UCAS maintenance schedule

Planned maintenance

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.

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. 

See planned updates here

Our patching and maintenance schedule

If you would like to know about maintenance that has already taken place, please contact your technology relationship manager. 

Information on how we manage our systems

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.

How we plan schedule changes

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

How we manage incidents

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.

How we manage service requests

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.

How we approach problem management

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.

Useful links

• ServiceNow – to raise a request for technical support.
• Test and training environments – to test the integration of UCAS products with your own systems, simulate the applicant journey, and assist with staff training and development.
• System guides – view and download manuals for our secure file transfer service and link products.