GitHub at U-M Support

FAQ

  • What happens to my U-M GitHub access when I graduate or leave the university?

    When graduating or leaving the university, you will lose access to all U-M GitHub organizations you are a member of. You will retain access to your GitHub account and any repositories created under your account. If you wish to continue work with any U-M GitHub organizations, you will need to be invited as an outside collaboratorto any repositories you wish to access. Please contact the organization owners for access.

  • Do students need a Shortcode to access U-M GitHub?
  • If a student wants to join an existing U-M GitHub organization, they will not need Shortcode. They can be invited to the organization by the organization owner using their U-M email address or GitHub username.

  • If a student wants to create a new organization, they will need a Shortcode. Shortcodes are required for all organization creation or migrations.

  • What about advanced features not covered in GitHub enterprise?

    Rebilled, ITS will pass the costs on to you. Unlimited users can be added. There is a charge for minutes over 100,000 and charges for additional storage beyond 50GB.

  • What about ITAR/Regulated data?

    This is not covered in the initial project.

  • I want to collaborate with people at other institutions. What’s the best way for us to do that?

    Importing your organization into the umich enterprise gives you a number of benefits which you can share with collaborators. People who are part of your organizations will be required to have a umich.edu login. In order to collaborate with people at other organizations who do not have a umich login, you’ll need to add those collaborators at the repo level.

  • Why do I need to give a Shortcode?

    GitHub offers some advanced features, including codespaces, action minutes, large storage, data transfer, and advanced security. While the Enterprise license unlocks these features for users of the service, these features are metered. When a unit incurs costs in these areas, we will rebill the costs to the Shortcode.

    As part of the enterprise license, U-M gets an allocation of action minutes and storage. Those will be allocated on a first come first serve basis per month. We will evaluate this allocation on a continuous basis to see if there are ways we can fairly distribute them to the university community. Given we are just launching the service, we will see how the service is adopted.

    If you do not wish to incur any additional costs, U-M offers shared linux and windows runner servers for building software.

  • My group does not have a Shortcode. What should I do?

    We are working with GitHub to set limits on a per organization basis to accommodate groups who do not wish to incur any extra charges. This feature is not available currently.

  • Is there any training offered?

    GitHub and YouTube have many videos featuring best practices. We are anticipating looking at hosting a best practices training this summer so you can learn more about how to take full advantage of GitHub. Sign up for our notify list to be informed.

  • My uniqname is already taken in GitHub. What should I do?

    Your username in GitHub does not have to be tied to your umich uniqname. You can append a number or letters at the end of your GitHub username if you are using your umich email address to authenticate. That is what weblogin, etc is looking for.

    GitHub users do not need to create a UM-specific account on GitHub, you can continue to use your existing account; simply add your umich.edu e-mail address to your account. It does not need to be a primary address on the account.

  • My organizations third-party integrations are having issues after migration to GitHub Enterprise. What should we do?

    We’ve had reports of some third-party GitHub integrations like Codacy or ZenHub experiencing issues after migrating an organization into the enterprise account. These integrations might need to be reset after migration, specific instructions will depend on the integration.

  • How do I use the ITS shared runners? 


    ITS provides shared self-hosted runners at no charge through the ITS Container Service. The following is an excerpt from a workflow that uses these runners:

    jobs:
    example-job:
    runs-on: [shared-linux-x64]
    container:
    image: ubuntu:latest
    steps:
    ...

    Use "runs-on: [nonprod-linux-x64]" to use the nonprod runners. You must specify some type of container image for your job.

    If you are already a U-M GitHub member, check out the example actions workflow using the shared runner.

    Visit Using self-hosted runners in a workflow for more detailed information on runner usage.