News
- Microsoft Sensitivity Labels. Starting April 21, 2025, UW will begin automatically applying sensitity labels to most MS Office files stored in Sharepoint and OneDrive. More info on this project can be found here.
- Mathematica 14.2.1. Starting April 2025, the UW Mathematica license server supports Mathematica version 14.2.1. More info on Mathematica can be found here.
- Website UW IT. On Tuesday, January 28, 2025, UW-IT officially launched it.uw.edu, phasing out the IT Connect brand and rebranding them as Information Technology.
- IT Equipment Order Form Physics. Starting December 6, 2024, Physics employees should use this form to order IT equipment.
- Zoom. Zoom will be requiring a minimum software version of 5.17.5 as of November 2, 2024. Open your Zoom client on your workstation to check the version and/or to update to the newest version.
- New Intranet / Knowledge base for PACS.
Support Options
For the quickest response to computer support issues (hardware or software) send email to one of the following addresses:
- Physics - help@phys.washington.edu
- Astronomy - help@astro.washington.edu
- eScience Institute - help-datasci@phys.washington.edu
- Institute for Nuclear Theory - help-int@phys.washington.edu
Our first-tier technical support schedule is Monday-Friday, 8:00AM to 5:00PM. The Help Desk is monitored by all members of the PACS team. We will respond to your ticket within one business day, and try to solve all support issues within two business days.
When opening a help ticket, remember to provide as much of the following as possible:
- Your Full Name
- Your Location (Office Number / Lab)
- Contact Info (Email and Phone)
- Your Computer Name (if you know it)
- Description of the Problem (including Operating System if applicable)
For others means of support you can try the following
- PACS Website - Intranet / Knowledge base for Astronomy and Physics.
- UW IT Connect - For Help with NetID, phones, Email and many other online resources.
- UW IT Service Status - UW-IT notices, eOutages and high priority incidents.
- Personal Computers
- Mathematica - For more information on the software package Mathematica.
History
The Physics and Astronomy Computing Services group (aka PACS) services the departments of Physics and Astronomy as well as the Institute for Nuclear Theory (INT). This group was started in the early 90's when these three units realized that combining funding for IT under one group provided the following benefits:
- Provided a larger-scale, managed IT environment
- Reduced overhead costs for staffing
- Combined buying power
PACS now also supports the eScience institute.
Mission
The PACS mission is to increase the efficiency and collaborate closely in the academic, research, and administrative functions of the units we serve. PACS uses its extensive academic IT experience to execute the strategy set forth by the faculty of these units, within the fields of information technology, data management, high-performance computing, software development, and business intelligence.
2024 Goals
- Provide outstanding customer support
- Continue to document our systems
- Update our PACS intranet
- Cross-train team members to provide better day to day support
- Keep overhead costs down by:
- Standardizing desktop, laptop and printing platforms
- Centralizing purchasing of IT equipment
- Centralizing computing and storage services by using internal and external service providers