Administrators
Each group account has a list of admins: SRCF users who manage the
account and its services. This includes access to the account in the
control panel, permissions to edit files inside
/societies/<groupname>, and receiving administrative email sent to
<groupname>-admins@srcf.net. It may also be used by an account’s
website to limit page access to current admins.
This list is the canonical definition of who is responsible for a group account, and is independent of any committees or roles in a University club or society that a group account on the SRCF may happen to represent.
Handover
We recommend that you keep your own handover documentation, covering what services and software a group account is using.
It is the responsibility of SRCF group account admins to keep their list of admins up-to-date, meaning both the appointment of their successors, and the removal of predecessors that should no longer have access.
SRCF system administrators will not process requests from users wishing to gain access to a group account, instead directing them to the account’s current admins to make their request.
Unmaintained group accounts
In order to maintain continuity of group accounts, we recommend keeping at least two admins at all times.
When a group account admin leaves the University without taking steps to retain access to their SRCF account (which includes emails to their membership address bouncing, or otherwise not responding to emails from the system administrators), they may be dropped from the list of admins, and their account suspended.1
A group with no admins is considered unmaintained, at which point some services (such as website hosting) will be suspended. If the group account is configured with a role email address, it may be contacted as a last resort, to inform the recipients of the situation and for them to nominate a stand-in admin and reactivate the site.
The SRCF has the responsibility as a data processor to prevent unauthorised access to personal data. If we’re unable to verify the handover of an unmaintained group account (for example, if a group account has no contactable admins and no role email to fall back to), we will not be able to provide access to its contents. As a user seeking access to such an account, generally this means you will have to register a new group account and start from scratch.
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If your account has been suspended for being uncontactable, you can reactivate it from the Control Panel. Note that you won’t automatically regain access to your group accounts – please contact the sysadmins to request these. ↩︎
Last modified on Saturday Sep 23, 2023 by Richard Allitt