So I just received an email (from JCA Arts Marketing mind you, not Tessitura) that there is going to be a 15.1 release of Tessitura? Do we know when this is going to be released? I'm frustrated by the lack of communication as we just yesterday set our upgrade plan in action and now that all has to change due to changes for RMA.
Michele
In the November 2018 Development Update we announced that v15.0 had been released on October 9th with the deadline to upgrade by April 9, 2019. In that same update we mentioned that we were working on Tessitura Version 15.1, an optional release due out at the end of the first quarter of 2019. We are still working on v15.1 and will begin the Beta process in the next month. The exact date of the v15.1 release has not been announced at this time, but it will be after the 15.0 deadline. v15.1 is an optional release, that will require v15.0 to be installed prior to applying v15.1. As the JCA announcement mentioned, the current RMA will continue to work on Tessitura versions 12.5 to 15.0. The new RMA will require that v15.1 is installed. For those of you who have upgraded to the 15.0.3 Service Pack, that's exactly what you want to do. Stay up to date with the service packs so that you can have the latest fixes and the most up to date software.
Regarding Service Packs. What is the current thinking around, how much testing we should be done before implementing a Service Pack in Live?
I'm interested in this from the Tessitura Network's point of view?
Also interested in this from the communities point of view. Has anyone gone from 15.0.2 to 15.0.3? What sort of testing did you do? What sort of problems or fixes did you see?
We can report that we went from 15.0.0 put in our dev environment back in late October of last year, this January we upgraded in our test environments to 15.0.2. in our Test environments. We did minimal additional testing focused on 15.0.2 and have seen no adverse impact...
With v14.1, we have installed all SP's to #8. We generally look through the list of what is changing in the SP, test out anything that applies to us (in our test environment) and then install in LIVE. We do not go through a full-on test like we do with a GR upgrade. We just can't afford that amount of time each time we need to install an SP.
If the SP is fixing something we need it to fix, we obviously spend more time testing that piece of it than anything else.
I agree that I can not afford to do a full Test for every SP. I'll either need to not do SPs. Or trust that these are exceptionally well tested.
How do we know when the SPs are made available? Because we have been on Tessitura V12.5.1 for a long while now, I've not had to keep up on this. How are the announcements of SP posted? On RAMP what requests do I need to make in order to get this work done?
cc: Anna Wessely (Past Staff Member) Tanya Hoffmann
I just check the service pack page periodically unless we're watching for a specific one. It was great when I used to get RSS notifications on the page but they don't work anymore. SP's are generally released early to mid month (or they were for 14.1). www.tessituranetwork.com/.../Service-Packs
We are on 14.1.5. Our current approach is to stick with the service pack level we are on unless we discover some major issue (and it has to be something really big) that compels us to upgrade to a later service pack. If we do upgrade to a later service pack, we would still go through most of our regular upgrade testing. There are so many different ways to use Tessitura and customize that even if Tessitura's testing process is solid, that's still not an adequate indicator as to how a certain release will function in specific environments.
I'm also not certain if the list of changes on the service pack page is 100% complete. Is there a chance of some other changes sneaking into a service pack that aren't well-documented? (Hopefully not.)
Anyway, once we have more experience with the service pack approach we might be able to go with more lightweight testing. But at the moment, we are taking a more conservative approach.
We've taken a more aggressive approach to installing Service Packs, at least while we were on v14.0.x -- our hand was forced earlier on because we had some payment issues/bugs that were resolved in later Service Packs. Service Packs, in our experience, have consistently led to greater stability, so we've become more comfortable with installing them regularly with little testing outside of installing the SP on TEST and making sure the system is able to process sales. Our auditors were a little miffed by that, in all honesty, but we're working through that.
Since moving to v15.0.x, we've been limited in our ability to schedule updates due to heavy sales and major shows -- the risk is just a bit too high. With that said, our confidence in Service Packs remains high -- especially since we, as an organization, are eager to move to new versions when the functionality makes it a compelling move. In the case of v15.0.x, we chose to move quickly as we've just gone on sale with HAMILTON subscriptions and are gearing up for HAMILTON Single Ticket sales, and improvements in v15.0.x, especially with the Pricing Rules engine, was compelling enough.
I think the problem is that the RSS feeds "work" (in that they exist and have posts on them), but the Network hasn't quite figured out how to properly utilize their web platform so that the feeds actually reliably contain the updates that they should. There was an article in the feed on 1/16 about V15 SP3 and V14.1 SP11, but the previous article in the feed was on 11/9/18 about 15SP1 and 14.1SP8. (So where was 15SP2 and 14.1 SP 9-10?) But in any case, the idea is that service packs are released on a monthly basis, so that is becoming a bit more predictable at least.
I deleted my feed and tried to get it back and now just get a page of code that begins with: the XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below. .
That's the actual feed itself -- if you take the URL of that page and put it into your RSS reader, it'll work just fine.
I'm going to set up an automatic email using the free version of Zapier. This will read the RSS Feed and send me an email through my Gmail account.
P.S. I'm using the same approach to be notified about the Service Outages over on RAMP. This is not too bad. $0.00.