Sage 100

Just found out on that the 4.5 upgrade will offer both a parallel and an in place option. If you are moving a customer from below 4.4 to 4.5, you will need to use the Parallel tool. But if it is a 4.4 to 4.5 upgrade, the in-place option can be used.

Stupid question, but why would we want the option?

It you need to reinstall the 4.4 version you must do a complete reinstall to a different location and then migrate data. You can not overwrite extisting system. It is a pain!!

So they will not be requiring the parallel for every upgrade like they said they would? Don't get me wrong. I am glad I can do an in place upgrade, it is a pain at times when reinstalling. I changed all my processes for parallel since I thought they said that was the way it was going to be from now on. Silly me should know that they are going to change it within two versions.

We have ALWAYS done a parallel for every upgrade, even before Sage put the parallel process in place. It just makes it seem like a smoother process.

I look at in place/parallel decision on a case by case basis. If the install is going to take days/weeks to do, then parallel. If it is going to be something accomplished in a half a day or less, then I'll do and in place after making a backup of the entire MAS folder. I still encounter issues with the parallel install (e.g. custom office panels, etc). Plus I still store most of the paperless files under the MAS_XXX\paperless folder, so resetting the indices are a PITA. I have started setting the paperless folder to a location that would not change when doing a parallel, but this is a minority of installs. I think Sage got it right on being flexible in v4.5.

When I say Parallel I mean using their tool to migrate then convert data. Most of our upgrades are Parallel meaning I never change the original data. I have both the Original Data and the Upgraded Data and can run either at any time. But I can use the install process to upgrade the original path to the new version and not migrate data. Just like @jeffschwenk I use to put paperless in the mas_xxx directory but once they said they required parallel I had to move it. So all the current upgrades have paperless outside of the MAS90 folder. I am glad that we don't have to do Parallel with a migration which doesn't move over the new pdf's, etc. I hated the fact that I couldn't just reinstall over an installation.

Doesn't the ""parallel migration"" process essentially just does an xcopy routine on the MAS_xxx and images\xxx folders?

It doesn't recopy the Paperless unless you do the whole system again. When we convert we 1st move over everything. Then go through a testing process. We will setup security for the new features and functions. Then VI jobs are updated and tested. Customizations are recreated or upgraded and then tested. There may be weeks between the first conversion and the second. If we just did the data during the conversion we would miss any new PDF files, IT users, VI jobs (no biggie there)

We recopy over the PDF log files -- Paperless has always been set to a directory outside the MAS directory. EBM users (if applicable) is done manually. We typically don't have new VI jobs and tell the customers to keep their user IDs in sync with the new version if they add a user.