any application, including accessing your email and files, as if in the department

To use applications available on the maths systems options include:

• The remote access portal (RAP) is the easiest option, further details and other options are at:
  • Remote Access to Linux Systems
  • Remote Access to Windows Terminal Server

Files

To get at your files remotely options include:

• Network file transfer - using an scp or sftp client
• Nextcloud department file sync and share service (or you could use the university OneDrive sync and share service)
• Secure network file mount - e.g. sshfs - some sshfs guidance for Windows users here - for Linux/Mac command line use you could as a one off make a mount point on your local machine with mkdir ~/sshfsmnt and then every time you wish to mount your maths home directory on your machine (that is assumed to be outside the maths network) you would run a command on the form sshfs username@gate.maths.ox.ac.uk: ~/sshfsmnt ; when finished you would then exit that folder so it is not in use and unmount it with fusermount -u ~/sshfsmnt
• Full remote session running applications as you would when working in the department - see the Applications section above

Journals

Access to many journals is restricted to computers within the university. If you are outside the university you need suitably tunnelled remote access:

• SOLO (replaces OxLip+) - use your university Single-Sign-On credentials to access this page from outside the university and gain access to journal resources
• BrowZine - available directly or from within SOLO
• Google Scholar Find it @ Oxford - Links to full text of available articles generated automatically for Oxford users (if outside OU internet domain, set Oxford as member library in your Google Scholar preferences)
• Run a complete remote session as described above for applications. The web browser running in the remote session is then of course within the university and can access the online journals
• Make a VPN connection - this routes your network connection via the university and thus allows access to online journals

Microsoft Teams [Collaboration, Communication, Teaching and Presentations]

The university licenses Microsoft Teams for collaboration and communication between university members but also with external people (say for interviews, seminar talks etc).

To login to Teams go to https://teams.microsoft.com and type in "<SSOUsername>@ox.ac.uk" as your username (e.g. math0000@ox.ac.uk), which would then redirect you to the university's single signon page where you can login.

If you are not part of a formal team you can still use the basic group chat and video call functionality between university members, by adding them to your chat.

Further information documentation on Microsoft Teams is available on 

https://help.it.ox.ac.uk/nexus365/teams-how-do-i

You can use teams from within a web browser or with a client application on your device.