Upgrades FAQ

What is "Verification of Space for ___"?

These are minimum requirements for upgrading a self-hosted environment. If you have specific questions as to the ‘why’ of these requirements, please submit a ticket as you would for a parallel issue with your specific question.

What is a Transaction Log?

Upgrading a database writes a large amount of information to the Transaction Log, it is imperative that at least 60% of the size of your Database’s Data file worth of Space is free on the Drive the Transaction log is located. The Location can be found by going Right Clicking the Database > Choosing Properties > Selecting Files > Look to the information for the File Type of Log.  You may have to scroll to the right to view the path of where the Transaction Log is stored for the Parallel or Live Database.

What is a Terminal Server? 

This is guaranteed space for the new Parallel or Live Debug. The old Debug folder will be backed up and the new one will be brought over, and pointed to the appropriate database.

What is a Web Server? 

This is for guaranteeing space for the new Parallel or Live Portal. The old Portal Folder will be backed up and the new one will be brought over and IIS set to point to the Upgraded Portal and pointed to the appropriate Database.

What is an Upgrade Account? 

If you have a special account you would like the Upgrade Team to use when upgrading your Parallel or Live. We also require a service account be created to facilitate the use of the Avionté Agent. The Agent handles many background processes of Avionté such as Background Checks and Mass Mail. If you do not provide a service account to be used for the Agent service, those features and some others will not function post-upgrade. Avionté does not store the credentials for this user.

What environment access do I have during an upgrade?

A customer has 'Read,' 'Write,' 'Delete', and 'Create directory' permissions for the following locations:

• Parallel or Live Debug Location: The Location of the Debug that is set to be upgraded for testing.  When the Upgrade is complete your IT will need to deploy, via the core app installer, the updated debugs.
  
  
• Parallel or Live Portal Location: The location of the Portal that is set to be upgraded.  This is usually located in C:\inetpub\wwwroot on the Web Server.

How do I restore my current production database backup over my parallel database? 

We ask that this be done prior to our technicians performing the parallel upgrade. This will ensure recent data being available for your testing purposes. If you do not currently have a parallel database, please create one from a recent backup of your production database.

How do I apply my custom-created content?

If you or your IT staff are creating your own customizations to Avionté in your database/report server that has not been commissioned through Avionté, we are setting the expectation that you and your staff will be taking ownership of that custom content. Post-Upgrade those items will need to be reapplied to your environment since they did not go through our source control.

We here at Avionté have gone through your database and collected the custom database content and portal customizations and have housed them in a version control software hosted on our local network as of October of 2015. Version control software, otherwise known as revision control or source control, gives us the ability to manage changes to collections of information. In this case your custom content is tracked by revision, time stamp and the user making the changes. This way we have a full historical view of each customization in your database. This process was completed in October of 2015. All custom content from that point and created previously is now housed in version control. Any subsequent additions of custom content created or altered by Avionté for you has also been added to version control under your company entry. Any customization made by you or a third-party developer since then will not be housed in our version tracking software.

This will provide a new challenge for some of you when you upgrade to version 15.2+. Under that new version the upgrade process will remove all stock Avionté stored procedures from the database and apply the standard version of the core Avionté procedures. Once that is completed your custom content will be applied from the content we have housed in the version tracking software for your company. If there is custom content you have made on your own, without our assistance or since we collected it in October of 2015, it will need to be re-applied by you, your IT staff or a third-party post-upgrade or it will not exist post-upgrade.

We understand this may cause some issues in the long run, however the speed and precision at which your upgrade can now be performed has been dramatically increased. Depending on the current volume of upgrade requests, they can be turned around within two to five business days (and potentially next-day) to have a parallel deployed at the new version.

Full lists of your custom content can be obtained by submitting a support ticket via the Avionté Support Center. This list will contain the names of the custom procedures we are currently tracking in your database and is available at no billable time. If you require additional information regarding any of the procedures such as what it does or what area of the application it affects it is also available, but will incur billable time/materials to generate.

We welcome any questions in regards to this delineation of policy. Contact us at UpgradeTeam@avionte.com. 

Additional Information Regarding Changes in Functionality

Weekly Process > Generate ACH Shortcut Button

Version 15.2+ of the Avionté Application removes the ‘Generate ACH’ shortcut button in Weekly Process.

If you utilize this functionality, please notify the upgrades team on your Parallel Request. The functionality will need to be added to your Weekly Process > Export/Import section to insure it works correctly. If you export your ACH files from Weekly Process > Export/Import this functionality change should not affect your ability to generate ACH files. This only affects those that use the shortcut button.

Additional information regarding this change can be found in the release notes in the Avionté Support Center

Outlook Connector/Outlook Add In

If you or your users utilize either the Outlook Connector or Outlook Add In there are some steps post-live upgrade that you will need to do. The Outlook Add In is no longer a supported feature after version 14.2. It was replaced by the Outlook Connector. Since this functionality is installed locally on your user’s computers, please follow the instructions provided in this article on the Avionté Support Center. Any existing Add In or Connector you have installed will need to be uninstalled and the new install run on those computers. The new Connector can be found on the Avionté FTP.

Record of Employment (ROE) Version 2.0

Avionté version 16.1 contains a major alteration to ROE functionality in an effort to standardize Record of Employment filing. Service Canada will not accept Version 1.0 web file formats after August 31^st, 2016.

The setup for ROE 2.0 can be found on the Avionté Support Center. Any questions regarding the setup that is not contained in that help article can be directed to your Client Manager. I would highly recommend testing this in your parallel to make sure it is working as expected if you file ROE.

New Email Templates

Avionté version 16.1 removes a customizable procedure used to email web login information. Previously this functionality was only able to be customized through Avionté and our Technical Services team. This functionality has been added to the core application to allow you to create and manage your email templates for Applicant, Employee, Customer and Vendor emails containing their web login information.

For those of you who have a custom version of the procedure that is being removed, you will be given a document detailing your customization with the email subject and body of the email so you can enter those in a new email template.

Instructions on how to enter a new email template can be found on the Avionté Support Center. If you have any questions that are not covered in the help center, please reach out to your Client Manager to work out a time to be trained on how to properly create the email templates.