06 Apr 15 ALA Connect down on April 7 for Shibboleth integration

On Tuesday, April 7th, ALA Connect will be down as we begin the process to implement ALA’s Shibboleth single sign-on integration. Because we’re also migrating user data from Connect to iMIS (our Association Management Software that stores all of our member data), it’s a more complex process than just changing the login, which is why it will take 24 hours to complete all of the steps.

Note that this also means the 2015 Annual Conference website will also be down during this same timeframe.

What does this mean for me?

• For members, the authentication process won’t really change. However, when you log in to ala.org, if you then go to Connect, you’ll automatically be logged in there, and vice versa. In fact, this single sign-on process already works across all of ALA’s Shibboleth sites, including conference registration and when accessing conference recordings. We’re excited to add Connect and the conference schedulers to that list to make logins work better for you across all of our services.
• Starting on Thursday, April 9th, everyone will use their ala.org username and password to log in to Connect. It’s been confusing for non-members to use a separate login, but luckily now everyone will log in the same way. Non-members will be able to use their existing ala.org login on the conference schedulers, too.
• For staff, it means they can manage non-member participation on official ALA groups using only iMIS rosters, which will be a big help for them since they have to rely on ITTS staff to do that now.
• Long-term, this is also the first step to combining Connect and ala.org profiles into one so that you can update all of your information in one place. This will happen later this month when the dust from the Shibboleth implementation settles.

So what exactly is going to happen?

Starting around 11am CDT on Tuesday, April 7th, Connect will be down while we begin the work. It will take several hours for the large amount of user data to synchronize into iMIS and make sure everything is working properly. Once we have the all clear, Connect will come back up on Wednesday, April 8th, probably around noon Central Time. We’ll then begin implementing Shibboleth, which will go live on Thursday, April 9th.

Your best bet to track our progress and get updates is by checking the @ALAConnect Twitter account, but you can also leave a comment/question here or email me (Jenny) at jlevine [at] ala.org.

We’re confident everything will go well, but we’re still accepting your well wishes and crossed fingers. See you in Shibboleth soon!