UCAS maintenance schedule
Here you can find a schedule of the changes we have planned to our systems and more information about out technical processes.
Here you can find a schedule of the changes we have planned to our systems and more information about out technical processes.
We carry out monthly patching and maintenance to our systems to ensure they’re secure, resilient and to resolve any issues we become aware of. There are two regular levels of outages, below is a summary of the different types and what it means for our systems.
What we call it |
What it means |
Details of systems and their availability |
---|---|---|
All systems and services hosted in our HEP1, HEP2, and production environments are unavailable while maintenance takes place. |
Maintenance to HEP1 and HEP2 takes place between 08:00 – 18:00. Weekend production outages are between 18:00 on Friday until 23:59 Sunday.
|
|
A smaller number of our systems are updated across our UCAS Undergraduate, UCAS Conservatoires, and UCAS Teacher Training schemes. Note: UCAS Postgraduate is not affected by this outage. |
Between 18:00 on the Friday and 23:59 on the Sunday of the maintenance weekend, the following systems will experience service interruptions:
web-link for application processing, xml-link, and odbc-link. Avoid sending transactions to us between:
|
Any maintenance outside of these regular outages will be added to our patching and maintenance schedule, and details will be provided in the table below.
We try to give you as much notice as possible when carrying out maintenance as we appreciate the impact it may have. Below is our scheduled maintenance for 2024.
Month | When we'll be carrying out maintenance to: | ||
---|---|---|---|
HEP1 |
HEP2 |
Production Outage level will vary |
|
January 2024 | 5 January | 12 January | Postponed until February due to January equal consideration deadline |
19 January | 26 January | ||
February 2024 |
2 February | 9 February |
8/9/10/11 February partial outage In addition to the usual impact, web-link and xml-link will be unavailable from 07:00 – 11:00 on Saturday 10 February |
16 February | 23 February | 29 February 1/2/3 March partial outage | |
March 2024 | 1 March | 8 March |
22/23/24 March full outage |
15 March | 22 March | ||
29 March | |||
April 2024 | 12 April | 5 April | 25/26/27/28 April partial outage |
26 April | 19 April |
25 April:
|
|
May 2024 | 10 May | 3 May | 30/31 May 1/2 June partial outage |
24 May | 17 May | ||
31 May | |||
June 2024 | 7 June | 14 June | 21/22/23 June full outage |
21 June |
28 June | ||
July 2024 | 5 July | 12 July |
7 July – full outage (to deploy 2025 cycle changes). Find out more. 12 July – preparations for ABL/C&C phase 1. |
19 July | 26 July |
25/26 July partial outage 26 /27/28 July – preparations for ABL/C&C phase 2. |
|
August 2024 | 2 August | 9 August | 29/30/31 August 1 September partial outage |
16 August | 23 August | ||
30 August | |||
September 2024 | 13 September | 6 September | 27/28/29 September full outage |
27 September | 20 September | ||
October 2024 | 11 October | 4 October | 24/25/26/27 October partial outage |
25 October | 18 October | ||
November 2024 | 8 November | 1 November | 28/29/30 November 1 December partial outage |
22 November | 15 November | ||
29 November | |||
December 2024 | 6 December | 13 December | 20/21/22 December full outage |
20 December | 27 December |
If you would like to know about maintenance that has already taken place, please contact your technology relationship manager.
Below we explain more about how we manage our IT processes. If you have a question, or would like more information about how we manage our estate, contact your technology relationship manager.
We understand that disruptions to services impact our customers and stakeholders and we only undertake outages where it is essential. Our change management process ensures all production changes are tested, impact assessed, reviewed, and authorised and gives consideration to keeping outages to a minimum. View
We have robust incident processes which are deployed when/if something unexpected occurs to ensure we restore normal service as quickly as possible. They also help us manage the impact of unexpected issues on our customers and stakeholders.
If you become aware of an issue with our system or experience an interruption of service report it to us by calling our HEP Team or raising an incident ticket in our ServiceNow portal. To escalate issues. or if your incident is not being responded to as expected, please contact your technology relationship manager.
When we become aware of an issue affecting our estate, we update our service status page. The status of the relevant system will be updated and will link through to a page with full details to track the progress of the incident. If an incident affects you and we need you to take action, we’ll email you.
If you need us to do something for you – rather than fix something – such as set up a new user on one of our systems, reset a password or generate test data, you should log a service request with us via the self-service support portal. Here you will find a catalogue for requests that can be made, as well the target delivery time for fulfilment. If you can't find a template that suits the request, or you’d like to have access to the portal, please contact our HEP Team.
We analyse trends, alerts, and events to proactively avoid incidents. This allows us to separate the urgent need to restore service (incident management) from the potential need to address a deeper underlying cause, and allow the two aims to continue in tandem with minimum contention of resource or attention.
The process also records workarounds (as known errors) to quickly resolve further incidents.