– good practices and recommendations

This document is intended to provide students (and their supervisors) involved in an interdisciplinary project with useful information for good practices in IT management of their project and team, while respecting EPFL institutional rules.

Different needs have been identified for MAKE projects that are specific to this category of challenging educational projects. For each of these needs, we try to provide recommendations on the tools the teams can use. For each tool we specify the strengths and weaknesses/warnings to consider helping projects make an informed decision about the tools they will use.

Interdisciplinary projects are well known by the student community at EPFL today. These projects, also known as “MAKE projects” regroup students from different disciplines working together towards a common goal. The AVP-Education is supporting these projects with financial support (partial), access to infrastructures like makerspaces of the SPOT and SKIL. Each project is supervised by a professor and a coordinator.

The main differences between interdisciplinary projects and more classical student projects are the following:

• The number of students in a single team: interdisciplinary teams tend to involve 20 to 100 students. Therefore, they need to organize themselves using collaborative tools to communicate.
• The lifespan of a MAKE project goes from an entire academic year including the summer (12 months of work). Sometimes a project can even be spread over several years. Therefore, knowledge management becomes very important for the student teams.
• Specific softwares: Because interdisciplinary projects usually involve building a physical prototype, they also require the use of specific software licenses not used in other “typical” EPFL projects. They sometimes require high computational power as well.

In other words, interdisciplinary projects have similar needs to those of a small company (PME).

MAKE projects have the following IT needs

1. Use of a messaging service for effective team communication, accessible from multiple devices. Size of MAKE teams is inciting students to use collaborative messaging services
2. Use a collaborative shared cloud solution to store documents and work with multiple team members on a same document simultaneously, from multiple devices. Size of MAKE teams is inciting students to work with collaborative shared drive for knowledge building and project management
3. Be able to generate polls and forms to quickly collect feedback of multiple team members or multiple people outside their team
4. The need to access specific softwares not available on typical computers at EPFL. Example: CAO design, simulation, Building VR environments, Media content production
5. If students work with connected objects - Internet of Things (IoT) - the need to access a specific network for IoT. Instead of a sharing wifi point access from a private smartphone, which is forbidden on EPFL campus
6. Archive documents (long term storage need). Because MAKE projects are spanning over multiple years, the need to document the knowledge acquired is necessary
7. Access computational power to train AI/ML algorithms

We identified different solutions you can use to answer these different needs. For each proposed solution, we are providing info/suggestions and strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths

• Free for MAKE interdisciplinary projects recognized by EPFL
• Similar functionalities than slack (most adopted solution by MAKE teams) for messaging service. Possibility to organize communication channels for subteams etc..
• Microsoft teams is compatible with groups.epfl.ch, meaning that only the students officially registered in a project could access the team workspace (well embedded in the EPFL infrastructure).
• Someone from the DSI is available to train students on this tool to explain how to use it and answer questions
• Data are stored in Switzerland (on the Azur cloud, which can be considered as internal to EPFL) so this solution is adapted to handle sensitive documents. If documents leak, there will be a way to understand what happened and there will be support.

• Comment: There is an algorithm to transform google docs into Microsoft document to help transitioning for a google drive (g-doc to word, g-sheet to excel, g-slides to powerpoint) to help you transition to sharepoint (the microsoft version for collaborative cloud which works with microsoft team). You need to contact 1234@epfl.ch to ask for this service.

• If you plan to use teams next academic year: contact Julien Delisle

Weaknesses

• Students in MAKE projects don’t necessarily know how to use teams, the few trials that we have made with students seem to conclude that this solution is less intuitive than other non-supported solutions. However, with training, these issues can be mitigated.
• This solution does not allow the creation of forms to collect feedback and does not allow to quickly generate polls. However, the google workspace will still exist as an EPFL tool and can answer this need.

Strength

• The service is free
• The data are encrypted and are stored at EPFL, making this solution very robust to exchange sensitive information and official EPFL documents
• Easy to quickly generate polls but not forms (however for forms, google drive still is an EPFL solution)
• Note: you can find all the information about the way matrix works here : https://matrix.epfl.ch

Weaknesses

• It requires most team to adopt a new tool, even thoug this tool is very similar to slack and discord

Strength

• Most teams are using Slack and are familiar with the tool already
• Easy to quickly generate polls (easy to ask the team to vote on something) but not forms (however for forms, google drive still is an EPFL supported solution)

Weaknesses

• Slack is not free (the free version erases messages after 30 days)
• Data are not stored in Switzerland so not adapted for sensitive documents (especially if the project collaborates with EPFL laboratories and they are using advanced technical documentation or anything that could be associated with institutional secrecy - secret function)
• EPFL does not support slack as an official solution. Therefore, supervisors of a MAKE project and/or students in the committee of an association will be responsible in case of a leak of data

