When IT is changing things

Planned changes calendar

The IT and Estates teams plan ahead — server upgrades, building works, system migrations. The Changes calendar in the portal shows everything that’s scheduled in the next 60 days, so you can plan around it.

Where to look

It’s in the portal masthead under Changes. You’ll see a calendar grid and a list view; both show the same data.

Each entry has:

• What — short summary
• When — start + end times
• Who’s affected — schools, departments, or services
• Status — Scheduled, In progress, Completed, or Postponed

Subscribing

You can subscribe a change to your personal calendar (Outlook, Google Calendar) by clicking Add to calendar on the change detail page. The subscription updates if the change is rescheduled.

Change freezes

Some periods are change freezes — typically the first week of term, exam weeks, parents’ evenings, and the day of a major Ofsted visit. During a freeze, no non-emergency change is allowed to proceed without exec sign-off.

Freezes appear as banded backgrounds on the calendar. If the team needs to push through a fix during a freeze, they’ll explain why on the change detail page.

What to do if a change affects you

If you see a planned outage on the calendar that conflicts with something important you’ve got booked (assembly, parents’ evening, exams), reply on the change with “This conflicts with…” as soon as you spot it. The team can usually move the work; the longer you wait, the harder it is.