School of Health: Working Remotely



Resources & Links


Concordia VPN


Accessing Concordia Office/Lab Phones

  1. Access your voicemail from off-campus:
    • Dial 514-848-4220
    • Press *
    • Enter your ID (extension) followed by #
    • Enter your PIN (voice-mail password) followed by #
  2. Set up call forwarding from your office phone to a personal phone:
    • Log into Student Hub / Carrefour and select Accounts & Settings, then Phone Configuration. Follow the prompts until you reach the Cisco Unified Communications Self Care page. Then:
      • Log in using your netname and password.
      • Select "Call Forwarding"
      • To enable, check the box "Forward all calls to:"
      • Enter your forwarding phone number, adding 9 at the beginning (e.g. 95141234567).
      • To undo the forwarding, uncheck the box "Forward all calls to:".
  3. Software Phone (Cisco Jabber): Jabber a software phone option which lets you use an application on your PC (when connected to the VPN) as your work phone. This requires IITS to set it up for you first, which will require contacting the IITS Service Desk. More instructions are on the IITS website.

Accessing SOH Shared Folders (ie. Project Folders)

The School of Health's file server hosts folders for individual research projects at the School of Health (restricted in access to student's of the project PI) and for individual users who are conducting research at SOH. These shares are accessible over the SMB protocol (also commonly referred to as CIFS or Samba).


Connect to your Windows computer at Concordia

  1. Remote Desktop Connection (RDP)

    If you want to use an on-campus machine as if you were sitting in front of it and have it work seamlessly, this is the right choice.

    Do not use this is if you want to join an existing session that another user is logged into (ie. a desktop support situation), or monitor an unattended analysis that you are preforming since this method will log out other users. For that it would be best to use a system like TeamViewer (see below).

    You will need to know the name of your computer (DEVICE NAME; e.g. PERFORM-F1BEBX or SOH-GJ34I1). To begin:

    Note that your on-campus PC must be powered on and connected to the network. When you are done, DO NOT SHUT DOWN the computer you've remoted into. Log out ("sign off") the session instead.

    If the computer is your personal workstation (not a shared lab computer) you may simply disconnect your session by closing the RDP window (you will remain logged in with an inactive session).

    From your Windows PC at home:

    1. Connect to the Concordia VPN first
    2. Run "Remote Desktop Connection" - it is a built-in Windows tool: Use the Search Box in the task bar, or open the Start Menu => Start Typing "Remote Desktop Connection" which will give a shortcut to the program
    3. In the "Remote Desktop Connection" program, type the name of the PC (e.g. PERFORM-F1BEBX) you want to connect to (you might have to add ".concordia.ca" to the device name, i.e. PERFORM-F1BEBX.concordia.ca), and then select Connect
    4. Optionally, click "Show Options" to set other options, such as what resolution to run the remote desktop at, should you link local resources on your PC (clipboard, hard drives, printers) to the remote PC
    5. When prompted, provide your login credentials. Enter your Netname in the format "CONCORDIA\yournetname".

    On your Windows, Mac, Android, or iOS device at home:

    • Open the Microsoft Remote Desktop app (available for free from Microsoft Store, Google Play, and the iOS & Mac App Stores).
    • Add the name of the PC (e.g. PERFORM-F1BEBX) that you want to connect to (you might have to add ".concordia.ca", eg. PERFORM-F1BEBX.concordia.ca).
    • When prompted, provide your login credentials. Enter your Netname in the format "CONCORDIA\yournetname".
    • Select the remote PC name that you added, and then wait for the connection to complete.

    Reminder: DO NOT SHUT DOWN your machines after you are done using them remotely. We can't turn them back on without someone physically going to the lab location, and that might not be possible or could require a delay of a few days.


  2. TeamViewer

    We've been using TeamViewer here since it's a popular system that is easy to use. In order for this to work, you need to have Team Viewer already installed and running on your on-campus machine and the one you are using at home. Team Viewer does not come installed on School of Health's machines, so unless you know it has already been installed, please contact IT first to install it for you. You can download it on your home computer from the official site: https://www.teamviewer.com/

    1. After TeamViewer is installed on the machine at Concordia and your own computer, connect to the Concordia VPN
    2. Open up the software and copy the ID and password from the remote (on-campus) machine, represented by (A) and (B) in the picture below.
    3. Then open up Team Viewer on your computer at home and enter in the ID from (A) into (C) and afterwards it will ask you for the password from (B).

    Note: TeamViewer has become increasingly problematic from a licencing, cost, and security perspective. So it's use is being deprecated. We are no longer installing it on lab machines.


    3. Reminder: DO NOT SHUT DOWN your machines after you are done using them remotely. We can't turn them back on without someone physically going to the lab location, and that might not be possible or could require a delay of a few days.


Connect to a Linux computer at Concordia

There are 2 options that are recommended here. We also advise against using TeamViewer since it sometimes has issues with the Linux graphics card driver.

  1. With a Terminal
    • Connect to the Concordia VPN
    • Open a terminal, replace the "yourNetname" and the "computerHostname" with your own information for the following command ssh -XY yourNetname@computerHostname

    It will be the most reliable way to interact with your machine. The "-XY" flag will allow you to open graphical programs like Matlab / FSL.

  2. X2GO
    • X2GO should already be installed on your on-campus machine ahead of time. If it isn't, when you're physically at the computer, install the server component from https://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/download:start
    • Install the x2go client on your home computer: https://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/download:start
    • Connect to the Concordia VPN
    • For the "host" you enter your machine name (you might have to add ".concordia.ca" to the device name, ie CONU-1234.concordia.ca).
    • For the "login", use your Netname.
    • For the "session type", select LXDE.

      • That's all you need to set it up. Your session will show up on the right hand side of the application and you need to double click it and enter your netname password.


    3. Reminder: DO NOT SHUT DOWN your machines after you are done using them remotely. We can't turn them back on without someone physically going to the lab location, and that might not be possible or could require a delay of a few days.


Connect to a Macintosh computer at Concordia

There are 2 options here:

  1. Mac's Screen Sharing

    The Instructions to do so are quite lengthy, they are broken into 3 parts and described in details in the following links.

  2. Team Viewer
    • The instructions are the same as the Windows instructions above.

    3. Reminder: DO NOT SHUT DOWN your machines after you are done using them remotely. We can't turn them back on without someone physically going to PERFORM, and that might not be possible or could require a delay of a few days.


Please remember that School of Health Research Members and their students also have access to the School of Health's cluster if you require additional computational power. Feel free to contact thomas.beaudry@concordia.ca if you need more help!


Network and VPN Support

For support to install, login, or troubleshoot the VPN, contact IITS Service Desk at help@concordia.ca

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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