Practical Matters: How to Access Your Office Computer Files Remotely

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program

Happy Labor Day! I hope you enjoyed your day off, because we don't have any more holidays until October -- and then the Academic Calendar gets a little screwy. But I'll talk about that in another post!

For now, I wanted to share with you one of THE most important and useful tips someone once shared with me -- the fact that we have access to computer files that we create on our office computers. And we don't have to resort to a flash or portable hard drive to do it. 

I know it's been hot, but savor these last summer days.

This means that if you forgot to upload that PowerPoint lecture to Blackboard, and now you're standing in front of your students wondering if they will take the same kind of notes without the usual visuals, you don't have to worry. You simply access your My Documents folder, locate the lecture, download it, and begin class.

OR, maybe you're working on a report at work and the clock hits 5 p.m. -- you have to go pick up kids and take them to soccer, karate, basket-weaving, etc. You think, I'll work on this later, after everyone's in bed. And then that time comes, four hours or so later, and you realize, *@#$?! I didn't save the document to my jump drive!   

No problem. You simply access your My Documents folder, locate the document, download it, and begin working. (For a short while -- you need your sleep, people, and that report can probably wait.)

How do you do that? you ask. Well, I'll tell you (as if you haven't figured that out yet from the title of this post). Far be it from me to encourage laboring over a weekend (and especially a holiday weekend at that) or into the wee hours of the night, but you should know that if you ever forget to email yourself a document or save it to a flash drive, there's still another way to access your files without driving several (or several + several more) miles back to your home campus.

First, type https://roam.sunysuffolk.edu/ into your web browser (or, you know, click the link and then bookmark it). You'll arrive at this:

Then, enter your MYSCCC login information. You'll be taken to this screen:

At this point you're asked to select the link to your home campus. It's important to note that if you were formerly an adjunct who began teaching on another campus, or even a full-time member transferring from another campus, your files are probably located under your original campus. (example: I transferred to the Eastern campus from the Ammerman campus a couple of years ago, and my files are still located under the Ammerman link.)

Click the link and be patient. I find that depending on the amount of traffic on the college server or the strength of the wifi signal at my own home or the coffee shop where I'm working, it can take a minute or two for something like this to appear: 

Use the arrows on the top right of the screen to scroll through the list until you find your MYSCCC Login. When you do, click the link, and you'll be directed to another link for your files ("My Documents").

Once you're in there, you can access anything that you created on your office computer and saved to your My Documents folder. (A word of warning: if you were working on a document and didn't save it to your My Documents folder, you'll be unable to open it up remotely.) You can even upload documents that you create at home to the school's server, and they'll be ready for you to access once you return to the office. All in all, this little tool is a pretty useful one to remember. Remote access to my office files has saved me time and stress on more than one occasion. May it do the same for you!