5/13/2013

Scheduled ICBS system restarts

• In an effort to maintain the health of the system and prevent unscheduled outages, the ICBS-R Team has adopted a strategy of restarting the application on a biweekly basis.  
• These restarts are done on Sunday evenings starting at 2100 Central Time to minimize impacts to ICBS users.  Including testing, a restart generally takes less than an hour to complete. 
• As nation-wide fire activity and cache staffing hours change, the team will adjust the time of these restarts as necessary.  Cache Managers and Assistant Managers should feel free to notify the ICBS-R Team if they anticipate the need for ICBS access after 2100 Central Time.
• The following is the schedule for the next few months:

System Restart Date	Start Time
May 26th	2100C
June 9th	2100C
June 23rd	2100C
July 7th	2100C
July 21st	2100C
August 4th	2100C
August 18th	2100C

BR 1.3.0.8 is scheduled for deployment on May 22, 2013

• This Business Release will include several change requests (CRs) addressing new functionality and fixes that the team and Change Management Board (CMB) want to have in place before the busiest fire months  
• Close to the deployment date, a copy of the 1.3.0.8 release notes will be posted on the “User Support & Quick Reference Guide” link in the left-hand menu

“NAP” (NESS Application Portal) is coming

• Final testing is being completed on the new LDAP system that ICBS users will be using to log into ICBS.  ICBS-NAP is being implemented to address security issues and to give users who access multiple applications (e.g. ICBS, ROSS, Inciweb, etc.) a “single-sign-on” portal 
• The ICBS-R and NAP Teams are targeting a mid-June transition to the new system
• Some features and requirements of NAP:
• Each user will need a unique (agency or personal) email address
• Accounts will be requested online rather than through the IIA Helpdesk
• ICBS Console and scan gun users will be able to change their passwords online (by logging into NAP on any networked computer)
• Rules of Behavior agreements will be done online instead of as separate Word documents
• User guides and instructions will be published in late May