In true horror movie fashion, even OnBase upgrades can creep up on you. Before you know it, you’re drowning in a sea of broken, unsupported programs reaching for any weapon you can find to pull through and save the day. But just like the first character who runs away into the woods, you don’t have a lot of hope when you go at it alone.
All hope isn’t lost. If you’re ready to upgrade your OnBase system there are a few ways to make sure it runs smoothly.
Ask for help
In our recent webinar, “Extreme Makeover OnBase Edition”, Mike Current, a member of the Hyland Upgrade Council, and our very own Infrastructure Engineer, Mark Hamilton, laid out the secret to running a successful upgrade. And the main driving force behind a great upgrade experience? Bringing experts in to help.
Whether you need a lot of help and want a partner like DataBank to completely run your upgrade from start to finish or if you just want them to pick up some slack and maybe create and run your test environment, getting the right people involved makes all the difference. As Mark put it in the webinar, just because you can build a house, if you’re not a construction worker and you haven’t built 5 or 6 houses already, it will probably be very difficult. So why not bring in someone who has completed multiple upgrades?
Look at your third-party products
Before even beginning an upgrade, you need to look at all of your third-party systems and applications to make sure they will run with the newest version of OnBase or that they are even running on your current version of OnBase.
If you go through an upgrade without checking and upgrading the rest of your programs outside of OnBase, you will probably come back to them barely working, not being supported by the newest version. Double check this before digging into an upgrade. Download Hyland’s third party product compatibility matrix (also available in Community) to help figure out what is and is not supported.
Create a test environment
Testing out your newly upgraded system is essential. You can either create a test environment yourself, or let a partner like DataBank help you out. Running through exactly what everything will look like before making it live for everyone to see can help rule out a lot of potential issues and bugs.
When creating a test environment you can typically choose between manually creating one or using a configuration migration. If you’re not sure which route you want to take, ask! We can help you work through the best option and get you running on a test environment.
You’re upgrade is complete! Now what?
After all is said and done, your system is upgraded and you’re running on the newest architecture, it’s time to look at what happened. What went well? What could have gone better? What do you users think of the new system and how the process went?
Looking for feedback after a large upgrade will help the next one go even smoother. Since you’ll most likely be upgrading again in another two years, wouldn’t it be nice to look back and not make the same mistake twice?
Upgrades don’t have to be scary. You can actually come out alive like the one hero left standing next to the monster being locked up or thrown back into the dungeon!
For more upgrade tips and a full look at the in’s and out’s of running a successful upgrade, watch the complete webinar here.
