Overview

Background

The Wiki is used extensively by the University of Edinburgh for subject knowledge sharing, administrative collaboration and teaching and learning.

There is a strategy to keep Confluence version no more than two point release behind the most recent vendor releases, and never running software beyond Atlassian’s “end of life” for that version.  There have been several point releases of Confluence since the 2018 upgrade, resulting in an upgrade required to introduce the latest patches and features to production as soon as possible from version 6.8 to the latest sustainable enterprise release version, currently version 6.13.3

Failure to do so would increase security risk by falling a long-way behind the latest version as well as increasing disruption and cost associated with major upgrade and migration projects in future. As part of this upgrade, the project would also aim to recode the IDM connector to address the issues we have with the current connector.

The target date for a production upgrade of the live service is at the end of the academic year - end of June 2019.

The upgrade to LIVE has been completed out of hours in the past, however this will be reviewed and a decision made after DEV and TEST upgrades are completed. It is recommended that as this is a priority service, any downtime more than two hours will require an out of hours deployment.

Scope

The central WIKI Service - Confluence. This will affect all WIKI owners and users.

The scope of this project includes the following:

1. Installing the latest sustainable enterprise release version of Confluence on the existing DEV, TEST and LIVE servers
2. Conducting functional testing of the upgraded wiki service
3. Recoding /  testing of the IDM connector if required. It will be known if this is required when DEV is upgraded. If not, it will be removed from scope and the deliverables.
4. Integration testing of the upgraded Wiki
5. User acceptance testing of the upgraded Wiki
6. Handover and documentation with Production Management

Out of Scope

1. Fixing any existing issues

Objectives and Deliverables

Benefits

1. This upgrade (Wiki application and database) will reduce security and other risks associated with falling a long-way behind versions
2. The upgrade should reduce disruption and costs associated with major upgrade and migration projects
3. This work will introduce the latest patches and features to production as soon as possible
4. The upgrade will demonstrate our long-term commitment to the Central Wiki Service
5. The upgrade will also help to maintain our skill base around Confluence software

Success Criteria

The success of this project will be determined by the satisfactory completion of the main deliverables within scope, essentially an upgraded and fully functioning WIKI.

Project Milestones