Overview

Background

Elsevier,  the company  responsible for producing the University’s Current Research Information System - Pure, releases 3 major versions of their software each year.  Planning to the known release schedule for the period 2021/2022 would mean:

There is a requirement to work with the most current version of the software whenever possible so that the University is able to take full advantage of the functionality that relates to key university  business processes e.g.:

• The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 
• Open access requirements and legislative changes (GDPR)
• Demand from those funding research as well as University researchers. 

Pure and the service that it offers needs to be kept up to date, especially to support future Research Excellence Framework  2028 (the date of which has still to be confirmed)

Pure will only support redundant features for one year following their deprecation. It is therefore vital that the University’s installation of Pure is kept up to date to avoid major step changes.

Pure is a supported service drawn from resource working in IS Applications Production Management and also, the Research Information Systems team.

This project, RIS022 has been initiated to continue the upgrade of Pure from versions 5.22 through to 5.24.

This work will also support People and Money to upgrade their Pure Configuration environment. This is anticipated to to run until the end of this project.

Scope

The scope of this project is to upgrade the University's installation of Pure to ensure that the software is fully supported by the 3rd party and continues to meet academic need:

• Upgrade three versions of the University’s installation of Pure to DEV, TEST and LIVE  also to include P&M Configuration from v5.22 through to v5.24
• It is the intention of this project to take point 2 release version through each environment, however this may be reassessed as the project progresses
• Testing of the Pure processes adopted by the University
• Testing of the Interfaces presenting data to Pure from Finance (E-financials and People & Money), HR from People & Money, IDM and Student Systems
• Testing of the outgoing interfaces to the downstream Web Services and Pure widget

Out of scope

• Upgrades to Tomcat, Java and Oracle  (to be reviewed with each release).
• Not expecting to have to carry out a data refresh as part of this project, this will be assessed at commencement of each upgrade

Objectives and Deliverables

Benefits

• All system upgrades will keep the University on track for future REF 2028 submission (the date of which has still to be confirmed)
• Additional functionality within each release will provide benefits to the business in addition to resolving bug fixes
• Pure support communication of the University’s current research to a global audience, underpins open access compliance and our REF return and contributes to continued research income
• Continued support of the Pure application by Elsevier.

Success Criteria

• Upgrades are undertaken with minimal impact to the production service
• No impact to the current performance of the application following upgrade

Project Milestones

• Project started                                                  22-Oct-2021                    
• Planning Complete                                        12-Nov-2021     
• Upgrade Development to v5.22.2            08-Dec-2021     
• Upgrade Test to v5.22.2                                11-Jan-2022                    
• Upgrade Live to v5.22.2                                 08-Feb-2022                   
• Upgrade P&M Configuration to v5.22.2  10-Feb-2022     
• Upgrade Development to v5.23.2              05-Apr-2022     
• Upgrade Test to v5.23.2                                 26-Apr-2022     
• Upgrade Live to v5.23.2                                 24-May-2022    
• Upgrade P&M Configuration to v5.23.2  26-May-2022    
• Upgrade Development to v5.24.2             02-Aug-2022     
• Upgrade Test to v5.24.2                                16-Aug-2022     
• Upgrade Live to v5.24.2                                28-Sept-2022     
• Upgrade P&M Configuration to v5.24.2  30-Sep-2022     
• Deployment Review Sign off                      07-Oct-2022     
• Closure                                                                14-Oct-2022

Project Plan

Project Plan v1.0 | Project Management (ed.ac.uk)