Software Updates and Deliveries
Types of updates
The further development of the software can lead to an expansion of and/or change to the software with the result that new functionalities are available and/or existing functionalities are changed and enhanced.
imc will provide customers with updates within Major Releases in the form of Innovation Packs, Patches, and Hotfixes at regular intervals. These are periodic adaptations of program parts and the associated documentation that contain improvements, extensions and other changes that represent further developments of the software.
The different forms of updates and expected frequency of release are as follows:
A major release relates to a new major version of the imc Learning Suite Software which marks a significant technical or functional enhancement that will be released approximately every 3-5 years.
An innovation pack relates to an upgrade to a new version of the imc Learning Suite Software that includes new features and functionality that will be released approximately every 3-4 months.
A patch release relates to a system change that is applied to resolve known error(s) and is released approximately every 6-8 weeks.
A hotfix relates to a system change applied to resolve critical known programme error(s) which will be released on an ad-hoc basis.
Example of version number: 14.20.2.3
Documentation
The Service Desk is not a hotline for application support or specialist advice. Information about changes and improvements to a new innovation pack or patch is communicated via other channels:
Patch Documentation - includes information related to standard error fixed with each patch
Release Notes - includes a general documentation about new standard functionalities and/or existing functionalities which were changed or enhanced
Delivery Tickets for New Updates
Tickets of type Delivery are created by the support team during the planning and preparation of patch deliveries. They are used to provide further information about the delivery contents and to schedule appointments and inform about delivery dates.
The information displayed in the ticket includes the
delivery version
the estimated delivery date
a list of the Service Desk tickets for which changes are included in the delivery
links to download the accompanying documentation
Workflow
Preparation phase - status “Planned“
Merge Planning
Deliveries will first go through a preparation phase. One of the first steps in this process is the planning of the so-called "merge", where the standard patch to be delivered is integrated into the delivery branch, which contains design, configuration and customisations of the respective customer system.
Estimated delivery date
As soon as the merge is scheduled, the estimated delivery date is calculated and displayed in the delivery ticket. Please note that this is only an estimation and not a concrete commitment.
We always try to provide the delivery to the estimated date, but sometimes we must delay dates. Delays will be communicated via the delivery ticket.
Delivery package
After the merge is completed, we verify which changes are or should be included in the delivery and whether all changes are completed. At the same time, you will see a list of all Service Desk tickets that will be handled with the delivery in the delivery ticket. If all necessary changes are completed and contained in the delivery branch, the branch is closed, and a delivery package is generated.
Quality tests
The package is then deployed and tested on the reference system, whereby the bug fixes in particular are checked again in the overall context of all changes. If the tests are successful, the delivery is released by the support team. This marks the end of the preparation phase, and the delivery can take place. During the entire preparation phase, the delivery ticket has the status Planned.
Actual delivery
For the actual delivery we differentiate between two cases:
systems which are hosted in-house (on-premise) by your IT team or by third party suppliers
systems which are hosted by imc or for which imc was commissioned with the patch management
Systems which are hosted in-house (on-premise)
In the first case we provide you with the delivery package for download on our SFTP server. A message in the delivery ticket and an additional e-mail informs you when the package is available for download.
The delivery is completed thereby, and the ticket is set to status Delivered.
Systems which are hosted by imc
here we differentiate between:
systems which are on cloud environments
there is no delivery ticket for customers view
the update has a fixed scheduling which can be checked within the Maintenance Schedule (Cloud)
systems which are on REALM environments
delivery date will be communicated via E-Mail, as soon as an update slot was booked at our hosting department
there is no delivery ticket for customers view
other systems which are on Azure, Green-IT etc.
The support team will inform you in the delivery ticket that the delivery package is ready to be installed and will tell you the planned maintenance date.
If available, the staging system will be updated first - after completion the ticket is set to the status Stage installation completed.
After a successful test phase, the production system will be updated. - After completion of the maintenance activities, the ticket is set to the status Installation completed.
If you think the update cannot be installed on the production system, please inform us:
in case a new error was discovered, you can submit a new service desk ticket and report the issue,
in case an old error is still reproducible and was not delivered on prod yet, you can comment the existing ticket (which should change after the delivery from status delivery pending to status resolved, but since it is not closed, comments are still possible)
Please always keep your systems up to date in order to have a low gap between your production system and our reference system (our internal test system, which uses the same configuration and software - including customizations - as your production system, as well as an anonymised copy of the database).
When is a Hotfix delivery package needed
in case imc delivered a new package / patch update and an error was discovered during testing the of the new patch update (CLOUD or on-premise) which was reported as “blocking of the productive update”
imc has to identify if this is a new software error introduced with the delivery package or it is already an error which is present on production.
Software error is already present on production: this means that the delivery package will not decrease quality / will not introduce a new error on production that was not present before. No hotfix is required. imc has to report the new error based on the actual severity.
Software error is new and not present on production: this means that the delivery package will decrease quality and introduce a new error on production that is not yet there. So, imc has to prepare a hot fix delivery (new hotfix patch or CUSTOM) in case this is blocking the production update.
First Customer Shipment (FCS) of our Innovation Packages (0.0 version)
The conditions for customers to qualify for a First Customer Shipment of an Innovation Package have been updated as follows:
Only customers who have an ordered enhancement in the Innovation Package AND
are not on a shared hosting environment AND
have a reason which is asking for an earlier delivery of the new Innovation Package (e.g. exceptional importance of included enhancements) which is asking for a delivery of FCS version
can request an exceptional FCS delivery via imc Service Desk, which needs to be confirmed by imc product team.
In Conclusion there is no regular delivery of the FCS version by default.
If you as a customer are interested to get the FCS version of a new release, you need to contact imc service desk and reason why you exceptionally need such a delivery.
However, the final go live system version is supposed to be always a general available release (1.0 version).