IT Services

Email, Messaging and Collaboration Services

The electronic messaging and collaboration suite is a hosted private cloud service provided by Microsoft. It consists of the Email Service, OneDrive for Business, Office Online, Office ProPlus, SharePoint Online, Teams and Forms. Email – Exchange Online Email is the official communication channel for the University. Two email systems, namely PolyU and Connect, are provided to staff and students respectively. PolyU Email is an email service for PolyU current staff. In addition to large mailbox quota of 50GB, it also provides features including calendaring, message sharing, and mobile push mail support, etc. If you are planning to travel out of Hong Kong and will continue using the PolyU O365 apps on MS Cloud (e.g., Outlook email, OneDrive for Business and etc.) for communication or collaborative with colleagues, you are required to enable two-factor authentication with Microsoft Authenticator app (PolyU MFA service) BEFORE you start your journey. - Staff who are currently using "Global Protect" VPN service to access campus resources should have already downloaded the Microsoft Authenticator app to your registered mobile phone. No further action is required. - For those who have not used "Global Protect" VPN service before, please refer to the PolyU MFA Service – User Guide to complete the installation of Microsoft Authenticator app and enroll your mobile phone before departure. Connect Email provides email service for students, alumni and retired staff and it also serves as a convenient channel for other communication and collaboration.   Microsoft 365 group is a feature available in O365 products e.g., Outlook for users to setup collaboration with other team members.  There are two types of M365 groups, namely public group and private group. Public group – everyone in PolyU/Connect will have full access (add, edit, and delete) to all posts and files.  Due to lack of access control and policy to manage post and file activities, public group is not recommended for long term use and important file sharing. Private group – only approved members will have access (add, edit, and delete) to all content in the group.  Private group can be used for project and team collaboration. For details, please refer to the user guide under “Training & Resources” for reference.   Web storage - OneDrive for Business OneDrive for Business provides online storage which could be accessed via browser, desktop client, and mobile apps.   Online tool - Office Online Office Online is a web-based version of Microsoft Office productivity suite. It provides web-based versions of MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote which enable users to access their documents using a web browser and an Internet connection but without the needs of installing the software.   Desktop Tool - Office ProPlus Office ProPlus allows licensed users (Full-time permanent staff and current students) to install the latest version of Microsoft Office on up to 5 desktops (PC/ Mac), tablets and mobile devices. The license will be revoked once a licensed user is no longer a full-time permanent staff or student.   Collaboration Tool - SharePoint Online SharePoint Online enables users to create and manage custom-built team-focused and project-focused sites for collaboration. Users can create sites to share documents and information easily with PolyU and external users.   Collaboration Tool – MS Teams Teams is a collaboration tool provides chat, file sharing, and meeting to assigned team members. It is a collection of people, conversation, files, and tools in one place to make collaboration more effective and efficient. Teams could be accessed via browser, desktop client and mobile apps.   Web Meeting - Teams Meeting Meeting could be easily created in Outlook with Teams Meeting. Teams Meeting offers multi-parties video conference with file/screen sharing, raise hand, chat, and session recording.   e-form – MS Forms Forms is a cloud-based form app provides a simple way to create surveys, polls, and quizzes. Collected data could be downloaded in Excel format for further processing.   Video engaging - Stream (on SharePoint) Stream (on SharePoint) is an intelligent video experience that empowers you to record, upload, discover, share, and manage video just as you would any other file.  

Endpoint Protection Services

User workstations/ notebooks are computing devices for staff used to communicate and collaborate with peers, students and external business partners at office (and outside office for notebooks). These fleet of machines are important productivity tools but also expand attack surface of campus if not included in University endpoint protection coverage. Over 6,000 workstations and notebooks have already joined PolyU domain and receive comprehensive security protection including regular patch updates, and desktop management support. For workstations/ notebooks at departments which have not joined PolyU domain, user can strengthen their endpoint devices protection by a simple enrolment process to Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Defender for EndPoint (MDE). Once Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) client software is successfully installed, the following security protections will be applied: Anti-Virus Firewall Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) Regular system security patching  

Enterprise Content Management Service (ECM)

The Enterprise Content Management Service (ECM) provides a centralized repository for departments across the University to store, retrieve and share documents on a common and standardized platform. It also facilitates departments to capture, manage, preserve and deliver the business essential digital records related to their daily business operation processes. With ECM, users can create a new level of efficiency in working environment, teaching or research and the managed content can be used to engage its users and enhance collaboration.

