Telephone support round the clock

Our telephone support hours have been extended to provide 24-hour assistance every day of the year including weekends, bank and public holidays and University closures. 

We are partnering with Norman Managed Services to provide wrap around telephone cover to ensure that your call to the IT Service Desk will be answered at any time, day, or night. 

Who are Norman?

Norman (Norman Managed Services) are based out of Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne. 

Norman Managed Services

Norman was first established in 2006 as a shared service for the five universities in the North East Metropolitan Area Network “NorMAN” (Durham, Newcastle, Teesside, Sunderland and Northumbria). Northumbria University ultimately became the sole operator and owner of the service as “Norman Managed Services” (Norman for short).

Benefits Norman provide:

  1. Always available: Norman operates 24/7, 365 days a year. They are even open on Christmas Day!
  2. Over a decade of experience: Norman has been supporting higher education institutions for 15 years, with many long term users.
  3. Education focused: Norman collaborates with over forty other Higher Education institutions, and has become the de facto provider of out of hours support for universities in the UK.
  4. University of Reading focused: The Norman team have been given access to our Knowledge Base, so they can answer specific University of Reading queries as well as general IT queries.
  5. Seamless Service: If your query can’t be resolved, a ticket will be raised and passed back to DTS for investigation during our Service Desk opening hours.

What can out of hours support help with?

Norman can deal with a range of UoR specific and general IT queries, such as:

  • General IT advice – they support Windows, Mac as well as Linux
  • M365 problems: helping solve issues with Teams, Word, SharePoint, PowerPoint etc.
  • Blackboard, Canvas – general issues with logging on, finding files, uploading etc.
  • Password resets – guidance on using the self service password reset (NB they will not be able to reset your password)
  • MultiFactor Authentication resets
  • How to connect to Eduroam Wi-Fi and troubleshooting wireless network issues
  • Printing, how to connect to printer, troubleshoot issues and raise printer problems for the printer engineers (next working day)
  • Email spam / phishing advice and basic IT security guidance such as how to run antivirus check
  • Specialist software requests and help with accessing Apps Anywhere
  • Out of hours critical incident identification and escalation
  • Signposting to other UoR resources such as Library, Student Services, Campus Cards, Room Bookings…

Important note: Tickets raised via the IT Self Service Portal or sent to us by email will not be dealt with by the out of hours team and will be picked up during the Service Desk working hours.

Out of hours contact details

To contact us out of hours, please call the usual Service Desk number (0118 378 6262) and your call will be diverted.

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