Partners HealthCare GitLab: Scheduled Downtime on 2/04/2019

The GitLab service (https://gitlab.partners.org/) will be upgraded from version 11.5.6 to version 11.5.7. The upgrade is scheduled to take up to 1 hour. During this time, the service will be unavailable between 7 AM to 8 AM on Monday, February 4th.

This upgrade will include:

• Critical security patches

For a complete list of changes, please refer to the GitLab project release notes:

• Version 11.5.7 -  https://about.gitlab.com/2019/01/16/critical-security-release-gitlab-11-dot-6-dot-4-released/

** Additionally, we want to reach out to the users of GitLab, to complete any necessary testing before the upgrade on Monday, February 4th at 7 AM. Please complete all your testing at this link: http://gitlab-dev.dipr.partners.org (** To login, just use your Partners ID and Password). The Development server is currently at version 11.5.7. Note – no projects or data have been copied over from the production server. You can create new projects in the development environment and conduct tests as necessary. Projects created in the development environment may be removed without notice (as we conduct future GitLab version testing).

If you any questions or concerns relating to this scheduled downtime, please email: rcc@partners.org

UPDATE: 09:45AM: The underlying issue has been corrected and Confluence is back on line.  We apologize for the inconvenience

UPDATE 08:45AM: The issue has been identified and ERIS technical teams are now working to resolve the issue.  ETA is ~11am EST

There is an issue with the infrastructure upon which Confluence relies causing Confluence to be unavailable.   ERIS technical teams are working to identify and fix the issue.

The enterprise is experiencing an issue with the Mail Gateway. Email sent via the List Manager service may not sent.

This is related to the Email Issue that was communicated on the morning of Monday, January 14 by IS Communications.

The GitLab service (https://gitlab.partners.org/) will be upgraded from version 11.5.5 to version 11.5.6. The upgrade is scheduled to take up to 1 hour.

During this time, the service will be unavailable between 7 AM to 8 AM on Monday, January 14th.

This upgrade will include:

• Critical security patches

For a complete list of changes, please refer to the GitLab project release notes:

• Version 11.5.6 - https://about.gitlab.com/2018/12/31/security-release-gitlab-11-dot-6-dot...

Please email rcc@partners.org with any questions or concerns.

MobileIron has scheduled an upgrade to the NA1 Cluster used by Partners and thousands of other customers tonight from 10pm through 8am.

The following will be affected during tonight’s MobileIron NA1 Upgrade:

• You will not be able to enroll new devices
• Existing MobileIron users will not be able to access the Partners App Catalog

Other functions such as Email, Haiku, Cortext, Receiver, Dropbox, PowerMic, etc are not affected and will continue to work normally

REDCap (https://redcap.partners.org/redcap) upgrades to v8.5.24 scheduled for Thursday August 9th at 7:30AM EDT are complete. REDCap was offline from 7:30-8:07AM EST.

 Full release notes can be found here. 

If you have any concerns about REDCap being offline at this time, please email edcsupport@partners.org

Important: New Method For Composing Survey Invitations!

One of the new features included in the upgrade to v.8.5.19 is the ability to fully customize survey invitations. The standard text and survey link are no longer automatically appended to the text you provide. 

For most users, the transition will be seamless. However, we recommend that users review any projects that utilize Automatic Survey Invitations to ensure their survey text is displaying as expected. 

For groups using the Twilio service, the projects should be reviewed as soon as possible, especially ones using Automated Survey Invitations. You may need to manually add in a reference to [survey-url] or [survey-link] into the text depending on your invitation preference.  

This is how the new feature is detailed in the REDCap release notes:

Improvement/change: New method for composing survey invitation text using Smart Variables for survey link

When composing a survey invitation, the standard text and survey link are no longer automatically appended to the survey invitation text at the time the email is sent. Instead, users must now specify all the entirety of the text of the email (including the stock text and survey link that used to be appended automatically, if they wish) and therefore must supply [survey-url] and/or [survey-link] in the text if they wish to provide the participant with a link to the survey.

If the user forgets to enter the survey URL Smart Variable in the text, REDCap will automatically suggest to them that they should.

If using the Twilio telephony module for sending invitations, the standard instructional text will still be appended in the SMS message as in previous versions EXCEPT for the “Email invitation” and “SMS invitation (contains survey link)” invitation types, which require [survey-url] and/or [survey-link] in the SMS text in order for the participant to receive a survey link.

Note: All survey invitations that were scheduled prior to this upgrade will still have the standard text and survey link appended to their survey text. Additionally, during the upgrade to this version, all saved configurations for Automated Survey Invitations (ASIs) will have the standard text and survey link automatically appended to the saved ASI email text, thus allowing the ASI behavior to remain exactly the same after the upgrade and allowing it to be backward compatible.

