LearningBuilder Upgrade Guide
- Billy O'Shaughnessy
- Christopher Butcher
- Melany Simms
Overview
This document provides a guide for LearningBuilder clients to understand the LearningBuilder Upgrade Process. When a LearningBuilder instance upgrades, it is moving from a previous version to the newest version available. Clients are entitled to one upgrade to their instance of LearningBuilder each year as part of your Subscription agreement. Below we describe how the process works, and the actions you should take to ensure your system gets upgraded.
Participants
A successful upgrade relies on enlisting the right people to ensure everything goes smoothly. Your upgrade effort will involve participants from your organization and members of the Heuristics team.
Client participants
As you prepare for the upgrade, please make sure you have identified the following participants.
Role | Description |
|---|---|
LearningBuilder Administrator | Client point of contact for LearningBuilder. Typically would be most familiar with testing processes. |
Technical Contact | Client technical resource who may need to be informed about testing integrations, or other more technical aspects of the system. May or may not be the same person as the Administrator. |
Informed Parties | Contacts that need to be informed about upgrade dates and decisions. |
Heuristics contacts
The following members of the Heuristics team will participate in the upgrade.
Role | Description |
|---|---|
Upgrade Coordinator | Manages the overall upgrade calendar and makes sure all the pieces come together. You will hear from our Coordinator via e-mail that will be tracked in Jira. |
Account Manager | Heuristics contact for all LearningBuilder matters. Will help coordinate special circumstances, such as Assisted Upgrades and the Risk Assessment. |
Project Manager | If you are working with Professional Services, this effort may be coordinated by your assigned Project Manager. |
Subject Matter Expert | This is a person who has advanced knowledge of your implementation, including customizations and integrations. |
Upgrade Timeline
We plan your upgrade well in advance of your production upgrade date so there are no surprises. For a standard annual upgrade, you are likely to be assigned a cohort that corresponds to a one of the first three quarters of the year.
The upgrade timelines follows this structure.
Task | Time frame | Owner | Objective / What needs to be done? |
|---|---|---|---|
Schedule your upgrade | More than 2 months prior to your Production upgrade | Heuristics | This task establishes the timeframe during which we will manage your upgrade, including the upgrade itself.
|
Plan your upgrade | 1 month before your Production upgrade | Heuristics | This task reviews your instance to prepare you for the decisions you will need to make about your upgrade.
|
Upgrade kick-off | Three weeks before your Production upgrade | Heuristics / Client | This is a meeting between Heuristics and your team to confirm expectations, assign roles, and start the process in earnest. |
Upgrade your User Acceptance Testing instance | Three weeks before your Production upgrade | Heuristics | This task upgrades your LearningBuilder instance in the User Acceptance Testing environment to begin the testing process. |
Customer testing | 1 week period Feedback due 2 weeks prior to production upgrade date. | Client | This is the period you have to test your instance to ensure the upgrade does not negatively impact your system. |
Issue Resolution | 1 week period Completed by 1 week prior to upgrade date | Heuristics | This is the period Heuristics uses to address any customer findings. |
Production Sign-off | Required 1 week prior to upgrade date. | Client | This is the period you have to tested your instance and found no issues or issues have been resolved and we are ready for Production. |
Upgrade Production | Upgrade date | Heuristics | This is the day we upgrade your Production instance. |
Monitor Production | Week after the upgrade | Client | This is the task to monitor your instance post production upgrade |
What to Expect During the Upgrade Process
To keep upgrade success high and costs low, we perform the upgrade in a three-week period. The period starts with a kick-off and ends with a post-upgrade monitoring period. Please consider the following factors during the upgrade.
Task | Considerations |
|---|---|
Initial Contact from Heuristics Support | You will receive a message about scheduling your Upgrade from our Upgrade Coordinator via JIRA. Please respond to this message, or forward it to the appropriate team member to avoid delays. |
Kick-off meeting | This meeting will formally convene the upgrade team members. On this meeting, we will confirm timelines, tasks, and roles. We will review your Risk Assessment document with you. |
Upgrade User Acceptance Testing environment | We will upgrade your User Acceptance Testing environment so you can test in a place that will not affect the operation of your site. |
Customer Testing | You will test your configuration in your LearningBuilder UAT environment. Alternatively, you can contract with Heuristics to perform certain tests. You have 1 week to test before your |
Issue Resolution | If you identify any issues, Heuristics and review and resolve within 1 week. |
Production Sign-off | You must sign-off on the upgrade 1 week prior to your scheduled upgrade date, or your upgrade will be delayed to the next cycle. |
What happens if you do not engage or Sign-off?
We require that all of our LearningBuilder instances upgrade once per calendar year. If you do not engage, with our upgrade team, your upgrade will be moved to the next cycle (typically 1 cycle per-quarter).
If you do not engage for two consecutive cycles your production instance will be upgraded at the end of the second cycle.
What’s Changing?
LearningBuilder publishes comprehensive release notes on our Blog. When upgrading from one version to another, you will receive the benefits of all interim releases between your current version, and your new version. We recommend that all LearningBuilder administrators subscribe to this blog and review all new release notes as they are published.