Remote (off-site) access to University resources

Please note: Staff should not process personal data (information about living individuals) on a computer that is not owned by the University. Exceptions to this are possible only with permission in writing from the Head of Department and the agreement of the University Secretary. Please see: Processing data off campus.

Electronic library resources and restricted web pages

The Off-site Proxy provides an easy way to access a large number of electronic library resources when you are working away from UoB sites. It has the significant advantage of allowing your computer to connect to resources as though you were working on-site. Setting up the proxy requires changing a setting in your browser and should only take a minute. Then to use the proxy all you have to do is enter your UOB username and password when you try to access a restricted page.

Once connected with the proxy, search for electronic library resources using MetaLib, the eJournals catalogue or the eBooks page. See electronic information sources for more details.  Further information is available on accessing electronic resources.

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Your University email account

For occasional email access from anywhere with a web browser use the Email tab in MyBristol, the University Portal. For heavy email users University you can download a copy of Mulberry for your home computer - it is quick, fully-featured, and pre-configured with the right settings for your mail account. If you prefer, you can use other email software (anything that supports IMAP). You'll need to set it up yourself and the Help Desk can't assist with any unsupported software.

• Download a copy of Mulberry

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• Email learning documents

File servers

The UoB virtual private network (VPN) provides a 'tunnel' to connect from off-site to the University so that your computer is placed on the University network and all your traffic flows via the University. Fileservers in your department may then be accessible.

Please note: when connected to the VPN all your Internet traffic is sent via the University (not just email, fileservers or whatever you wanted, but also anything going on in the background such as instant messaging or filesharing). To avoid problems you should disconnect from the VPN when you don't need it.

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• Accessing CUFS from the UoB virtual private network
• Accessing the H: drive from the UoB virtual private network

Your desktop computer

It is possible to connect to your on-campus desktop computer and access its desktop from off-campus locations. Please see the instructions on how to set this up.