The process of booking an upgrade differs slightly depending on whether your Weighsoft system is hosted by Access or not.
Upgrades are not self-service and must be scheduled with the support team.
Upgrade Times
Upgrades are allocated a 1-hour time slot and can be booked between 9am and 3pm, Monday to Thursday (9am being the start time of the first upgrade, and 3pm being the start time of the last upgrade).
Note: Most upgrades take considerably less than an hour to complete. However, a full hour is booked to allow sufficient time for any unexpected issues or additional checks that may be required.
These hours have been chosen to ensure that a full complement of Support Engineers and Developers is available should any assistance or escalation be needed during the upgrade process.
Requesting the Upgrade
In order to request an upgrade you can reach out to your Account Manager or contact the Support team via the Digital Assistant (either via the portal or the in-app interface)
When the chat begins advise that you want to arrange an upgrade and the Digital Assistant will ask for some details:
Your current version of Weighsoft (which you can find by going to Administration>About)
What version of Weighsoft you need to be upgraded to (if you know).
The reason for the upgrade (for example is it to deploy a specific fix or function)
What date and time would be best for the upgrade to be carried out - refer to the details above for more information.
The Assistant will then pass your request directly to a member of the support team to get the upgrade booked in for you.
Upgrade Options
We currently have various options for carrying out upgrades:
Manual Upgrade in Office Hours
This upgrades are booked through and carried out by the support team between 9am and 3pm, Monday to Thursday (9am being the start time of the first upgrade, and 3pm being the start time of the last upgrade).
Typically, these upgrades involve approximately 30 minutes of downtime during which the system will be unavailable.
To request an upgrade simply open the Digital Assistant and say you would to book an upgrade, the Assistant will ask you some basic questions (what version are you on, when would you like the upgrade to be done) before passing the request through to a member of the team for it to be booked in.
If you are an Access-Hosted customer then these are carried out free of charge.
If you are an on-premises customer then there may be a charge, depending on the nature of the upgrade.
Manual Upgrade Outside of office hours
If the above time slots do not work for you then you can request the upgrade to be done outside of office hours.
In these instances the upgrade will need to be carried out by the Professional Services team and may incur a charge for the work.
These are booked in the same way as above, but once the date and time have been requested the Support Team will pass the request on to the Professional Services Team for it to be booked in and quoted for.
Monthly Automated Upgrades
Important: This process is only available to Access-Hosted customers
We are pleased to offer a new automated upgrade programme for Weighsoft.
Once enrolled, your Weighsoft system will be automatically upgraded to the latest version outside of business hours on a monthly basis.
Upgrades are typically scheduled for 7:00 PM on the second Tuesday of each month. From time to time, additional interim upgrade windows may be required to deploy important fixes or new functionality.
Please note that your Weighsoft system will be temporarily unavailable for approximately 15 to 30 minutes while the upgrade is being completed.
The programme is free of charge, and you may opt out at any time.
If you would like to join the programme, please contact the Support Team. We will review your system to confirm its eligibility for automated upgrades.
Important: In order to be eligible for the automated upgrades your system must first be running at least version 5.531. This is because versions prior to that require manual work to be done as part of the upgrade process.
You can check your current version in Administration>About. If you are running 5.530 or lower then you will need one of the above manual upgrades first before you can be added to the automated upgrade program.
Database-Only Automated Upgrades
If you are an Access-Hosted customer then you will have already been getting "database only" monthly upgrades for the past several months (you may have seen a banner appear in Weighsoft notifying you of the upgrade each month).
These upgrades are also carried out at 7pm on the 2nd Tuesday of every month, during which time your Weighsoft system will be briefly inaccessible for around 15-30 minutes.
These upgrades have no effect on your current Front End user experience, but they prepare the background of your system to allow any future upgrades to be carried out much faster.
If you are not enrolled in the above "Full Upgrade" program then you will still receive these updates on a the 2nd Tuesday of every month.