[Chapter-delegates] Important Reminder: Systems Downtime (15-30 June) related to the transition to the new AMS

Fri Jul 7 16:24:49 PDT 2023

Hi Olivier,

I'm not Andre, but I can sort-of answer your questions.

First, the short version: we will not take anything down without plenty of warning to the community, and we are acutely sensitive to the reality that a large number of people are likely to be unavailable during August.  You should expect another 2-week window to be announced for later this year, but we are not taking anything offline in the upcoming weeks.  At a minimum, I would expect that we would announce any possible outage with plenty of time (6 weeks or more) for people to be able to complete their work in the existing system or to postpone it until the new one is available.  So, you may continue with your plans using the existing system.  As soon as we have a realistic, solid plan to address the gaps we have identified, we'll announce new dates.  This will certainly take us longer than we'd like, because we also have to arrange all those dates around all the other things going on within the community as well as the work of the rest of the Internet Society and Foundation staff.

Second, because I know we have a community that will doubtless have at least some members curious about the details, some details.  (The rest of this is really just for my nerdy need to explain this in a few paragraphs, so if you're not that interested in applications and databases there'll be nothing interesting in the coming paragraphs.)

The reason for the postponement turns out to be more complicated than it seemed to us.  As noted in the original postponement announcement, there were some user acceptance testing (UAT) items that failed, and we had a tough time understanding exactly why.  It appears that this was related to some configuration issues of the new system that needed to get shaken out.  I think we now have a reasonable schedule for that, and if that were the only issue I'd feel confident announcing new dates now.

Unfortuately, that's not the only issue.  It turns out that there is a dependency between those configuration issues and the data handling that has to happen to import the data to the Salesforce platform (which is what undergirds Fonteva).  I know that many people on this list are familiar with data systems and their migration, and will find that prior sentence as mystifying as I did when I first learned it.  The issue lies really in the source platform: MemberNova stores its data in a NoSQL JSON format, so in effect to do a data migration to a more traditional relational model one has to parse all the data.  That parsing results in some sensitivity to the target system, and it seems that Salesforce is sufficiently flexible that the organization of the data is actually dependent on how it will be used.  (If I may say so, as an old-timey database guy this gives me hives.  But I stopped being a database operator a long time ago, and I believe the application world really does work this way now.)

Worse, in traditional _Mythical Man-Month_ fashion, none of this can be parallelized because it's sort of a cascading series of dependencies.  And since I was around for the aftermath of the MemberNova migration, where the migration included an ill-advised decision to purge data not compliant with GDPR at the same time, I want to make sure the data work on this is not only perfect, but also comprehensible in retrospect.  So, we're doing a slow, careful going-over of all that work, and planning various test runs and so on, so that we will have a really accurate estimate of what is going to happen when next we give the community a date.  In other words, I want the next date to stick, and not to be an estimate but a commitment.

I hope that's helpful.

Best regards,

A

On Fri, Jul 07, 2023 at 05:15:46PM +0100, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond via Chapter-delegates wrote:
>Dear Andre,
>
>your last communication regarding the roll-out of a new system was 
>16th June 2023. As we are entering the holiday season in Europe, 
>yesterday a couple of colleagues asked me whether there was a new date 
>for roll-out and if the ISOC Portal was likely to be unavailable soon, 
>as we may launch into some updates and potentially filing projects for 
>funding. We wouldn't want to be interrupted in the middle of this 
>work. Just a quick update of where you are would be helpful.
>Many thanks,
>
>Olivier
>
>On 08/06/2023 14:58, Andre Copelin via Chapter-delegates wrote:
>>
>>Dear Klaus,
>>
>>We understand that, as chapter officers, you rely on our AMS to 
>>manage your activities, and the success of this rollout is critical 
>>to you.
>>
>>Please know that I am as eager as you are to see the new system up 
>>and running and supporting the needs of all stakeholders. I, and 
>>several others, are deeply entrenched in making this happen.
>>
>>To help our members understand what to expect, we developed a set of 
>>FAQs <https://isoc.box.com/s/d4zt053guc8dmsmbj0rq6sr5a2ure4mh>. Our 
>>responses to your earlier questions were included in the 2 June 
>>update.
>>
>>We are also working on the answers to additional questions we have 
>>received, including yours. Please check back on the FAQ by the end 
>>of this week; we'll have another update by then.
>>
>>If there is anything else you’d like to know, please let us know via 
>>AMShelp at isoc.org.
>>
>>Thank you for your thoughts and concerns. We all have a vested 
>>interest in making this transition a success so we can spend more of 
>>our time and resources supporting our shared vision of an Internet 
>>for everyone.
>>
>>Best,
>>
>>Andre
>>
>>*From: *Chapter-delegates 
>><chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org> on behalf of Klaus 
>>Birkenbihl via Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
>>*Date: *Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 11:06 AM
>>*To: *chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org 
>><chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>, AMS Support <amshelp at isoc.org>
>>*Subject: *Re: [Chapter-delegates] Important Reminder: Systems 
>>Downtime (15-30 June) related to the transition to the new AMS
>>
>>Andre,
>>
>>Just to stay fair: I checked the FAQ - and none of my questions was 
>>answered. Maybe you referred to the Question:*What happened to the 
>>requirements gathered in 2021? *Admitted there is some text 
>>pretending to be an answer. But neither did we ever get an info 
>>about the outcome and which requirements were accepted - nor did we 
>>see any requirements specification for the vendors. So saying "The 
>>requirements gathering in which the chapters participated was 
>>critical to selecting the right AMS." isn't far from "shut up - 
>>father knows best".
>>
>>So here some further questions:
>>
>>  * For the sake of a minimum of transparency: can you please make the
>>    RFI sent to vendors available?
>>  * Was the RFI kind of an requirements specification (RS) or more a
>>    generic "can you provide something cool?"?
>>
>>  * Some of the Chapters admins urgently demand since many years a
>>    simple API to exchange data between local Chapter Admin Systems
>>    and AMS - crucial to keep HQ and Chapters DBs in sync. (An option
>>    to transfer bulk data might be a modest start.) Is this covered by
>>    FONTERA? (I'd hate to repeat the rational for a decentralized
>>    networked administration between HQ and Chapters).
>>
>>Best regards
>>
>>Klaus
>>
>>Andre Copelin via Chapter-delegates wrote on 02.06.23 21:20:
>>
>>    We have responded to questions received so far, including those
>>    from Klaus
>>
>>-- 
>>Klaus Birkenbihl
>>Internet Society German Chapter (ISOC.DE) e.V.
>>c/o ict-Media GmbH
>>https://www.isoc.de
>>
>>_______________________________________________
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>
>-- 
>Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
>http://www.gih.com/ocl.html

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