CUKAS newsletter – September 2014

Closing date for music applications

Tomorrow, 1 October 2014 at 18:00, is the deadline for 2015 applicants to submit an 'on-time' music application. Applicants who apply for any course though CUKAS after this deadline will be flagged as 'late' regardless of the course deadline. Applicants should be given equal consideration if they apply by the deadline stated on your website.

We will keep you updated via Yammer on the processing of 1 October applications this week.

System maintenance from 24 - 27 October 2014

To allow us to make improvements for the 2015 application cycle, the following systems will be unavailable from 18:00 on Friday 24 October to 08:00 on Monday 27 October.

Providers

• Net.update
• odbc-link
• xml-link
• web-link
• Course Collect

Applicants

CUKAS Track

odbc-link updates

Enhanced odbc-link connection

As part of our continual service improvement programme, we introduced an enhanced odbc-link instance (ODBCFE1) in summer 2013 with greater capacity and throughput. If you have not already made the changes to switch to the enhanced ODBCFE1, please do so by Friday 28 November 2014.

To make the changes, please follow the instructions on page 3 of the 

If you have any questions or would like any support, please contact your Technical Relationship Manager:

• Kalvyn Griffiths - London and South East
• Adam Glaudot - Northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland
• Tom Gromski - East, Midlands, South West and Wales

Adding new IP ranges

If you are an odbc-link user, you need to add the following additional IP ranges to the original ranges:

• 54.74.0.0/15 (54.74.0.0 - 54.75.255.255)
• 54.170.0.0/15 (54.170.0.0 - 54.171.255.255)
• 185.48.120.0/22 (185.48.120.0 - 185.48.123.255)

Page 3 of the 

 has been updated to reflect this.

You can make these changes now - this will have no impact on your current service and ensures resilience. In the event of a failure, the service will recover to a secondary server; this process is automatic and provided by Amazon, so any impact will be minimised by adding the additional IP ranges. Not adding them may mean that, in the event of a server failure, your firewall will prevent you from accessing the secondary server.

Whilst we do not anticipate any additional changes, we will let you know as soon as possible if there is anything else you need to do.

Please also note that, following the request to add additional IP ranges in April 2014, we informed you that we would be investigating what we can do to potentially limit IP ranges for the odbc service in the future. This review is still ongoing and as soon as a decision has been reached, we will let you know.

We are also sharing this information with your technical team, but please forward it to anyone else who would benefit within your organisation. If you have any questions, please contact our HEP Team at hepservicedesk@ucas.ac.uk or call 01242 545 734.

Release of the 2014 Star J transactional file

The Star J file for the 2014 cycle is planned for release in mid-November. The file provides data on every individual accepted at a conservatoire and is used for annual HESA returns. The data also forms part of the Student Record required by HESA and some providers in England use the file to support HEFCE returns.

We will provide confirmation of the release date in early November.

Post-incident analysis reports

As part of our new incident management process, we are now providing you with analysis of any incidents which have occurred in relation to our systems and services. The 

 covers the following:

• odbc-link database unavailable
• problems receiving incoming calls

We appreciate these incidents will have caused some inconvenience and would like to assure you that resolutions were implemented.

If you have any queries relating to these incidents, please contact the HEP Team on 01242 545 734.

UK and international qualifications guides 2015

The UCAS qualifications guides for entry in 2015 are now available to download. These guides provide up-to-date information about a wide range of pre-HE qualifications and entry routes to HE, and are intended primarily as working manuals for tutors and staff involved in admissions and related activities at universities and colleges.

'Making the most of your audition' guide

We are updating our 'Making the most of your audition' PDF guide and would appreciate your feedback. If you have any suggestions that would benefit your applicants in their auditions, please post your comments on Yammer.

CUKAS User Group meeting

The next CUKAS User Group meeting will be held on 21 October 2014 at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Please email Janet Warne at j.warne@ucas.ac.uk if you would like any items added to the agenda, which will be posted on Yammer next week.

CUKAS branding change

The re-branding of CUKAS to UCAS Conservatoires and launch of the new website are due to take place in November. Here is a 

 for moving to UCAS Conservatoires.

The primary means of delivery of the re-brand is to the ucas.com website. We are proposing to co-brand CUKAS and UCAS Conservatoires into ucas.com under its own section, and migrate away from cukas.ac.uk in April next year.

This will be supported with messages to applicants and advisers.

Please remember that all CUKAS news is posted on Yammer as soon as it is available. The CUKAS Yammer group is open to all staff working at a conservatoire that are part of the CUKAS scheme.