Sample upgrade plan

The following sample upgrade plan is recommended for production installations of Semaphore:

1. Contact Progress Semaphore to discuss your upgrade: Progress Semaphore can advise you on configuration and/or model issues that you might encounter, or, if you prefer, guide you through the process. They can also provide you with new versions of your model and/or publisher configuration files to be used after the upgrade has been completed.

2. Verify he test upgrade environment mirrors your production environment: To ensure a smooth upgrade process, the test environment should closely replicate the production environment. This includes:

   • Using the same versions of Semaphore installed in production.

   • Ensuring all systems integrated with Semaphore are present in the test environment.

   A common approach is to back up the production environment and restore it to the test environment for accurate testing.

3. Upgrade your test upgrade environment: Perform the upgrade process outlined in following "Upgrade Process Overview" section in the test environment.

4. Test your test upgrade environment: In your test environment:

   • Ensure that all individual Semaphore components work as expected and test any integrations to verify they are working correctly.

   • Ideally, you should test every Semaphore workflow that you use to ensure they are unaffected by the upgrade. At a minimum, focus on items highlighted in the Semaphore Release Notes and core Semaphore functionality used in your installation.

   • Review classification results using a sample set of documents to confirm expected outcomes post-upgrade.

   • Refine configurations or models, potentially involving Progress, if necessary. Re-perform tests after making changes until all tests pass acceptably.

   Once all tests have passed acceptably, proceed to the next step.

5. Schedule an outage of your production environment: Notify all impacted parties in advance that an upgrade will be occurring.

6. Backup your production environment: Make backups of all relevant software and files before upgrading the environment. See "Backup the existing installation" for more information.

7. Upgrade your production environment: Perform the upgrade process outlined in "Upgrade process overview" in the production environment.

8. Test your production environment: After upgrading the production environment, perform the same tests conducted in the test environment, as far as possible. If the production and test environments closely mirror each other, this process should be straightforward, as any issues should have been identified and resolved during the test environment upgrade.

9. Notify Progress of environment changes: Complete the Semaphore Installation Details document and return it to Progress. Progress Technical Support maintains information about your installation in case you encounter support issues. It is important that this information is up to date if they are to be able to deliver accurate information when requesting support.