Drive can be used to work individually or collaboratively on documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and more. Google File Stream can be used to backup and remotely access files on your desktop, laptop, phones, and other devices. The Southwestern community has unlimited Drive storage.

Go to Drive

Helios is a Southwestern storage server for students, faculty, and staff that houses home directories, files, and sometimes websites. Helios can be accessed from your office, laptop, lab, classroom, or your favorite coffee shop. You get 600MB of space. Helios is great for storing homework, projects, research, etc.

Upon logging into a Southwestern computer you will be automatically connected to your Helios storage.

• For Windows, there will likely be an H: drive labeled with your username.
• For Macs, the drive will be located on your desktop and will be labeled with your username.

Helios can be accessed from off-campus by using FTP software or browser extensions. We recommend FileZilla.

1. Download and install FileZilla
2. Open FileZilla
3. Fill in the QuickConnect bar at the top
   1. Address: sftp.southwestern.edu
   2. User:         (your username)
   3. Password: (your password)
   4. Port:          (leave blank)

Colleague is a web tool for storing, viewing, and modifying data about Southwestern students, faculty, and staff. Most departments rely on Colleague data in one form or another.

Colleague access is restricted based on job type/function and requires the approval of both IT and your supervisor. If you lack permissions required for your job type/function please contact your supervisor and the Infodesk. To request access to Colleague, complete the Colleague Access Request and Application document and return to Administrative Computing. Completion of the application requires you to review the Ellucian Security and Access Policy.

For security reasons, Colleague requires a separate user account and can only be accessed from on-campus. If you require off-campus access you can ask your supervisor to request VPN access for you.

Contact the Infodesk

Informer is a useful web tool for Southwestern administration to view and report against Colleague records.

Go to Informer

The Data Cookbook is a tool for centralizing, documenting, and viewing Colleague data definitions. This greatly simplifies the process of understanding existing reports and creating new reports. Data definitions are maintained by the Administrative Computing department and can be useful for any Colleague user.

Go to the Data Cookbook