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Dual Code offers its clients zero-touch updates. Zero-touch updates mean that clients do not need to schedule nor get involved in the update of their servers.

Our release process requires the successful execution of over 21,000 automated tests against all areas of our software before an update becomes generally available. And that's not all! Dual Code then further verifies each and every client installation by applying the update to a copy of their live environment and then running a complete system health check against that copy. The results are displayed in a System Health report available in your system. Any reported failure will be manually inspected by one of our application specialists. When no failures are reported, the system will automatically schedule the update of both your live and staging servers and notify all System Administrators.

The production and staging servers are scheduled to get updated at the same time since you are not required to review and/or approve the updates. This eliminates pain points for organizations as well as delays, and in turn reduces your exposure to cyber attacks. Organizations who prefer to assign resources to manually verify the update on their staging server prior to updating their live environment can do so by leveraging a scheduling tool built in the learning environment to re-schedule the date and time of the update for either system (e.g. staging or production).

Q. I used to request software updates via the Help Desk. Do I still / can I still do that?

A. No. Prior to release 3.9.12, Dual Code would send an email to all clients when an update would become available, and clients would log in our Help Desk and schedule their update. As of release 3.9.12, this is no longer necessary and you can no longer scheduled your updates this way. After the release has been tested by our automation tools on your system, the update will automatically be scheduled. 

Q. Who gets informed when an update is scheduled?

A. All System Administrators get notified when an update is scheduled. They will receive an email (using the email address they have on file in the learning environment) and a notification in the learning environment using the system's built-in notification tool.

Q. Will I get notified when my staging server is scheduled to be updated?

A. Initially, the staging server will be scheduled to be updated at the same time as the live server. You may change that. The staging server will try to notify you, but in most cases, emails on staging servers are being blocked and/or a noreply email address. As such, you won't receive an email notification if you cancel or reschedule the update of your system server. But the notification displayed in the staging learning environment will still appear.

Q. How long does an update take (e.g. how much downtime)?

A. The update varies based on the size of your system. When you get notified that an update has been scheduled, the approximate time it will take to complete the update (the downtime) is specified in the email itself. If you do not have the email, you can also see it on the System Health page.

1. Log in the system in question as a System Administrator
2. Go to Site Administration > Reports > System Health
3. Click on the "Review" button next to the "Update" check

Q. Can I reschedule an update?

A. Yes. System Administrators may reschedule an update.

1. Log in the system in question as a System Administrator (staging server vs. live server)
2. Go to Site Administration > Reports > System Health
3. Click on the "Review" button next to the "Update" check
4. Click on the 'Reschedule" button
5. Select a date / time for the update from the available time slots

Note that you can reschedule the date/time for the production system, staging system, or both systems from the production environment. (When viewing the System Health page on the staging server, you are only able to reschedule the staging server update.)

Q. Can I cancel an update?

A. It depends. You may cancel your update, unless:

1. The update is mandatory (e.g. it contains high-priority security fixes that put you at risk of a cyber attack)
2. You are no more than 2 releases behind. For example, if you are running 3.9.12, you can skip 3.9.13 and 3.9.14 but cannot skip 3.9.15.

Q. What if I can't wait for the regular / automated update and need to request an urgent update to our system?

A. If your update is not yet scheduled and for any reason, you need to update your system urgently, you may still request an update via our Help Desk. If for example our Implementation Services team has developed a new feature that you urgently want or you see that a software defect has recently been fixed as per our Release Notes and you don't want to wait until the next regularly scheduled update, you may work with our Implementation Services or Client Services team to schedule your update.

Q. How do I know which release is on our system?

A. The "Update" check in the System Health report mentioned earlier references the version of the software you have (e.g. 3.9.13) and the "Build" number (e.g. 20220328). The build number is a date in the YYYYMMDD format. It tells you exactly on what day the release installed on your software was released.

Q. How do I know which release will be installed?

A. The release you will get is the build available 1 day before your scheduled update. So if you are scheduled to be updated on March 31st, you would get the the latest build available on March 30th. It's important to understand that this is true regardless of when you schedule the update of your staging server. For example, if you schedule your staging server to be updated on February 28 and then schedule the update of the production server for March 31st, on March 31st, both the production server and the staging server will be updated to the release available on March 30th. The process does not allow to install any release other than the latest release on your production server.