July 2022: modernising Portico to deliver a more resilient service for the future

In July 2022, UCL will be migrating Portico, our student information system, to Tribal Cloud to make sure this critical service remains operationally resilient and secure while also providing greater flexibility to scale the service to meet demand at busy times in the academic cycle.

Although the precise timing for switching over to the Cloud has not yet been finalised, the window for this is expected to be between 14 and 18 July 2022. Every effort is being made to keep this period to a minimum as Portico will be unavailable during this time. The exact timing for this outage will be confirmed at the earliest opportunity.

Over the next few months the Portico Cloud application will be tested to make sure the migrated service will continue to operate as expected. Services that take data from Portico, such as Moodle and the timetabling system (CMIS), will also be tested. Using this approach we will be able to detect and resolve any issues at the earliest opportunity, keeping the outage duration and impact on users to a minimum.

Following the migration, Portico eVision is expected to look and function as it does today so there will be no need for re-training. Users will continue to have access to the same processes and reports as they do now.

Information will be provided to users of SITS Client about a few changes the migration will introduce.

Please share this information with your colleagues to help with planning around this down time. Notification of this interruption of service will be placed on the Portico login screen a few weeks prior to the outage period.

Contact email for further information: isd.sitsmodernisation@ucl.ac.uk