Any vendor supplied updates to the Administrative ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software will be made in the test environment and all members of Applications Development and the designated end user testers will be notified. They will be given a description of what has changed and the proposed date on which the change will be made in the production environment. Unless the update is of an urgent nature, the end user will have two weeks in which to perform testing. If no problems are reported to the members of Applications Development prior to the proposed date for implementation in production the update will be applied as scheduled.

For some updates that are time sensitive or which fix a critical issue it may not be possible to allow for testing prior to implementation in production. Some regulatory or financial aid updates will also fall into this category. These may be applied directly to production at the discretion of the Director of Applications Development.

Users requesting customizations must fill out the Administrative ERP Change Request Form. (Include timeline, budget, user priority, testing criteria, sample output, list of testers, relative impact on the institution, number of clients affected, and other resources needed.) This form must be signed by both the user making the request and the director of their department. The customization will then be reviewed by the CORE/Applications Development team and approved or denied by that group. Approved customizations will be applied to the test environment and the appropriate end users will follow the testing plan to ensure that the changes made are functional and as expected. When they are satisfied with the function and quality of the changes made, the user and department head must sign the Ready to Release Form. The responsible IT staff person will devise a rollback procedure and schedule the date for the change to be made in the production environment. The IT staff person will be responsible for documenting all changes made to the software. The end user will develop all training documentation as appropriate.