You may have been affected by some issues with our University systems over the last week, especially if you’ve been trying to check your timetables or have been waiting for your course enrolment updates.
We’d like to apologise to any students who were affected by these issues, as it’s not the experience we’d like you to have when starting or returning to your studies.
Our returning students will know that there have been some changes from previous years, so let’s break down what’s going on.
What’s happened?
In June, the University experienced a cyber-incident that meant we had to take some of our key systems offline.
Our teams have been working all summer to restore our services, but our digital infrastructure is huge and there are still issues with systems not updating as quickly as we’d expect, or communicating with each other in the way they should.
Timetabling and course unit enrolment
We have been facing some issues for small group teaching. The original problem which was delaying these activities appearing on your timetable has now been resolved, but there may still be a slight delay while Schools catch up on outstanding allocations to classes.
All personal timetables are now up to date and refreshing as normal. If you are enrolling on or leaving a course unit, this will be reflected on your timetable overnight.
To help our staff with the high volume of enquiries they are receiving, we ask that you do please check back in the following morning before getting in touch.
Attendance monitoring for students on Student Route visas
You may have heard that international students on Student Route visas are required to check in at our Hubs twice a week, or you may be affected by this yourself. While students could previously do this online, our checking-in process is currently more manual than we would like due to the cyber incident.
The University sponsors Student Route visas and there are strict requirements from UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), that we must follow to demonstrate that a student is fulfilling the conditions of their visa. Without an online solution, students have been asked to physically present their ID cards for swiping.
We are doing all we can to make the checking-in process as smooth as possible, and are working hard to identify how we can make the process simpler for our students. However, even when we are able to put in place a new technical solution, there are likely to be some in-person check-ins due to UKVI visa requirements.
Students affected by this have been emailed directly and can contact their School for support. More information on the process can be found on the Visa check-in support page.
Your student services
We are also upgrading My Manchester, the central hub for our online student services following the cyber incident, but you can still access everything you need via direct links.
We suggest you bookmark the page above, which also has further information should you have issues logging into any of these services.
Restoring all our systems continues to be an incredibly complex task and we’d like to thank all our students for being patient with us as we get our services back to running smoothly. We’ll keep you updated in the weekly student newsletters.