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 model issues that you might encounter or guide you through the process. Progress can also provide new versions of your model or Publisher configuration files to use after the upgrade is complete.

2. Verify that the test 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 that are installed in production.
   • Ensuring that 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 environment: Perform the process described in Upgrade process overview in the test environment.

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

   • Ensure that all individual Semaphore components work as expected, and test all integrations.
   • Ideally, test every Semaphore workflow that you use to ensure that the workflows are unaffected by the upgrade. At a minimum, focus on changes and known issues described in What's new in Semaphore and the core Semaphore functionality used in your installation.
   • Review classification results by using a sample set of documents to confirm the expected results after the upgrade.
   • Refine configurations or models, potentially with assistance from Progress, if necessary. Repeat the tests after making changes until all tests pass.

   After all tests pass, proceed to the next step.

5. Schedule an outage of your production environment: Notify all affected parties in advance that an upgrade will occur.

6. Back up your production environment: Create all required backups before upgrading the production environment. See Back up your existing installation for detailed instructions.

7. Prepare a back-out plan: Define the conditions under which the production upgrade must be backed out. Ensure that the installer for the previously working Semaphore version is available and identify the backups required for the back-out procedure. See Back out a Semaphore upgrade for the complete procedure.

8. Upgrade your production environment: Perform the process described in Upgrade process overview in the production environment.

9. Test your production environment: After upgrading the production environment, perform the same tests that you performed in the test environment, as far as possible. If the production and test environments closely mirror each other, any issues should have been identified and resolved during the test upgrade.

10. Update your installation details: After upgrading the production environment, complete Installation details to document the current configuration. Print the results and retain them for future reference.