News

Details: This is to inform our UChicago REDCap user community of a change to our REDCap Support email address. On December 1^st, the new email address will change to redcap@uchicago.edu. Please use the new email address for your support requests or inquiries. Support requests generated within REDCap (production moves, project changes, etc.) will automatically use the new email address. The ‘Contact REDCap Administrator’ blue button in the lower left corner of your projects will also use the new address. Please kindly refrain from directly emailing our REDCap Administrator’s Outlook email address, as our goal is to offer a single point of contact with redcap@uchicago.edu allowing us to improve service delivery, streamline workflows, and measure metrics.

Who Is Affected: All University of Chicago REDCap users (including external collaborators)

A note on password help: Passwords are not managed by REDCap Support. For BSDAD or UCHAD password help, please visit the UCMIT Service Now Portal or for external collaborator account password help, please email BSDIS at bsdis@bsd.uchicago.edu.

Questions, comments, feedback? Please contact us via our REDCap Inbox.

Thank you for your support and continued use of REDCap!

(Post Date: 11/9/23)

If so, please consider applying for a new Director of Data management role at UChicago available for a new aging, Alzheimer’s and related dementia research center led by Dr. Rogalski.  The best candidate for this position would have extensive experience with research data management including building databases, extracting and cleaning data, gathering datasets, harmonizing data between disparate datasets or databases and organizing internal and external data requests. The center will be utilizing REDCap databases, so REDCap expertise and database experience is highly recommended.

Please consider applying here: https://uchicago.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/External/job/Data-Science–Sr-Specialist_JR22663

*Please note, this is not a CRI job posting. It is a courtesy posting for a new UChicago research center.

The new Google reCAPTCHA feature can be enabled to help protect your Public Survey Links from abuse from ‘bots’, which are automated software programs that might enter trash data into your survey. A ‘captcha’ is a turing test to tell humans and bots apart. It is easy for humans to solve, but hard for bots and other malicious software to figure out. By enabling Google reCAPTCHA on your public survey, you can block automated software while helping welcome your survey participants to begin your survey with ease. The Google reCAPTCHA functionality can be enabled on the Public Survey Link page of your project, after which the Public Survey Link will display the reCAPTCHA checkbox and “I’m not a robot” text on a survey page prior to allowing the participant to view the public survey. Note: A survey participant will never have to pass the reCAPTCHA test more than once per day on a given device/computer. The new feature only works for Public Survey Links and not for custom survey links. Please contact REDCap Support with any questions.

REDCap has been successfully upgraded to version LTS 13.1.27. Details of the newest features and improvements can be found here. We hope you enjoy the newest functionality. Please contact REDCap Support with any questions.

Event: REDCap Scheduled Downtime and Upgrade

Date/Time:Monday, May 1^st, 2023, 5PM-7PM

Website: https://redcap.uchicago.edu

Reason: An urgent upgrade to a newer version of the software is required to apply critical security fixes issued by REDCap.

Who Is Affected: All University of Chicago REDCap users, including non-UChicago external collaborators, mobile app users, API users, survey participants.

Impact: REDCap will be unavailable during this downtime. Unavailability is further defined as:

• Survey emails and Alerts & Notifications will be halted until the upgrade is complete.
• Survey links will be inaccessible and will display a ‘REDCap is offline’ message when clicked on.
• API activity will be halted until the upgrade is complete.
• Mobile app users are strongly encouraged to sync any data on their devices back to their REDCap project before the upgrade begins. Although not encouraged, offline data collection may continue in the app during the upgrade, however the online sync process will not be available until the upgrade is complete.

Updates: As soon as the upgrade is complete, communication will go out confirming its completion, as well as details of the newest features and functionality which are also part of this upgrade.

Questions? Please email UChicago REDCap Support.

On Saturday 4/22 and Sunday 4/23, PRFS will be out of service for the IT Infrastructure Team to perform an upgrade. During this time, PRFS (Lab Shares) and services relying on PRFS (e.g. Gardner) will be unavailable. Even if you’re able to connect to storage shares, please refrain from doing so until the upgrade has been completed. Please plan accordingly and email support@rt.cri.uchicago.edu with any questions.

UPDATE 3/23/23 10:25 PM: All remaining REDCap images, signatures, and files have been restored. Please email redcap@rt.cri.uchicago.edu with any questions or concerns. Thank you again for your patience.

UPDATE 3/21/23 10:15 PM: REDCap remains available for use. However, images and uploaded files may not be available yet. We are in the process of restoring the remaining files. Another outage will need to be scheduled to complete the process. This outage is scheduled for Wednesday, March 22 at 3pm for approximately 1-2 hours. Please email redcap@rt.cri.uchicago.edu with any questions or concerns. Thank you again for your patience as we diligently work to restore all REDCap files.

