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

Sat Jul 8 01:53:09 PDT 2023

Wow, that's a great update. Thank you very much Andrew!

Olivier

On 08/07/2023 00:24, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> As an Internet Society Chapter Officer you are automatically subscribed
>>> to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet 
>>> Society Chapter Portal (AMS):
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>>> Conduct:https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/ 
>>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
>> http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
>
>> _______________________________________________
>> As an Internet Society Chapter Officer you are automatically subscribed
>> to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet 
>> Society Chapter Portal (AMS):
>> https://admin.internetsociety.org/622619/User/Login
>> View the Internet Society Code of Conduct: 
>> https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/
>
>

-- 
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
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