REDCap (https://redcap.partners.org/redcap) upgrades to v8.1.17 scheduled for Tuesday June 19th at 6:30AM EDT are completed. REDCap was offline from 6:30-7:34 AM EDT.

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

New action tag: @HIDECHOICE - Hides one or more choices of a multiple choice field. This action tag is useful if you wish to retire a particular choice after utilizing it for a while in data collection, thus allowing you to hide the choice from that point after without orphaning any of the choice's data, which would happen if you simply deleted the choice.

New feature: PDF download for survey respondents - On an instrument's survey settings page, a user may enable the option "Allow participants to download a PDF of their responses at end of survey?". This option will display a button for the survey participant to download a PDF file of their responses for the survey they just completed. Users may also download this same copy of the PDF since it has been added as a new PDF download option at the top of data entry forms.

Improvement: When a calc field's value is changed, it will now display a red border on the right edge of the calc field's text box to subtly indicate that the displayed value is different from the stored value in the database. And if the calculated value gets changed so that its value matches the stored value again, the red border will disappear. This will help users make note of when calculations have been triggered and if there is any disparity between the displayed value and the stored value.

New action tag: @MAXCHECKED - Allows a checkbox field to have a maximum number of checkboxes that can be checked.

New feature: New option to allow respondents to return to a partially completed or fully completed survey response without needing a return code.

List of more new features and fixes 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

We are sorry for any inconvenience that occurred with the proxy server outage and we want to share what happened and what we have done to remedy the situation. We were unaware of an increase in usage directed at our servers. All DIPR based HTTP and HTTPS traffic route through our proxy server in the Partners DMZ. We have seen an increase in traffic over the past few weeks and a very large increase in traffic on Wednesday, May 23rd at 9:00am, 2:30pm and 3:50pm.  This increase in traffic caused the proxy server to run out of memory. After the first incident, we increased the memory on the proxy server from 12gb to 16gb and engaged Neteng to try and determine where the increased traffic was coming from. After the third incident on Wednesday, a customer reached out to us concerning the stability of our environment and noted that they had increased their usage by 2500 new engagements to their site. Given this news we increased the memory on the proxy server from 16gb to 32gb, and we adjusted the apache configuration to manage the new load. We are currently monitoring apache, memory usage and load on the proxy server and feel that now we have a good configuration to manage the increased load. Also, we have started plans to replace the current proxy server with a redundant pair of proxy servers, however, that configuration is probably a couple of months away from implementation. 

Proxy users could help us by providing usage estimates for their sites and letting us know when they anticipate new users or additional sites and users coming online.

Research IS & Computing website maintenance completed on Thursday, May 24 between 7-7:30a.m. EDT. The https://rc.partners.org website was offline from approximately 7:10-7:15a.m. EDT to apply security patches and bug fixes.

This morning, there was an issue with our license in Production and our system was not able to send out any mailings, between 12:00 am to 10:40 am (this morning). The issue was corrected and the problem is now, fixed!

** If you sent or scheduled, any mailings between 12:00 to 10:40 am (today), please do not re-send the mailings, again. All mailings were queued and should be sending out as normal. If your mailings, do not get sent out in the next hour or so, please contact: rcc@partners.org for assistance in sending out your mailing.

Additionally, if you have further questions or concerns about this issue, please email: rcc@partners.org

The ERIS Infrastructure team will perform maintenance on mysql2.dipr.partners.org and mysql3.research.partners.org on Sunday, May 20, 2018, from 9:00 am - 11:00 am. There will be a short interruption of service for each server during the maintenance window. 

EDCSupport is consistently experiencing a high volume of requests. In order to alleviate the number of tickets we receive, we're working towards a few process improvements. As of today, we're allowing certain types of projects to be created in real time and without REDCap Admin approval.

Please be sure to complete as much information on the request to ensure expedited project creation.

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

Research IS & Computing website maintenance was scheduled for Wednesday, May 2 between 7-7:30a.m. EDT. The rc.partners.org website was offline for approximately ten minutes, from 7:10-7:20a.m. to apply security patches and bug fixes

In order to prepare for a future upgrade, the Freezerworks System will be temporarily taken offline for less than 30 minutes on Monday, April 30th, 2018 at 5 pm. 

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

The system was taken offline from Tuesday, April 11th through Friday, April 13th while our technical team worked with the vendor on identifying and resolving the issues.

ACTION REQUIRED BY FREEZERWORKS USERS  

Freezer inventory data that was entered should be reviewed during the past 7 days (April 5th - April 12th). The data may need to be re-entered. 

We apologize for any inconvenience during this interruption. 

If you have any questions or concerns about email: edcsupport@partners.org

Research IS & Computing website maintenance was completed on Tuesday, April 3 starting at 6:30a.m. The rc.partners.org will be offline between 6:45-6:55a.m. EDT for bug fixes and security updates.

The mysql service went down over the weekend. All mysql databases hosted on mysql3.research.partners.org were down from 1:30pm on Saturday March 17, 2018 through Sunday March 18th at 9:30am. Please check your applications and database connections for all instances on mysql3.research.partners.org.

Please contact rcc@partners.org if you have any questions or concerns.

We are seeing a bug in the Microsoft Outlook full client application where this week’s calendar "Week" view is not displaying the time correctly after Daylight Savings time. This will be resolved after Saturday, March 17, 2018, but you can view the "Work Week", "Daily" or "Monthly" views as workarounds. Learn more about this bug and the workarounds here:

https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/calendar/time-zone-dst-calendar-display-bug-in-outlook/