We’ve recently announced some scheduled maintenance being performed on the Elucidat app on the 26th of March 2022. Whilst we believe there will be relatively low impact despite the scale of the work, we wanted to answer a few additional questions we thought people might have.
What are we doing?
This period of scheduled maintenance will upgrade the databases that sit behind the Elucidat app to the latest, most secure version, as well as optimise them to allow us to continue to service the growing number of learners we are seeing engage with our customers’ courses.
What does this involve?
To perform this upgrade, we will essentially be creating an already upgraded copy of everything behind the scenes, and then switch each part of the app over to use this new store of data. No existing data will be lost in the switch over, and the change should be relatively seamless.
What might I see happening on the day?
We’ve engineered this upgrade to have as little impact as possible. For each service we switch over there will be a predicted 5 to 10 minutes where this particular part of the service won’t be available.
For example, when we switch the login services over, authors will not be able to log in during this time. Other parts of the app will continue to work.
Later, when we switch over the services behind learner tracking, you will see 5 to 10 minutes where learner progress will not be tracked.
This pattern of intermittent downtime will continue on a service by service basis until the upgrade is complete. As we are doing this one service at a time, there should be no period where the app is down completely, and we’ve scheduled it over a weekend to reduce impact further.
What if I use the API to manage courses and releases?
At certain points, the API may be unavailable entirely, returning errors. At other times, the API may not carry out the requests that have been asked of it.
What do I need to do?
The requirements of each customer will differ, so there is no one-size-fits-all advice we can give here - however, it may be prudent to advise authors and learners that some intermittent downtime will be seen in different parts of the app on the day, and to avoid any mission critical work on this Saturday.
What does this mean for our learners?
At certain points during the day:
- Learners may be unable to load courses.
- Their progress may not be saved.
- Content within the course may not load.
- Data for a learner may not be recorded in Elucidat.
- Data for a learner may not be sent to a relevant LRS.
If there are any questions on the above, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your Customer Success Manager or contact support@elucidat.com prior to the changeover date, where we will be happy to help answer any questions you may have.