Users and Services Portal Handbook

# 2. Main concepts

In order to start using Users and Services Portal, it is recommended to get familiar with a few key concepts employed in the system.

# User

Users and Services Portal's user is a person who registered to the portal accepting all regulations and got access to the functionality
offered by the portal.

# Affiliation

Affiliation assigns a Users and Services Portal's user to a specific group of users with different settings.

There is a couple of affiliation types available:

  • Scientific affiliation - for independent research workers of Polish research and development institutions.
  • Students affiliation - for students of Polish public universities,
  • Commercial affiliation - for individual customers.
  • Institutional affiliation - for PSNC staff.

Affiliation is a way of confirming that a user can perform certain operations like, for example, using a specific offer and purchasing a service. Specific because, for example, an offer for students can only be used by a student, so it must have a student affiliation.

# Space

Space is a central object in Users and Services Portal that groups users in order to get access to services.

Spaces have types that are closely related to affiliation types, in the way that a user holding a certain affiliation type can create a space of corresponding type.

Consequently, we have the following space types:

  • Scientific space - for independent research workers of Polish University or Research Institutions that are listed in the POLON database, and holding PhD. Free of charge for employees of the institution with a signed PIONIER contract. Report of results required with scientific publications.
  • Students space - for students of Polish public universities. Free of charge for students of universities with a signed PIONIER agreement.
  • Commercial space - for individual customers. Payable by credit card based on the price list.
  • Institutional space - for PSNC staff. For PSNC staff for realisation of tasks related to PSNC activities.

# Product

Product is a concrete item that is offered by the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, like HPC resource or Cloud resource.

# Offer

Offer represents available services that can be requested in a selected space in order to obtain access to products.

# Service

Service is result of acquiring the offer. It is a value, like computing time, data space, etc., which is used and consumed by space's users.

# Roles in Space

Members of a Space can have different roles:

  • Owner - a member who owns the space,
  • User Admin - a member, who can invite new users to the space, as well as remove or change the roles of existing space members,
  • Financial Admin - a member who is allowed to see billings and perform settlement activities in the portal,
  • End user - a regular member of space, who is able to use Space's services.

Note: for Students spaces, the management of users and their roles is disabled.

# Regulations

Terms and conditions related to the usage of Users and Services Portal for User Management and Access to Services.
The regulations are available here (opens new window).

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