Typically system downtime extends through late afternoon on Saturday, however because the size and complexity of this particular upgrade is somewhat less than other recent upgrades, we hope to restore access sooner if all goes well, however we cannot precisely predict the time access will be restored. This will impact both Banner and BannerWeb.
This announcement is meant to provide ample advanced warning of the system's unavailability for planning purposes. An additional announcement will be sent next week just prior to the upgrade, as a last-minute reminder.
If you rely on Banner for access to College data and/or are a regular user of Banner, please read on for additional information:
GENERAL UPGRADE INFORMATION:
Approximately twice a year, Sungard, the company responsible for the Banner system, releases a major software upgrade. In general, we apply these upgrades about 6 months after their release. In general, we have two major upgrades each year which usually results in the system being unavailable over part of a weekend. Our last major upgrade which required system downtime was: August 2006.
What might I notice as different? This upgrade does not include significant changes to look/feel or navigation within Banner. The majority of users should not notice anything different with Banner following this downtime. This upgrade remedies issues with and/or improves some existing functionality but in highly specialized portions of Banner that the majority of users do not use. Users impacted by these changes have likely been involved in testing to date and are already aware of any changes to expect. Many of the changes are more 'behind the scenes' in that they are meant to respond to regulatory requirements, fix defects, etc. If you encounter any problems using Banner after the upgrade, please contact the Helpdesk.
With this upgrade we will continue our previously established practice, Friday downtime. As the size and complexity of our Banner installation at Middlebury has grown, we’ve found it necessary and prudent to consider some scheduled downtime as part of the upgrade schedule. Initially, we had one or two modules running. Today, we have six or more modules, depending on how you count them. This means that much more to upgrade and test. And certainly, we’d rather have some scheduled Friday downtime, than some unscheduled Monday downtime. We will have a full day of downtime, beginning at 6 a.m. EST on Friday, April 13th. With this and all future downtime, the date for such an outage is announced in advance, and the selection of the date is done in consultation with all major offices. Having a day of downtime for a major upgrade is a common practice at other institutions running Banner.
You may wonder what options you have for accessing data during the downtime. For those of you familiar with running reports, our reporting database, will be available for reporting during the downtime. The reporting database contains data approximately 24 hours old. Our pre-production database will also be available. It contains data approximately a week old. In general, if you are looking for fairly general data—such as an address or phone number, more than likely, one of these sources will provide you the information you need. You may wish to run other hard-copy reports prior to the downtime for your reference. The Directory on the web site, is available and may provide the basic contact information you seek. If you have questions about where to access certain data, or your best course of action during the downtime, please contact Carrie Rampp, Area Director, LIS. 443-2451 or rampp@middlebury.edu.
You might ask, how do we assure the quality of the planned upgrade? Beginning in January, our testing teams, representing all functional areas of the college began reading about the upgrade, in preparation for full-scale testing which began in February. Each functional team, in a test environment, has attempted to replicate all critical processes to assure they are working properly prior to the upgrade. This requires hundreds of hours of effort, all leading up to a sign-off date for the upgrade. Once LIS staff have applied the upgrade, representatives from these same testing teams will again test critical functionality, prior to the system being made available again to the campus. Presently we are quite confident the upgrade will present no major issues. However, if you encounter an issue or question after April 13, please alert the Helpdesk so it can be further explored.
By all means, if you have questions that have not been answered by this message, do not hesitate to contact me.
Carrie Rampp
Area Director, LIS
802-443-2451
rampp@middlebury.edu