Communication channels

Email

  • You should keep up to date with our email.

  • Aalto email is Microsoft which isn’t great, but that’s life.

  • This extension that rkdarst made can delete the relevant Web Outlook cookies to prevent login loops.

  • When setting up the Microsoft two-factor authentication, you can use use a non-phone device and get a QR code that works with any TOTP device/program.

Calendars

  • You have a personal calendar as part of the Outlook. This is the official Aalto calendar

  • You are expected to keep it reasonably up to date with appointments, since we use it to find free times, etc.

  • Send calendar invites to keep people’s calendar in sync.

  • We have a “Science-IT” calendar which you can add (see onboarding) which appears alongside your calendar. This is used for things which people should know about, but is not appropriate to send out a calendar invite to everyone (it’s not something that everyone has to or probably will attend).

Chat systems

  • We use Zulip chat. Its specialty is organizing information.

  • Official getting started guide

  • rkdarst’s hints on managing too much information

  • Chat is for short term topics. It is great for quick talks, but:

    • It’s short term and not everyone can follow everything.

    • If you need rapid talking, consider moving to the Garage zoom room to talk.

  • Zulip topics allow you to follow what is most interesting to you.

  • Topics are very important, since it allows people to scan… topics… and see what to read. Try to make topics descriptive enough so that someone will know when they need to click.

  • You don’t need to follow everything unless you want. However, there are some important channels which you should always follow:

    • #science-it for everyone

    • #rse-internal for RSEs

    • #triton-admin for admins

    • Beyond that, follow what is relevant for your work. See the rkdarst blog post above for ideas on managing the effort.

  • If unreads get too long (for example after vacation), mark everything as read as read. Then you will see what stays active and you can scroll back of those topics to get caught up. You aren’t expected to follow-up on old chats after a break, but you should probably quickly browse the “inbox” and “recent topics” view.

  • Users can ask questions in the public channels in our chat. It’s good to answer but we don’t promise any guaranteed service level there.

  • Try to avoid private messages unless about a personal matter - it’s better to use our internal channels and good topics and allow everyone to learn from our questions.