MSI Support Staff

Request Tracker (RT) is the primary interface that MSI staff utilize to support users. If you are in need of technical assistance from our team of support staff, system administrators, computational scientists we encourage you to email help@msi.umn.edu. This will automatically create a ticket for you.

Ticket response times: Urgent requests sent during regular business hours are often able to be handled within several hours. One of our staff members will respond within 3 business days (often less) to requests for other non-urgent matters. Our system administrators rotate through an on-call schedule for weekends and non-business hours to handle emergency service outages.

Please do NOT email our staff members directly. Tickets are triaged throughout the day to ensure every request has equal opportunity to be addressed. It is important to have all requests remain in the ticketing system. We encourage you to provide as much information in the initial ticket request to help expedite issue discovery. We make every effort to provide you with assistance in a timely manner.

Level 1 Support Staff

There are a limited number of Help Desk staff and students that can assist in addressing basic questions on MSI systems and services.

  • Phone support - User may call our help line (612) 626-0802

  • Online Office Hours - Visit our sign up page to schedule a remote meeting time.

They can assist in the following areas:

  • MSI services

  • Guidance with connecting to MSI systems

  • Basic software installation

Level 2 Support Staff

Our Research Informatics staff are also available for guidance on ticket request and offer consultation services.

To set up a meeting with our staff here, create a new ticket by emailing help@msi.umn.edu.

Alerts and Notices

Our Support staff will manually update our status page during business hours to notify users on scheduled maintenance periods and systems facing issues that are being investigated.

Help Desk Office Hours

Our Help Desk is in operation Monday to Friday

  • 9am - 12pm CST

  • 1pm - 4pm CST

Users may visit Level 1 support staff in 599 Walter Library for in person assistance.

Creating a new support ticket

Users are encouraged to include the following information when creating a support ticket to expedite the ability of our staff to become familiarized with your request.

  • Access related

    • What is your local operating system?

    • Are you connecting from off UMN campus?

    • Were you recently invited to an MSI project?

  • Compute / Slurm

    • What is the job id that you are working with?

    • Description of your workflow, was it migrated from another compute environment?

    • Is the issue new? What is the approximate date the last time the workflow worked?

  • Software Installation

    • What is the link to the installation documentation?