Deployment Group 5 Advances Steadily Toward Fall 2021 Go-Live
With go-live dates only six months away, Deployment Group 5 (DG5) colleges are keeping busy with training and data validation activities.
At eight colleges — Bellevue College, Bellingham Technical College, Big Bend Community College, Everett Community College, Grays Harbor College, Green River College, Skagit Valley College, Whatcom Community College — DG5 is the largest ctcLink deployment group yet.
The colleges will convert to ctcLink over three weekends:
- Group DG5-A – Oct. 11, 2021: Grays Harbor College, Green River College, Skagit Valley College
- Group DG5-B – Oct. 25, 2021: Bellingham Technical College, Big Bend Community College and Whatcom Community College
- Group DG5-C – Nov. 8, 2021: Bellevue College, Everett Community College
Targeted Training
In preparation for October/November 2021 go-live dates, DG5 college project managers, subject matter experts, and college staff are taking advantage of DG5 ctcLink training, and ctcLink Learning Environment access.
To help DG5 stay out in front of end-user training timelines to get ready for their July 2021 User Acceptance Testing activities, these resources were made available to DG5 colleges much earlier than for previous deployment groups.
The completion timelines indicate a deadline for end-user training. These deadlines are specific to getting DG5 colleges trained up for their go-live phase, but the Canvas training courses will be available into the future.
DG6 lookahead
DG6 colleges also have access to training and the ctcLink Learning Environment. DG6 end-user training completion timelines will be added as they are available, but can be approximated based on DG5.
DG5 Go-Live Impacts All ctcLink Colleges
ctcLink will be offline for all ctcLink colleges during each conversion weekend. ctcLink colleges should plan for ctcLink to be offline for these weekends:
- Friday afternoon, Oct. 8, to Monday morning, Oct.11, 2021
- Friday afternoon, Oct. 22, to Monday morning, Oct. 25, 2021
- Friday afternoon, Nov. 5, to Monday morning, Nov. 8, 2021
ctcLink colleges should communicate early and often that ctcLink will be offline for staff and students and may want to take these outages into account when planning Winter quarter 2022 registration timelines.
Communications planning tools are available to help colleges keep students and staff aware of the downtimes:
- Student, employee and faculty-focused communications resources at ctcLink Communications Toolkit.
- ctcLink Student Communication Resource Guide
