How RC Staff Approve a Pending Account Request

Introduction

This page is intended to guide Research Computing staff in processing account requests from users.

Since 2020 the account application process as well as the approval workflow for these accounts has been paper-less. Approvals and other required input is therefore gathered electronically from several stakeholders including Research Computing staff, PI's, Director Research Computing, the Export Control Office, and IT. In this document we concern ourselves only with how RC staff approves any given account request.

RC Role in Workflow

Note that currently RC interacts with any given request either at one or two different stages of the the workflow, depending on whether the applicant is internal or external. For internal applicants, RC staff simply performs a sanity check on the contents of the application and approves it if all looks OK; this is the sole interaction with internal requests.

For external applicants, on the other hand, there are two interactions: the first is the sanity check on the contents, while the second interaction requires RC to verify the affiliation of the applicant (approve if affiliation is confirmed, or reject otherwise).

Internal Applicants

Internal (TAMUQ) applicants require only a review and sanity check of the application data fields. After the review, approval (or rejection) is usually granted from within the ServiceNow portal. Typically an approver will create a filter within ServiceNow in order to list all pending workflow tasks in one place (as seen below):

Each row in this listing represents a pending action or decision to be taken for a given request. Some rows can be for internal requests while others are for external requests; all would be listed here. In order to take an action on a particular request, the RC staff must click on the link for the appropriate task. Once the intended task details page is open, here is how the request shall be approved:

If the request were to be rejected, one would instead select the "Closed Cancelled" value from the dropdown list for the State field seen in the screenshot above.

External Applicants

Applicants who are not enrolled in coursework at TAMUQ or are not on TAMUQ payroll would normally be classed as external research collaborators. Even among external applicants, there are two types: (a) those who belong to institutes with which TAMUQ has an agreement on the use of TAMUQ HPC resources (HBKU, Qatar University) and (b) those who belong to any other local or foreign institution. External users of the first type may obtain accounts without having to formally collaborate/participate in research with a TAMUQ Principal Investigator (PI), while those of the second type must list a TAMUQ faculty member as their PI.

First Interaction with Request

The first RC interaction with all external applications is a kind of verification where the application is checked for completeness and correctness. For instance, do the telephone number and email address look valid? Are valid copies of a passport and CV attached to the application? Is the research description sufficiently detailed? If the application is for an account renewal, did the user provide citations of publications that benefited from raad2 in the past.

If all appears good, the RC staff can simply mark the relevant task as "Closed Complete" in the servicenow portal. This effectively clears the request to proceed to the next stage of the workflow. If, on the other hand, corrections or improvements need to be made to one or more fields of the application request, RC staff need to communicate via email with the applicant to seek additional information or confirmation. Once the required modifications are made, the task is marked with a status of "Closed Complete". If for some reason a rejection is to be pursued, the task must instead be marked as "Closed Cancelled".

The interface used for this action is identical to the one illustrated in the section above.

Second Interaction with Request

Apart from other approvals, the institutional affiliation of certain external applicants must also be verified, and this therefore constitutes a distinct stage in the workflow. At this stage of the workflow, a request can only gain approval if the applicant's institutional link has been verified by RC. If such a link cannot be verified, a rejection is earned instead.

Here again, the approver should maintain a filter to list all such pending approvals on a single page within ServiceNow. When the time comes for an approval or rejection, one must click on the

[ under construction ]

Which Applicants Require Verification?

External applicants who are not collaborating with a TAMUQ PI need to have their affiliation verified. On the other hand, those who are collaborating with a TAMUQ PI don't need to go through this verification. In such cases the burden of "knowing" and vouching for the applicant rests with the PI herself.

How to Verify Applicant Affiliation

Some external applicants belong to institutions with which TAMUQ has agreements on the use of our HPC resources. HBKU and Qatar University are two such institutions. We have an understanding with these institutions on how to verify the status of their members when they apply for accounts with us. Each institute or unit delegates an individual to liaise with RC staff for the purpose of verifying applicant affiliation status. Here are the delegates we deal with currently:

Verification involves the RC staff emailing the appropriate delegate, asking about the status of the applicant with the delegate's institution or unit. Here is a sample email message sent to one of the delegates:

Subject: approval request for QU HPC Cluster account applicant

Dear Maha,
 
We currently have the following applicant awaiting approval for an account on the HPC Cluster.  Kindly confirm that this individual is employed by or enrolled at QU at this time and that you deem this request to be genuine.
 
Name:               Jane Smith
Email:              jane.smith@qu.edu.qa
Role:               Research staff
Project title:      Novel Green Chemicals for  Inhibition of Corrosion and scale formation in Oil and Gas Fields
Supervisor:         Dr. John Doe
 
Thank you.

Regards,
RC Staff

Ref: RITM0044129

Specifically in the case of students from QU, we use the following format for the verification email:

Subject: approval request for QU HPC Cluster account applicant

Dear Maha,
 
We currently have the following applicant awaiting approval for an account on the HPC Cluster.  Kindly confirm that this individual is employed by or enrolled at QU at this time and that you deem this request to be genuine.
 
Name:               Jane Smith
Email:              jane.smith@qu.edu.qa
Role:               Student
QU ID number:       012345678
Project title:      Novel Green Chemicals for  Inhibition of Corrosion and scale formation in Oil and Gas Fields
Supervisor:         Dr. John Doe
 
Thank you.

Regards,
RC Staff

Ref: RITM0044131

Note that QU student applicants are prompted (on our account application form) to submit their QU ID numbers. This has been done upon the request of the QU delegate as it helps him more easily identify students and verify their enrollment status.

Here is yet another example of an email to the QCRI delegate:

Subject: approval request for QCRI HPC Cluster account applicant

Dear Anastasios,

We currently have the following applicant awaiting approval for an account renewal on the HPC Cluster.  Kindly confirm that this applicant is affiliated with QCRI and that you deem his request to be legitimate.

Name:            Jane Smith
Email:           jsmith@hbku.edu.qa
Role:            Research Staff
Supervisor:      John Doe
Project title:   Accounting for cryptic relatedness between subjects with no genotype data across families

Thank you!
RC Staff

Ref: RITM0044836