What can I expect with my upcoming PENTA Upgrade
Issue/Symptom/Question
What can I expect with our PENTA Upgrade? What should I be aware of?
Applies To
PENTA
OnBase
Workbench
Web Apps
Upgrades
Questions & Answers
Q: How do we schedule a date for our upgrade?
A: Speak with your Account Manager via email or in a status call. They will reach out to ReQuordit and CC you in the email. ReQuordit will send you a questionnaire to fill out to the best of your ability. Once that questionnaire is received back by ReQuordit, they will schedule a discovery call with Penta, your team, and ReQuordit where we will discuss the specifics for your upgrade and pick dates. Any date changes must be requested through ReQuordit and confirmed by all three parties.
Q: How do we pay for the upgrade?
A: Payment will be made to ReQuordit per their Solution Overview. The cost is based on hours worked and is split between the different environments. For example, if you have two environments such as Test and Production, you would receive a quote for each environment and an invoice for each environment based on the hours logged.
Q: What is new for this upgrade?
A: We recommend you read all release notes for each Penta version from your current version to the version you're being upgraded to. You can find all release notes here. If you have any questions about how the upgrade may impact your business, please reach out to your Account Manager.
Q: What do we do if we find issues while testing?
A: Submit a support ticket through the ReQuordit support portal. ReQuordit will involve Penta Support as needed. Any email chains containing support questions started with the Penta team or ReQuordit team will be reminded to open a support ticket and not resolved via email.
Q: What time can we expect the upgrade to start?
A: For the non-production environment upgrades, the work will typically begin Monday morning. We schedule these to be completed within one week. For the production upgrade, ReQuordit and Penta recommend a start time of 8am CT. This allows for the work to be done while the most resources are available. Production upgrades are scheduled to be completed within one business day. This early start time allows for the upgrade to be handled efficiently during the scheduled business day, and it provides your testing team ample time to test critical functions before going live with all of your users.
Q: What does your company need to do in preparation for an upgrade?
A: If you host your own servers on premise, you will need to purchase any new servers (which will be recommended based on the server's current Operating System) and get them spun up at least a week prior to your scheduled upgrade. ReQuordit and/or Penta may also require additional information from your company- this should be discussed during the initial discovery call.
Q: What does your company need to do during and after the upgrade?
A: During the upgrade, your internal IT team will need to install any third party apps such as outlook apps. After the upgrade to your testing environment, your team is responsible for allocating resources to test all critical and daily functionality in the upgraded testing environment. ReQuordit will schedule a Go/ No Go call at least 48 hours prior to the PROD upgrade. All critical testing must be completed before then.
Q: Testing is taking longer than we expected and we're worried about the production date. Can we reschedule?
A: It is recommended you stay in contact with the upgrade team as you progress through testing. You can reschedule your production date without a fee with a minimum of 10 business days notice per the signed agreement with ReQuordit and Penta. If you request to reschedule within 10 days of your Production date, you may be subject to a fee.
Testing
Please be sure you have resources planned for the testing period (between your non-production Testing upgrade date and Production upgrade date).
It is the responsibility of the customer to accomplish all relevant testing for their environments.
We schedule the testing (non-production) and Production upgrade approximately 4 weeks apart to allow your team time to thoroughly test the environment and work out any kinks through support tickets. It is your responsibility to complete this testing in a timely manner to keep your Production upgrade on schedule.
This is a generic list of items that your team should plan to test. Penta expects customers who are upgrading to reference the release notes for all relevant version updates and consider those items while planning the testing.
PENTA Modules | Web Applications/ Other Apps | OnBase |
---|---|---|
Project Management | TEP | Workflow |
Finance and Accounting | eTime | Document Import and Retrieval |
Payroll | Customer Portal | Custom queries, foldering, review in Penta for Windows |
Human Resources | Employee Portal | Autofill Keyword sets |
Billing and Account Receivables | MFS | Diagnostics Console |
Accounts Payable | Call Taking (Customer Console) | Unity Scheduler |
Inventory | Dispatching | Other 3rd Party Software |
Equipment Cost Control | Project Management | |
Fixed Asset Management | Accounting (Bank Rec) | |
Purchasing | Compliance Reporting | |
Service Management | ||
Interfaces | ||
Legacy Reports | ||
Crystal Reports | ||
Printing | ||
Workbench |