REDCap (https://redcap.partners.org/redcap) experienced unexpected downtime today from approximately 1:10 - 2:05 PM EDT. The issues were related to the infrastructure supporting REDCap and not related to this morning's upgrade. 

REDCap is back online. 

If you have any concerns, please email edcsupport@partners.org

REDCap (https://redcap.partners.org/redcap) upgrades to v8.5.19 scheduled for Monday December 10th, 7:00AM EDT are complete. REDCap was offline from 7:00-8:05AM EDT.

This upgrade includes a number of new features and bug fixes. These include:

New feature: Smart Variables: Smart Variables are dynamic variables that can be used in calculated fields, conditional/branching logic, and piping. Similar to using project variable names inside square brackets - e.g., [heart_rate], Smart Variables are also represented inside brackets - e.g., [user-name], [survey-link], [previous-event-name][weight], or [heart_rate][previous-instance]. But instead of pointing to data fields, Smart Variables are context-aware and thus adapt to the current situation. Some can be used with field variables or other Smart Variables, and some are meant to be used as stand-alone. There are many possibilities.
35 Smart Variables are available. They can reference things with regard to users, records, forms, surveys, events/arms, or repeating instances. Documentation and examples for using Smart Variables are included on the Project Setup page, Online Designer, and other places throughout REDCap in a popup and alternatively as a standalone page.

Improvement: Added new "Record ID" column in the Survey Invitation Log table to allow users to find specific invitations more efficiently. Note: If the record name should not be displayed in order to preserve the anonymity of a response (e.g., participant identifier is not used, designated email field is not used), it will instead display an icon indicating that the record name cannot be displayed.

Improvement: The Survey Invitation Log now contains an extra column on the right-hand side to allow users to delete many scheduled invitations at once (rather than having to delete them one at a time).

New feature: Survey-specific email invitation fields: This is a new option on the Survey Settings page that can be enabled for any given survey, in which a user may designate an email field for sending survey invitations for that survey only.

This feature is similar to the project-level email invitation field except that it is employed only for the survey where it has been enabled. This allows users to have data entry workflows that require multiple surveys where the participant is different for each survey. Using this feature, multiple people can be emailed a survey invitation, after which all the survey data they enter goes into the same record in the project.

Improvement/change: New method for composing survey invitation text using Smart Variables for survey link: When composing a survey invitation, the standard text and survey link are no longer automatically appended to the survey invitation text at the time the email is sent. Instead, users must now specify all the entirety of the text of the email (including the stock text and survey link that used to be appended automatically, if they wish) and therefore must supply [survey-url] and/or [survey-link] in the text if they wish to provide the participant with a link to the survey.

Release notes highlighting new features, improvements, and major bug fixes are available here.

Full release notes available here.

If you have any concerns about REDCap being offline at this time or any questions about these new features, please email edcsupport@partners.org

Applies to: All databases and systems connecting to the MySQL hosted database system mysql3.research.partners.org

The ERIS Infrastructure team has resolved the operational issue on mysql3.research.partners.org and has canceled the shutdown and restart identified for this evening.

This is a precautionary communication. 

There is a possibility that we may need to shut down and restart mysql3.research.partners.org tonight (11/14/2018) between the hours of 7:00 pm and9:00 pm. We have an operational issue that is impacting normal maintenance. If the issue is not resolved by early evening, then we will need to shut down and restart mysql3.research.partners.org.

If the issue is resolved and we do not need to restart, we will share a communication with you. If we need to shut down and restart mysql3.research.partners.org tonight, we will send a communication before the shutdown and again when mysql3.research.partners.org is back online.

Impact

All databases hosted on mysql3.research.partners.org will be offline while we shut down and restart mysql3.research.partners.org. 

Action Required

If you are the owner of a database on mysql3.research.partners.org, we encourage you to take your applications offline before the maintenance window and reconnect once the work is complete.

Please let us know if you have any questions by forwarding your questions to rcc@partners.org.

On Saturday morning November 3, 2018 from 7:00am - 9:00am the ERIS Infrastructure team will perform maintenance on mysql3.research.partners.org and on https://rc.partners.org. There will be a short interruption of service for both mysql3.research.partners.org and for https://rc.partners.org during the maintenance window. 

The proxy server is back online. The /var directory filled and HTTP went down when it could not write to its log file. We cleaned up var and restarted HTTP which resolved the problem. 

The proxy server went down at 10:25 and was back online at 11:05.

Please reach out to rcc@partners.org with any questions.

We are making an update to the log in process for Secure File Transfer at https://transfer.partners.org. Starting Thursday, November 1st at 10:30 p.m., employees will need to access this system for your individual accounts using your primary work email address and Partners password. This change is only for individual employee accounts.  External collaborators and group/departmental accounts can continue to login the same way.

With the Secure File Transfer Service, you can exchange large files with collaborators both inside and outside of Partners via a web browser. Visit https://rc.partners.org/SFTP for more information about this service.