Revision as of 15:14, 21 April 2016

General Information

Next Upgrade Date

The next upgrade is scheduled for July 20 2023.

Quarterly Upgrades

Upgrades are now released on a quarterly basis.

Key reasons for changing to a quarterly upgrade approach include:

• This upgrade period will bring more enhancements that will make your SmartSimple system more robust with more and better features.
• We are well into the process of becoming Service Organization Control 2 (SOC 2) compliant. This process requires more in depth testing and review of our work to meet a higher level of compliance. Better security standards mean a more secure platform for all our users.

Upgrade Schedule

We regularly update the list of upgrade features and schedule for both the backup and production servers on this Wiki page.

This page will provide a general overview of each upgrade, with links to the Wiki articles describing the new or updated features and how to use them. You can also subscribe to the Technical Journal that is sent out prior to each upgrade on the Newsletter Signup Page. (Unsubscribe here).

System Upgrade Process

The objective of the System Upgrade Process is to ensure that customers have a chance to review, without compromising the integrity of their production system, how their applications and information will work following the upgrade. In order to take advantage of this you will need to know how to access your backup instance of SmartSimple. If you need assistance with this either refer to the Backup Server and Testing Instances Wiki article, or contact the SmartSimple support desk.

For clients on a Dedicated Server, please review the SmartSimple Upgrade Process – Dedicated Server page.

Upgrade Schedule Details

The following tables outline the detailed upgrade release cycle.

If you are part of our Key Release your SmartSimple Cloud system will be automatically upgraded according to the following schedule. Generally North American Clients are on the Key release.

If you are part of our Global Release your SmartSimple Cloud system will be automatically upgraded according to the following schedule. Generally clients in Europe, Middle East and Asia as well as Managed Dedicated clients are on the Global release.

If you are on dedicated environment that is client-managed your SmartSimple Cloud system is only upgraded manually by your system administrator or by submitting a request to SmartSimple. The upgrade package is made available for you according to the following schedule.

Backup Server Update

• Each backup server will be updated to the "release candidate" prior to the upgrade date.
• This update will provide for instance specific testing of release candidate, as you can log into your respective backup server and test the changes against your most current data and configuration.
• Internal staff will also be using these servers to perform instance specific testing.

Update Go/No-Go

• Subject to satisfactory testing on both the pre-production server and the production backup servers, the Go/No-Go decision will be made on Wednesday at 12:00pm.

Current Upgrade Package: April 2016

The Production SAAS server was last upgraded on January 28th 2016, between 10pm - 10:15pm EST.

Important: The upgrade will be applied to your backup server one week prior to the scheduled upgrade date for your production server.
You are encouraged to log into your backup server during this period to test the changes against your most recent data and configuration. 

If your organization has a dedicated SmartSimple server or you host in-house, the upgrade will be made available on February 18th.

General Details

Upgrade Dates

Public Cloud Production release date: April 28th 2016

Public Cloud Backup release date: April 14th 2016

Private Cloud Production (Managed Upgrades) release date: May 12th 2016

Private Cloud Backup (Managed Upgrades) release date: April 28th 2016

Global System Upgrades

The new features listed below are enhancements to the SmartSimple system and will be immediately available to SmartSimple users upon the application of the upgrade to their server:

Enhanced Visual Styles for Tabs and Captions in Arcadia

Updated the style of tabs and captions within the Arcadia interface for improved look and feel. These include changes to the color and style of field labels, and the introduction of accent colors in tabs.

• Why?

Enhanced Dynamic List View Filtering

List views and search filters have been enhanced with the ability to dynamically filter lists based upon the current user. This allows the creation of a single list view that shows the current user all records they are associated to in a specific role.

• Why? | How

Enhanced Level 1 List Views With Ability to Search Organization and Contact Fields

A past enhancement added the ability to display the fields of associated records within a Level 1 list view, this enhancement now allows you the ability to also perform searches on these fields with advanced search. The Advanced Search functionality has now been enhanced to allow you to search the following records on a Level 1:

a) the organization connected to the Level 1

b) the branch connected to the Level 1

c) the external person connected to the Level 1

d) the internal person connected to the Level 1

• Why? | How

Enhanced Level 3 List Views With Ability to Search Level 2 Fields

A past enhancement allowed you to display Level 2 fields within a Level 3 list view, this enhancement now allows you the ability to also perform searches on the Level 2 fields within advanced search. This will allow you to create more complex searches and filters.

