How are upgrades of MYOB Advanced managed?
One of the many ways that MYOB provides value to its clients is by adding new features and enhancements to its products. MYOB seeks to continuously improve MYOB Advanced using an ongoing upgrade program and in many cases these enhancements arise directly from client feedback. Upgrades can be classified as major or minor.
Minor upgrades
Minor upgrades are those that contain a relatively small number of changes, the vast majority of which will not be directly visible to users of MYOB Advanced. These could consist of changes such as performance improvements and rectification of product defects.
MYOB will rollout minor upgrades on a frequent basis, approximately every 2-4 weeks. Minor upgrades are applied to all clients simultaneously on a scheduled determined by MYOB. The majority of minor upgrades will also not require any system downtime, however if downtime is required, this will be in the standard weekly maintenance window.
Major upgrades
Once or twice per year MYOB will perform a major upgrade of MYOB Advanced. Major upgrades contain a larger number of changes that will be apparent in the day to day use of MYOB Advanced. Examples of such changes include new features, screen layout improvements, new reports and new system configuration options.
Due to the extent of changes, it is highly likely that some downtime will be required to apply the upgrade and it is also prudent for clients to confirm that their customisations, extensions and add-ons operate as expected in the latest version. In addition, MYOB knows that some clients may wish to spend time working with the new version in an environment that is separate from their live account to become familiar with it. Most importantly MYOB understands that there may be times where a system upgrade would be extremely inconvenient to a business operation, to accommodate this MYOB has designed an upgrade program that gives clients flexibility to control the upgrade of their account.
Can I choose when to upgrade?
MYOB will schedule the upgrade of all clients' accounts over an extended period of 6 months. Clients will be notified in advance as to what their initially allocated upgrade date is and will be given an option to change to a different date with 60 days notice. In this way, clients can control the best time to upgrade their account.
What can I expect to happen during the upgrade process?
Prior to the upgrade
30 days before the client's account is scheduled to be upgraded, MYOB will send an email reminder to the client that also includes an option to opt-in to an Upgrade Sandbox. The Upgrade Sandbox is a snapshot of the client's live account that has been copied to a separate database then upgraded to the latest version. Here clients can preview how their account and data will look and work after the upgrade, this is an ideal opportunity to test any customisations, extensions or add-ons and address any issues that this may throw up.
The upgrade
When the nominated time arrives, the upgrade will be applied to the client's live account. In most cases this will require downtime so the upgrade will generally be performed in the scheduled maintenance window of Tuesdays 8:00-10:00 PM AEST*. If an alternative time is required for operational purposes, MYOB will give clients at least 7 days notice of planned downtime for a major upgrade.
After the upgrade
Once the upgrade is complete, the client will be able to login to their live account as normal and continue using MYOB Advanced. MYOB will provide detailed information on what product changes have been made so that clients can understand how to get the most value from them.
*MYOB reserve the right to change this window with prior notification and scheduled maintenance windows will be notified through the MYOB System Monitoring Page.