How are Upgrades Released and do we have any Control Over Releases and Their Timing?

Author: Eric Vasbinder

ERPs Applicable:

• Vista

• Spectrum

• Procontractor

Customers on Automated Upgrade Schedules

When a customer is brought live into our VP1/TC1 cloud, they are always added into our automated upgrade schedule, and will receive the newest releases of Vista, HFFS, and more shortly on or after release.  This process will be fully automatic, but notifications will be sent out prior to the upgrade being schduled.  Upgrades will occur overnight during the work week.

Our rollouts of upgrades in the Vista Cloud happen over a series of waves.  Rollout waves start occurring just prior to GA with our Early or "Pre" Release Wave, followed by our GA Release, and then Delayed Waves occurring over the next few weeks.

The four waves can be thought of as follows:

• • Wave 0 (Pre-Release): 

  • Wave 1 (GA):  Generally, receives an upgrade to Vista at GA

  • Wave 2 (GA+1):  Receives upgrade at approx. GA + 1 weeks

  • Wave 3 (GA+2):  Receives upgrade at approx. GA + 2 weeks

You will be notified at your contact email address at least one week in advance when your environment will be updated.  NOTE:  Please make certain your contact information with Viewpoint is updated.

If you would like to "opt out" of a scheduled upgrade, please submit a cloud support case, requesting that your environment be removed from automatic upgrades.  This has the effect of requiring that you specifically request when you would like to have upgrades added into your environment; once you're removed from automatic upgrades, you stay removed until you request to be added back into automated upgrades.  Once removed, you'll need to follow the process below for "Ad Hoc" Upgrades.

Unsupported ERP Versions NOT Allowed

An extremely important item to note is that due to compliance requirements around SOC 2 and more, our team cannot permit customers to run unsupported versions of our ERPs in the cloud.  

As such, customers who are not on the automated upgrade schedule will need to bring their environment to a supported version of the ERP prior to their currently running version expiring.  In addition, if a customer is moving into our cloud, they will be allowed to "go live" with the version they are currently using for testing.  However, if that version is no longer supported, they will need to upgrade to a currently supported version in a reasonable timeframe after go live.  For example, if a customer goes live on Vista 2022r1 when the current releases of Vista are 2023r1 and 2022r2, they will be technically on an unsupported Vista version.  As such, within 30 days after go live the customer should have a plan in place to test and approve upgrading to a supported version of Vista; in this example either 2023r1 or 2022r2.  

Ad Hoc Upgrades

How to Request?

Customers who are no longer in the automated upgrade train, and who would like to have their Vista and/or HFFS installations upgraded to a newer release, need to submit a cloud support case, requesting that their installations be upgraded and to what version.

Timing?

Ad-Hoc upgrades are performed twice a month, on Tuesday evenings of the second and fourth Tuesdays of every month.  The process usually starts around 9 or 10pm Pacific Time for North American customers, and of course during the day (Pacific time) for our Australian customers.  This way, each customer's environment is only down during their overnight hours.

Estimated Downtime?

Each customer's environment is unique.  Thus, we cannot guarantee a specific timeframe for when the environment will be available running on the new version.  However, we do endeavor to restore environments within an hour or two of the start of the process.  This has been achieved in the vast majority of our upgrades.

Weekend Upgrades?

Unfortunately, to ensure the best possible support for your environment during the upgrade process, we do not support upgrades over the weekend at this time.  Upgrades will be scheduled to occur overnight Monday - Thursday and will respect your local time zone.  For example, a customer in Australia will not have their environment upgraded at noon their time, but rather overnight their time.