• Why? | How

Updated Reports List Page

This enhancement extends the Arcadia list view page-style to the Reports page. This enhancement also adds search functionality.

• Why?

New Font Weight and Color Settings Added to List View Columns

This enhancement adds the ability to easily select a font color or bold the text values of a column in a list view through the list view settings.

• Why? | How

New Currencies Now Supported in the System

40 new currencies have been added to the list of standard system currencies.

• Why?

On-Demand System Upgrades

The following features are available immediately with the application of the upgrade, but must first be enabled or configured by a System Administrator:

New Customizable Privacy and Confidentiality Policies

Privacy is a shared responsibility. This enhancement adds the ability for organizations to define their own policies. Separate policies can be created for individual country and language combinations. Also added is a Privacy & Security tab where all policies are managed. The policies will appear on the standard system login page as well as in the header section in user portals.

• Why? | How

Enhanced Search and Filter Functionality Added to Provider / Consumer List Views

This feature enhances provider / consumer list views with the ability to search and filter results. When viewing a provider record you can apply a list view filter on the list of consumer records.

• Why?

New Disable User Account After Inactive Period

This enhancement enables user accounts to become disabled after a specified period of inactivity. Controlled by the Password Policy settings, an account can become disabled, requiring a password reset to regain access.

• Why? | How

Beta Previews

New Field Revision Annotations

Revision Annotations allows you to add annotations at the field level and allow edits to be made to specific fields while keeping the rest of the record locked. Flexible security allows you to configure role-based permissions to allow different users the ability to add annotations to fields while others the ability to edit the field value.

• Why?

New Contact Invitations

The Contact Invitation feature simplifies the process of inviting contacts to collaborate on a system record through an email invitation. It also allows for the invitation of new contacts that do not currently exist in the system. To facilitate this, invited contacts can accept or decline the invitation to associate them to the record. Contacts who are new will be directed to a contact sign-up page where you can then control their registration behavior.

• Why? | How

New Assignment Panels - Phase 1

Assignment Panels allows the navigation of different list views simultaneously and easily search and bulk assign users to records. This first phase adds the ability to assign users in one panel to Level 1 records in the other panel. This feature will be expanded in the future to allow assignment to and from more record types.

• Why? | How

New Create Consumer Records in Batch from Provider

This new feature enables the creation of consumer associated records in batch based on the contacts or companies associated to a provider record.

• Why? | How

Enhanced Stripe e-Payment Integration

This enhancement furthers the integration with contemporary payments service, Stripe, and builds on the initial beta release in November. Through the Invoice module, payments can be accepted by credit cards using the Stripe integration.

• Why?

Notes for Admins

New Style Sheet for XML Budgets and Defined Default Classes

Updated the style of XML data custom fields with a new default style sheet. This enhancement eliminates the need for hand coding HTML styling when creating XML data fields.

• Why? | How

New Arcadia X Layout Picker

The Arcadia X Pre-Made Layout Picker enables the point-and-click configuration of different portal layouts using pre-made templates and the choice of Arcadia X themes and backgrounds. Arcadia X layouts built using the layout picker are responsive by default.

• Why? | How

New SmartField PDF Page Options

This enhancement enables greater control of PDF documents generated from SmartField Views. Easily control page breaks and changes to page orientation within a PDF generated from a SmartField View with field format settings.

• Why? | How

New Role Permissions for Submit Buttons

Submit buttons can now be configured so that they are presented to users based on role and UTA role permissions reducing the need for visibility conditions.

• Why? | How

Enhanced Dynamic Control Fields

Updated the design of dynamic control custom fields for more consistent and improved behavior. The improvements were achieved through changes to the way Dynamic Control fields are rendered. While subfields are currently repeated multiple times on the form, in the case that they are available for multiple options in the dynamic control field, they will now only exist on the form once.

• Why?

Extended Record Lock Feature to Contact and Company Records

The Record Lock feature ensures that only one person may be editing a record at any given time. This enhancement extends the Record Lock functionality to include Contacts and Organizations, and eliminates the possibility of two users concurrently editing these records.

• Why? | How

Enhanced Message Queue Functionality and Re-Sending of Failed Emails

Updated the message queue list with the ability to easily discover and re-send failed emails.

• Why? | How

Previous Upgrades

See the Previous Upgrades page for a list of previously-implemented upgrade features.

Future Upgrades

Click here for a listing of future upgrade dates.