Colleague Software Updates

Monthly Update Schedule:

This is a description of the usual process for software updates to the Colleague environments at Lewis & Clark College.  We have three Colleague environments.  Development refers to an environment used only by the Information Systems staff to develop new processes and check information before it goes out to users.  The Test environment is available for users to set up and test new processes before moving them to the Live (or production) environment.

Software updates to Colleague are installed on a three month cycle, at the beginning of each month.  This is a “rolling” process, with all three monthly activities being done each month.

Month 1 — On the first day of each month, a new software update group will be created and installed in the Development environment.  This group contains all software updates delivered by Ellucian in the previous month.  During the month, Information Systems staff review all updates for any impact on our custom process, impact on our business process, and make recommendations for testing by users.  If changes are needed to any custom processes due to any of the updates, InfoSys staff will make those changes and test them.

Month 2 — On the first day of the second month (one month after a software update group is installed in the Development environment and after any necessary changes have been made by Information Systems staff), the software update group will be installed in the Test environment.  Users will notified, and will have one month to test any of their processes that may be affected by any of the updates.

Month 3 — On the first day of the third month (one month after a software update group is installed in the Test environment and after necessary testing has been completed), the software update group will be installed in the Live environment and users will be notified.

Announcements with details of the software updates in the group will be emailed to lc-dug@lclark.edu when the group is installed in the Test and Live environments.  Dates may not be exact depending on weekends, schedule conflicts, illness, whether testing is completed on schedule, etc.

Exceptions to the above process may be year-end regulatory release, Financial Aid regulatory release, and critical updates, which may need to be installed sooner than the above schedule allows.  The above process is followed but on an accelerated schedule.

Data Refresh:

Data from the Live data will be moved to the Test environment every few months, or when requested. 

If you are not on the lc-dug mailing and would like to be added, contact infosys@lclark.edu.