Federated Login for HKAF

‘Federated Login for HKAF’ service allows staff and students of member institutions of Hong Kong Access Federation (HKAF) to use their institutional credentials to seamlessly access a wide range of services and resources provided by education institutions all over the world in a controlled and trusted setup. PolyU is a member of the HKAF which enables our staff and students to use their NetID and NetPassword as an authentication to access services and resources from other joined institutions in Hong Kong and around the world for teaching, learning and research activities via HKAF. With this service, faculties and departments can extend the use of their applications /services to staff and students of other institutions easily and without extra efforts on managing enormous accounts. Currently, some service provider (SP) applications have been successfully integrated into HKAF and are available for use. Click here for more details. The Service is deployed in accordance with HKAF’s policy and encompassing rules and guidelines, which have been laid down by HKAF, for accessing services of Service Providers connected to HKAF. For details, please refer to HKAF website (http://www.hkaf.edu.hk). Interested faculties or departments are welcome to contact IT HelpCentre for assistance.

FinTech Lab

Blockchain One of the core technologies that boost the evolvement of FinTech (Finance Technology) and also many other sectors, like logistics, health care and education, with its distinctive characteristics: immutability, decentralization, transparency, etc. You may already heard of various terminologies of Blockchain, like distributed ledger and consensus; however, do you eager to enrich your knowledge and even showcase your experience in Blockchain to employers by learning how to build a Blockchain application and understanding how it works. A FinTech Lab is here to serve. FinTech Lab To equip our students with hands-on experiences in (permissioned) Blockchain, a FinTech Lab is setup in Student Computer Centre (SCC) with computers equipped with the required runtime and tools for (permissioned) Blockchain application development. Walking through the training materials (see section Training & resources), you are able to develop and deploy a Blockchain application for Letter of Credit with IDE and Composer.

Gitlab Service for Research

Gitlab is a commonly used on-premise web-based DevOps (development + operation) lifecycle tool for software development. To keep abreast of the trend, we provide researchers with on premises git repository as an alternative for storing code base (Ide integration, e.g. Rstudio) and implementing software project management. To start your project with GitLab, please make prior registration here.

Hardware Maintenance Support

The University centrally co-ordinates maintenance services for registered PC systems and their peripherals of departments with vendors to achieve cost-effectiveness. Prior registration is required before maintenance services will be provided. The following accessories of the registered PCs are currently covered under Hardware Maintenance Support scheme: mouse and keyboard RAM, hard disk, and motherboard monitor Please call the service hotline at 2601 6466 for maintenance services.

Helpdesk and Desktop Support

Helpdesk Support If you encounter problems when using the University’s IT services, you are welcome to contact our IT HelpCentre for assistance. You may visit us in person at Room M201 of Li Ka Shing Tower (Block M) or submit your help request via the IT Online ServiceDesk (https://www.polyu.edu.hk/itservicedesk). You may also contact us via the following channels stated below.   Desktop Support covers areas related to: provision of standard windows images with common software security hardening for all staff desktop PC and department's computer laboratory computers software deployment and regular patches for all domain managed PCs

High Performance Computing Support Services

In line with the University’s emphasis on applied research activities, shared servers, disk storage and common software on the academic and research computers and efficient technical support will continue to be made available to students. We also provide support for the development of communities of practice and to establish high performance computing facilities which provide a shared service for big data centric research and build capability within the University.

IoT Data Provisioning and Data Visualization Service

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a rapidly evolving and expanding collection of diverse devices and wearables that interact with the edge devices as well as Cloud applications. With IoTs data integration and growth in computing and storage capabilities on Cloud, the barriers to achieve real time monitoring and tracking on environment and activities become much lower to allow such application to expand to higher education campus. A shared IoT infrastructure is established with the components to facilitate the adoption of IoT technologies in research projects and administrative operation of the University: A private LoRaWan network infrastructure covering the open areas of the campus A data collection and provisioning infrastructure for collecting telemetry data from edge devices irrespective of the location of the devices and provisioning the collected data to external database A data visualization platform for users to analyse the collected data with dashboards Near-to-realtime alert can be generated based on anomalies detected from edge devices Edge devices can be controlled via the IoT infrastructure to perform corresponding actions based on the telemetry data or open data There are some use cases showing how departments leverage the IoT infrastructure and related services to achieve their operational need or research project objectives.