Conencting to the University VPN

To access some services within the university, you need to be on campus or connected to the university VPN.

Chromebook

First, you will need the AnyConnect extension. This can be installed from the play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cisco.anyconnect.vpn.android.avf&hl=en_GB&gl=US

You should see a page like this:

After using the "Add to Chrome" button and waiting for installation, you will see the page changes to look like this:

You don't have to go through the play store to launch the VPN software in future. Once set-up, you will just need to click in the notification area and enable it. For now, you can run it from the Play Store page, or use the search key on the Chromebook keyboard to find "AnyConnect", as in the screenshot below:

You will see that the AnyConnect client is installed but might take a little time (no more than a minute or two) to be ready to use for the first time:

When it's ready, you can click on the VPN icon in the notifications/settings tray accessed from the bottom-right corner of the screen:

Clicking on the VPN icon should give you the option to add a new VPN connection with the AnyConnect client.

When you see this screen, you can click to add a new connection:

This is where you enter the VPN server details. I've called it "Coventry University" here, which makes sense. You can call it something different, but ideally something that signifies what it connects to. The address must be anyconnect.coventry.ac.uk

This should now be saved so you can connect to it in future:

To activate the connection, select it from the list. Here you will be asked for credentials. These are your university username and password.

Once connected, you can see it shows in the AnyConnect dialog as well as in the notifications panel.

Windows

If you have AppsAnywhere, you will find Anyconnect installed.

If not, browse to https://anyconnect.coventry.ac.uk and follow the instructions.

Linux

The best option is to use the open-source client called "openconnect".

Install it with your package manager. For Debian-based systems, this will likely be sudo apt install openconnect and for Arch-like systems it will be sudo pacman -S anyconnect. Last time I used an RPM-based system it was Red Hat, before Fedora was a thing, so I won't try to advise on this. If anyone wants to send me the magic words, I will include them here.

Once installed, use sudo openconnect anyconnect.coventry.ac.uk.

You might be asked for your local password if you haven't recently used sudo. But after that, you will be asked for your university username and password. This will be the first part of your e-mail, before the @.