UPDATE 3/19/23 12:23 PM: Dear CRI Colleagues: We are pleased to notify you that PRFS and all related CRI services are now available. We will be continuing to monitor the system closely for any abnormalities. If you have experience any anomalies or have any questions, please submit a ticket by emailing support@rt.cri.uchicago.edu. If you have further questions or concerns, please feel free to email us at cri@bsd.uchicago.edu. Thank you again for your patience as we diligently worked to restore services. – Julie and Brian

UPDATE 3/17/23 5:06 PM: Dear CRI Colleagues: We have restored critical clinical functionality, and REDCap remains operational. However, PRFS remains unavailable for use as we continue performance stability testing. At this point in time, we plan to restore the system on Sunday, March 19. The root cause of the PRFS outage is still being investigated, and we will continue to monitor the system closely for the foreseeable future. Per our annual operating plan, PRFS is scheduled to be replaced in the coming months which will remediate the stability risk. We will provide an update on Sunday as to when the system will be available. Thank you for your patience as we diligently work to restore all services, and please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns. – Julie and Brian

UPDATE 3/16/23 5:27 PM: Dear CRI Colleagues: PRFS remains offline, though we successfully completed the utility and found no inconsistencies with data integrity. The root cause is still being investigated, and as such, we have scheduled additional performance testing for Friday, 3/17 before we re-activate the system. We will have provide further updates on our performance testing tomorrow. In the meantime, REDCap remains operational, and we are actively restoring critical files. If you have a critical need, please contact cri@bsd.uchicago.edu. Thank you for your patience as we diligently work to restore all services, and please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns. – Julie and Brian

UPDATE 3/15/23 5:16 PM: Dear CRI Colleagues: PRFS remains offline as we continue running the utility that will determine if there is any data corruption that must be repaired. Based on the rate at which this utility is running, we expect it to finish tomorrow. To date, we are pleased to say that we have not identified any data corruption but will know more tomorrow upon the utility’s completion. In the meantime, REDCap remains operational, and we are actively restoring critical files from our backup system. If you have a critical need, please contact cri@bsd.uchicago.edu. Thank you for your patience as we diligently work to restore all services, and please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns. – Julie and Brian

UPDATE 3/14/23 5:29 PM: Dear CRI Colleagues: PRFS remains offline as we are currently running a utility that will determine if there is any data corruption that must be repaired. This utility must be run with the data offline, and it is scheduled to complete on Thursday. At that time, we will know the extent and duration of our recovery efforts. In the meantime, REDCap is up and running, and we are working through critical data restoration from our backup system. If you have a critical need, please contact cri@bsd.uchicago.edu. Thank you for your patience as we diligently work to restore all services, and please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns. – Julie and Brian

UPDATE 3/14/23 9:22 AM: REDCap is now available for use. Please note, to ensure there is no data corruption, any project files created before today are still in the process of being restored and will be added when possible. This includes files stored in “File upload” field types, “Descriptive Text (with file attachments)” field types, and previous export files. Thank you for your patience, and please email redcap@rt.cri.uchicago.edu with any questions or concerns.

UPDATE 3/13/23 6:59 PM: Dear CRI Colleagues: On the afternoon of Thursday, March 8th, we encountered a critical error within our CRI PRFS parallel storage system. This critical error caused the storage system to become unavailable. Working throughout the weekend with our partners Lenovo and IBM, we have worked through the instability. To ensure there is no data corruption, the entire 2.5PB file system will need to be checked and verified and will be offline. We will provide an estimated restoration date by the end of the day on March 14th. In the interim, we are working on alternative means for critical functions. Please email cri@bsd.uchicago.edu if you have a critical need. Thank you for your patience, and do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns. – Julie Johnson and Brian Schinker

UPDATE 3/12/23 8:27 PM: Services are still down. The vendor’s development team will continue to work over night on understanding the source of the error and finding a way to safely bypass it.

UPDATE 3/12/23 12:57 PM: Services are still unavailable. The vendor, having a global presence, is working on analyzing system logs and crash-dumps from the system around the clock. In the last 12 hours, there has been progress on narrowing down the location of the error, but it is still unclear what is required to correct the issue.

UPDATE 3/11/23 4:46 PM: Services are still unavailable. The team is troubleshooting with the vendors to resolve the issue. It is our top priority to restore services and we apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for your patience.

UPDATE 3/10/23 12:34 PM: Unfortunately, services are still unavailable. The team is working to resolve the issue and it has been escalated with the vendor. We apologize for the inconvenience, and greatly appreciate your understanding and patience.

UPDATE 3/9/23 5:08 PM: The impacted services are still unavailable and the team is investigating the issue with the vendor. At this point, we do not have an estimate on when services will be restored.

UPDATE 3/9/23 2:25 PM: We are currently experiencing issues on PRFS storage that is affecting the use of CRI Lab shares, the Gardner HPC Cluster, Linux Stats, and other CRI & BSDIS systems, including REDCap. The team has identified the cause and are working on restoring services.

QUESTIONS: Please email support@rt.cri.uchicago.edu.

Date: Thursday, March 23, 2023
Time: 12:00PM-1:00PM
Info: Join Senior Systems Analyst Julissa Acevedo and IRB Associate Director James Lynch for an elective session focused on the REDCap eConsent process.  This session will cover the elements of the informed consent process, requirements for electronic informed consent process, and the implementation process for electronic informed consent.  In addition, the session will help to familiarize attendees with REDCap setup and resources for electronic informed con­sent.

Speakers: Julissa Acevedo, Senior Systems Analyst/REDCap Administrator, The Center for Research Infor­matics at the University of Chicago and James Lynch, Associate Director of Education and Quality Assur­ance,University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division IRB

Zoom Information (REGISTRATION REQUIRED):
https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJApf-GsqTMoGtUtnRQ_h938xEfIaBogYPEk

The Office of Clinical Research is seeking feedback on our functions and services to ensure we are serving the re­search community as well as possible. Please take a moment to complete the Office of Clinical Research Utilization and Satisfaction Survey. Thank you.