Abstract

Consideration about EngageOne® Compose Server upgrade path. It discusses possible approaches to make this challenge easier and finally announces availability of new tool called APC - Asset Promotion Command.

Introduction

By the end of this year (2019) support for EngageOne® 3.1.2 Server will end, so we can expect that many customers using that version might be willing to upgrade. I propose the alternative path for upgrade.
One of the most important points in terms of upgrade is data and the question: whether all data must be upgraded/migrated to new version of application?
When we look at EngageOne® Compose Server from data life cycle perspective, we can find two basic categories Assets and Communications

1. Assets (and configurations) – Sort of data that do not change very often and have long life cycle.
   1. Assets related to communication: templates, active contents, devices, delivery options/channels, document classes etc.
   2. Related to internal processes definitions and configurations: workflow definitions, administration settings (user roles, access rights, retention rules) etc.
2. Communications - documents and internal (review) processes - Sort of data that the system produces every day but that have a relatively short cycle of life. For instance, when a document/communication is composed and delivered to all channels, usually it is no longer needed as we already have it in Vault®. Here purge process comes in action. Similar case is for review process, when finally a communication or asset is approved, review process is removed.

Taking into account data life cycles there are some more possible scenarios. Two most common of them are:

1. In-place upgrade where all data moves to new application version and old version is no longer accessible.
2. Assets migration to new version instance. Old version still works until all communications and processes end. New version processes only new communications.

Let us discuss these scenarios deeper in next sections.

In-place upgrade

EngageOne® Compose release media contains set of upgrade scripts

• database schema update scripts
• groovy data upgrade scripts

These scripts are tools of official upgrade path and actually, perform an in-place upgrade. The in-place upgrade allows you to upgrade existing installation to the new version with your existing configuration. Automatically updates the database and file repository (active drive) 
How many customers use these scripts really? I received feedback that this upgrade path is not very common for customers and Professional Services daily life scenarios. As we know, for some reasons customers and services very often choose manual asset migration path. Why? Here are the most obvious pros and cons of the in-place upgrade:

Pros

• All data is preserved
• Integration ecosystem configuration does not change - machines and network addresses/URLs are the same after upgrade

Cons

• System is down during upgrade
• What if upgrade process fails!?
• All rubbish data remains
• Revert to previous version is possible only by reinstalling the server and restoring the database from backup

Asset Migration

This option is of a scenario when customer wants to keep old installation. The migration process requires that customer must export all required assets from old version. When new version is up and run on separate machines then using asset promotion feature all required assets are imported to the new installation.

Pros

• Old system can be up during upgrade
• All rubbish data not migrated
• Any Customer can try it before final migration process

Cons

• Asset promotion feature does not support all types of asset – however currently the list is quite long, and we have a plan to support more
• Temporally two versions of system works concurrently
• Integration ecosystem configuration changes - new machines and network addresses/URLs change after upgrade so integrated systems must switch to new version

Asset Export

In order to choose Asset Migration we invest to improve an asset export and currently there are three options:

1. Until today for older versions than 4.4.7 the only option was manual asset-by-asset export using EngageOne Admin or just use assets published from Designer®
2. Asset promotion - export – possible in version 4.4.7 or newer
3. NEW! (Alpha version) – Asset Promotion Command - APC

Asset Promotion Command -APC.

APC (alpha version) is already available for testing. APC is compatible with all EngageOne® Compose Server versions including version 3.1.2. 
APC is intended to allow an export of all supported assets and configurations from any EngageOne® Compose Server  and next import to other server instance.

Features:

1. Export assets from any EngageOne® Compose Server version - assumption is that v 3.1.2 is the oldest supported
2. List communities (domains) from any version
3. Support the same set off assets/configurations like currently released asset promotion server version for all legacy versions
4. Only reads data - source instance of EngageOne® Compose Server is not impacted anyhow so export can be executed on running production instance
5. Configurable feature flags - allows disabling not existing database schema changes or features existing only in newer versions of EngageOne® Compose Server
6. No installation required – can be run on any machine with access to EngageOne® Compose Server database and Active Drive on the production environment
7. Simple configuration property file - only 4 things to configure
8. Runs on Windows and Linux operating systems marked as supported by EngageOne® Compose Server documentation

More details about the APC will be covered in a separate message. 
Getting the best from EngageOne® Compose Server - Asset Promotion Command Export for a seamless upgrade

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Tomasz Kupka
Knowledge Community Shared Account
Shelton CT
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