A scheduled upgrade to the Student Information System (SIS) will result in several campus tools being unavailable between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Sunday, August 2.

What will be unavailable?

During the upgrade, you will not be able to use the following tools:

• Student Information System (SIS), including
  • Student Center
  • Faculty Center
• Course Search & Enroll (CS&E)
• Degree Audit Reporting System (DARS)

As a result of the upgrade, some tools may see reduced functionality or have some components unavailable, including:

• 25Live
• Transact
• Parchment

What’s changing

SIS will be moving to upgraded central database servers. Much like regular software updates, periodic hardware replacements are necessary to ensure our systems remain compatible with modern technology, properly sized for the university’s needs, and running on a safer, faster, and more reliable infrastructure.

While this upgrade directly benefits SIS, its scope is much broader, impacting all database customers at UW–Madison. The full infrastructure replacement must be completed by October 2026. To minimize any potential disruption to students, faculty, and staff, the implementation team is targeting to have SIS fully updated prior to the start of the upcoming academic year.

What else to know

While we worked to minimize the impacts that this outage will have on the campus community, we recognize that any outage disrupts regular business operations.

The upgrade has been scheduled to minimize impacts to Student Orientation, Advising, and Registration (SOAR).

If you are a student enrolled in a summer term course or an instructor teaching a summer term course: Please plan to not have access to the systems listed above during the outage. Some summer sessions may have add, drop, withdrawal, or other enrollment (requesting pass/fail or credit/audit options; changing the number of variable credits) deadlines during this outage. These deadlines will not change due to the outage; if you intend to make any related enrollment changes, you will need to do so before or after the outage. Refer to our Session Dates webpage to find the specific deadline(s) that apply to you.

If you are a continuing student who wants to make changes to your fall courses: You will need to finish any enrollment changes before the outage begins or wait until it has ended.

If you are an advisor, a curricular representative, or any other campus user of the systems listed above: You will need to complete any work before the outage begins or wait until it has ended.