Oasis Upgrade

Welcome to the OASIS upgrade blog.  After many months of planning, developing and testing, we are ready and eager to upgrade OASIS student information system to version 8.3.  Beginning now, we will close access to the OASIS system and begin taking systems that work with OASIS off-line.

The upgrade process is a very involved project that includes offices on every USF campus and many areas within IT.  We work together to plan for the upgrade and the end results of these planning efforts is the upgrade project plan.  To give you an idea, the project plan for this OASIS upgrade is 11 pages long and has over 250 tasks to be completed.  If any one of those tasks has a dependency that must be completed before another task is started, that is noted as well.  Tasks are timed so that everyone is aware of the time their work will need to be completed. Each task is assigned to a person for completion.   As tasks are completed, emails are sent to the whole group to note the completion and the next task can then be started by the appropriate person.  

Our primary means of communication throughout the upgrade is through email.  I carefully selected the word “primary” as email is not our only means of communication; we have a contingency plan if there should be an issue with the email system.  Contingency planning is essential and an integral part of the upgrade process.  It is important to have contingency plans throughout the upgrade.  For example, at 6:00 PM and after all of the systems have been taken off-line and before the upgrade begins, there is a back-up of the entire OASIS system.  As the student system is upgraded, back-up “snap shots” are taken so that we can always have a copy of the work that is in progress.  The full system back-up and snap-shots are a comprehensive approach to capturing data pre-upgrade and in current state during the upgrade.

I will be back blogging around 6:00 PM after all systems have been taken off-line!