1. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop Outline: – CMS collaboration – User Support clients – User Support task definition – passive support: documentation – active support: solving problems – Our interests in support provided through EGEE The CMS User Support Kati Lassila-Perini CMS User Support Coordinator Helsinki Institute of Physics

2. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop CMS Collaboration The CMS User Support provides support for physics analysis. The CMS collaboration: – 3141 collaborators in the database – 1992 signing CMS publications – interest groups: – 1017 persons have marked “software” – 945 persons have marked “physics”. CMS collaborators who use GRID resources do it through CMS VO.

3. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop Typical CMS User Support client A physicist doing analysis AND developing analysis software – s/he wants to know the details of the software, such as – where a track comes from – with which algorithm it was reconstructed – what is the efficiency of the algorithm. – s/he does not want to know any computing details, such as – where the data is stored – which procedures provide the access to the data. Two different approaches are needed for computing and software issues.

4. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop User Support task definition Provide use support for analysis – Help desk, triaging of problems – organize and provide documentation – organize tutorials – provide guidance to user for trouble shooting analysis jobs – define what is needed for users to monitor and track jobs and data in the system – user accounts and VO management. Coordination based at CERN – team at CERN – involvement of SW developers – involvement of physicists – user support front-end at each T1/T2.

5. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop Passive and active support Passive support: – documentation – getting started – detailed software guide – monitoring and trouble shooting tools – making the existing documentation easily available. Active support: – help desk – savannah portal for user question – e-mail contact – hypernews forums. The better we organize the passive support, the less we need the active support – but it will always be needed for problem reporting.

6. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop The CMSSW documentation consists of – WorkBook: to get started and up to first analysis. WorkBook – Reference Manual - technical documentation: Reference Manual – class lists – brief description of content and purpose of each package – data formats – default configuration files and sequences. – CMS Offline Guide - the rest, i.e.: CMS Offline Guide – description of algorithms and software architecture – documentation which is too detailed for the WorkBook – instructions for analysis and validation. The CMSSW documentation

7. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop Active support A human interface: Help desk in a central location (CERN bld 40) A single entry point: the savannah cmssw portalthe savannah cmssw portal An e-mail contact: cms-user.support@cern.chcms-user.support@cern.ch De facto: most of the user questions go to the hypernews forumsthe hypernews forums – advantages: – quick reply, possibility for discussion, wide audience – disadvantages: – not scalable with a foreseeable increase of questions, no tracing, sometimes no reply, confusing for new users – moving computing questions from discussion lists to savannah – no need in discussion nor wide audience. ggus interface used but not widely advertised for end-users.

8. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop Challenges in problem reporting The solution to most of the user problems is easy – the difficulty lies in finding the right person who knows the solution (we have 77 sw subsystems with 2-20 or more packages each). The risk of a central problem reporting system is to add a tremendous overhead in comparison with direct e-mails or with discussion lists. The risk of direct e-mails and discussion lists is the difficulty to trace the already solved problems and to check that they were really solved. Both are needed, our solution: – to offer and advertise a single entry point with savannah for user questions – questions routed to group conveners (sw) or computing experts – to follow and monitor the discussion lists to pick up FAQ and documentation items.

9. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop CMS and ggus My users ≠ your users, your users = my experts. ggus is used by CMS collaborators. I have discussed the use of ggus with – CMS VO manager – data production team – data transfer team – people providing help with CRAB: – a Python program intended to simplify the process of creation and submission of CMS analysis jobs into a grid environment. Our interest is to use ggus when it provides that fastest way to the solution. We think we could increase the use of ggus by our experts.

10. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop ggus areas of interest to CMS Authorization/authentication Site specific aborts Data access – most frequent problems in stage out File transfer – limited number of contacts, problems solved directly. Information system – wrong site information given Workload management – can be very critical Monitoring Middleware Documentation

11. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop General comments on ggus The ticket submission form has “Types of problems” which are not of interest to CMS users – however, as ggus users in CMS are experts and not often end- users, I see no point of requiring customized submission form. It would be helpful to have easily available the list of people who would receive the tickets – if a ggus user knows that his usual contact will get the mail through ggus it will increase the probability of using the system. Minor comments: – it is slightly irritating to have to click OK in the User Idenfication Request on every move you do – it is easy to get lost in the acronym jungle (a good effort linked in docs, but what is COD, UTC, GOC…).

12. Kati Lassila-Perini 1.3.2007 EGEE User Support Workshop My expectations from this Workshop Get to know the people involved. Understand the User Support systems provided by EGEE. Map the CMS needs to the services provided. After the workshop I hope to be able to write a detailed list of use cases where the CMS collaborators can find the quickest solution through the EGEE User Support.