Strength

• Most teams are using Slack already and Discord being very similar, the teams are familiar with this kind of tool
• The service is free
• Easy to quickly generate polls but not forms (however for forms, google drive still is an EPFL solution)

Weaknesses

• Same as slack except the service is free

Strength

• Most teams are using Google Drive already and are familiar with the tool
• Generating forms is extremely easy
• Managing access (with restrictions) to documents (read only / upload / edit etc..) is intuitive for students and for other stakeholders inside and outside EPFL

Weaknesses

• The service is limited in size, however temporary exceptions for the existing projects - and for team drives only - can be asked (contact 1234@epfl.ch). If you already benefit from an exception for your team drive, there is no plan to terminate this exception in a close future unless the project terminates
• Data are not stored in Switzerland so not adapted for sensitive documents (especially if the project collaborates with EPFL laboratories and they are using advanced technical documentation or anything that could be associated with institutional secrecy - secret function). Therefore, supervisors of a MAKE project and/or students in the committee of an association will be responsible in case of a leak of data

Strength

• This service is less restricted on size – storage limited starts at 250GB extensible on demand up to 1 TB
  • Note: It is a collaborative drive meaning that large files and archives must not be stored on sharepoint, only collaborative documents on which many students are working on.
• It is important at the end of every year to archive unused documents (see the proposed solution later)
• Data are stored in Switzerland so it is adapted to handle and store sensitive documents
• This solution is supported by EPFL
• Link between share point and Microsoft teams is offering an all-in-one solution for a messaging service and a collaborative drive
• Link with groups epfl is implemented meaning that only students officially registered in a project can access the share point (no need to handle access to the drive to new students)
• Comment: There is an algorithm to transform google docs into Microsoft document to help transitioning (g-doc to word, g-sheet to excel, g-slides to powerpoint).
• If you plan to use teams next academic year: contact Julien Delisle

Weaknesses

• Managing access (with restrictions) to documents (read only / upload / edit etc..) might not be as intuitive as g-drive at first, but training is possible and will mitigate this

Strengths

• Easy to generate a wide variety of forms
• Easy to restrict access to a form only to people at EPFL
• Easy to collect answers in a google sheet well organized

Weaknesses

• Difficult to know what is acceptable to do in terms of privacy because data are stored outside of Switzerland. Collecting email addresses for example could be sensitive depending on the subject of a given poll.

We don’t know if it’s possible to generate forms with Microsoft teams. However, add-ons may exist like “Survey monkey”, but usability must be tested

A solution already exists and is available for MAKE interdisciplinary projects. This solution offers a portfolio of software ranging from CAO design, simulation, media content creation, virtual environment design etc.. and is described here: https://make.epfl.ch/remote-pc

Strength

• The solution offers a wide range of different software that is necessary to realize projects. These software solutions are not always available in typical computer rooms at EPFL

Weakness

• The MAKE team is maintaining this solution with no backup or support from central services, making the solution quite fragile and the support available to students limited. We ask the different teams to keep in mind that we are doing our best with very limited resources, and we might have delays in responding to demands.
• Not ideal - administratively speaking - for students because they have to validate the conditions of use of software before being able to use it.
• For non-supported software, the projects are responsible for ensuring the proper use of a chosen solution. For example, for 3D experience from Dassault system, we provide only a client on our machines but if a project is using this tool, the project supervisor must ensure proper use of it including being careful with institutional secrecy.

As it is forbidden to share an access point using smartphones on the campus (in order to connect an object/micro-controller to internet) a solution has been put in place by the MAKE team and is available for MAKE interdisciplinary projects. All information are provided here https://make.epfl.ch/tools/iot-wifi

Strengths

• Works better than sharing connection from a smartphone
• Respects EPFL rules related to safety

A solution is implemented providing free storage space used on their collaborative drive right now. See the solution there: make-archives.epfl.ch This solution uses nextcloud that communicates with the S3 server of EPFL. This long-term storage solution is not a collaborative tool but will provide teams with necessary space to clean their collaborative drive and still being able to access knowledge built by previous teams.

Strengths

• The fees will be taken care of by MAKE so it will be free for the different teams.
• As it is stored on the EPFL network, sensitive documents can be placed on this cloud
• The server architecture and topology is made for long term storage
• The storage limit is set at 10 TB/team.

Weaknesses

• It can get a bit slow to upload documents on this cloud (3min for 1 GB on campus). Please stay patient during the upload. However, as it is not made for collaborative work, uploading speed should not be an important feature for this tool.

Two complementary solutions exist at EPFL, both are worth investigating (those services are paid services – with the u1 price for internal users, meaning only direct costs are invoiced). Bachelor and Master students can have some free credits :

• Scitas: https://www.epfl.ch/research/facilities/scitas/
• The research computing platform : https://www.epfl.ch/research/facilities/rcp/
• Contact : supportrcp@epfl.ch

The MAKE team does not have the knowledge to provide support or advice on this topic, it is advised to discuss it directly with the two entities mentioned.