SmartSite, the new learning management and collaboration system at UC Davis, will shut down for part of a weekend in August while its software is upgraded.

The outage will start at 10:00 p.m. on Friday, August 17, and end by noon on Saturday, August 18. This downtime includes recurring monthly maintenance to campus systems on which SmartSite depends as well as a SmartSite specific software upgrade.

In preparation for the fall, the SmartSite team will be fixing several known issues and upgrading the Assignments and Gradebook tool.

"This update will add increased functionality to the Gradebook," says SmartSite Program Manager Kirk Alexander, "including the addition of categories and weighting."

For additional information about the downtime, please email smartsite-help@ucdavis.edu or call (530) 754-HELP for assistance.

For information about SmartSite, including an overview of tools, user profiles, training sessions and self-paced learning materials, please visit smartsite.ucdavis.edu.

SmartSite is now the preferred campus system for managing classes online, although its tools are handy for a wide range of collaborative uses. It has been tested as a pilot program on campus since early 2006, and more than 9,000 people have used it so far.