Overview

With so many malware attacks happening in the healthcare sector each year, we should all take upgrading more seriously. Fear mongering aside, there are actually some great benefits to upgrading your learning environment. Often, bugs that you didn't even realize were affecting you will be fixed and new features will be added.

Here are the top reasons why you should always be upgrading your learning environment to the latest version.

• Cyber Attacks. It seems like every week, we hear another major news story about a ransomware or malware attack that's affected a huge organization. The older your release, the longer hackers have to find bugs and issues to exploit. Cyber attackers can also read Moodle's release notes, which list the security issues addressed by their latest release. If you neglect to upgrade your system and install the latest security patches, you are increasing your risk of a cyber attacker exploiting the known vulnerabilities of your system.
• Bug Fixes & New Features. While security is a major reason to upgrade software and can't be overstated, there are some cool benefits to software updates. Often you'll see improved performance, bug fixes and/or new features. Since our clients' feedback is at the center of Dual Code's development process, you'll most likely find user experience and user interaction improvements with most new software releases.
• Software End-of-life. As new major releases become available, older releases reach an end-of-life, at which point, Dual Code stops supporting them. Once a release has reached its end-of-life, Dual Code no longer fixes bugs or security issues with that older release. By remaining on this older version, you are not only at risk of a cyber attack, but Dual Code may also not be able to support you.

Upgrade Process

Dual Code releases new versions of the learning environment every other month. Prior to the release, we execute over 15,000 automated and manual tests. With each release, we publish release notes and will often host a webinar to demonstrate the release highlights.

Since Dual Code performs the upgrades for all cloud-based services, keeping your site up-to-date is simple, easy and safe! And definitely much safer than the risk associated with not upgrading your learning environment.

Step-by-step Guide

To schedule an upgrade:

1. Request an upgrade via Service Desk. Log in the Service Desk (https://support.dualcode.com), click the “Request an upgrade” hyperlink and fill out the short form. (A "Live to Staging Sync" is not required but it is better to test against your most recent data.)
2. Verify your staging server. Once your staging site has been upgraded, you can experiment with the new features and/or run your own acceptance tests.
3. Schedule the upgrade of your live system. Updating your live site will require 2 hours of downtime. During this time, your users will be shown a maintenance message with an estimated completion time. You will be presented with several dates to choose from for maximum flexibility.

Release Schedule

Dual Code's release schedule and versioning scheme is similar to Moodle's schedule for LTS (Long-Term Support) releases. We try to release a new major version every 24 months and a minor release every other month. We also continue to support the older release by providing security updates an critical bug fixes for a one-year period after the newest release is available. This allows you to plan your major upgrades while being assured that your existing release is secure. 

The following table highlights some key dates for specific releases of the Dual Code Healthcare Edition in reverse chronological order.

Major and Minor Versions

Starting with version 3.0, the version numbers will consist of three numbers separated by a dot, for example 3.0.3 or 3.1.4. The first two numbers, like 3.0 or 3.1, represent the major version. The third number distinguishes minor versions within the same major version.

Between two minor versions, Dual Code continues to do custom development work and enhancements to Moodle for our customers. These customizations are initially only released to the customer(s) that requested them. If we feel they are valuable for the majority of our customers, Dual Code will include these customizations in our next minor or major release. We may also send these enhancements to Moodle itself if we feel it would be valuable for the Moodle community in general.

Upgrade Expectations

• Minor Version: Minor version upgrade process for customers using Dual Code Healthcare Edition typically contain 1-5 new features or feature enhancements, as well as bug fixes and security patches.

• Major Version: During a major version upgrade there may be some major user interface changes that are part of the Moodle, Dual Code HCE, or a third party portion of the software.

Source Code Maturity Level

The Dual Code learning environment, which is based on Moodle, follows the same version numbers as Moodle. In other words, version 3.0.3 of the HCE (Healthcare Edition) contains the same source code as version 3.0.3 of Moodle, with the exception of the enhancements made by Dual Code.

It is not uncommon for new major software releases (not just from Moodle but from any software company) to contain a higher than usual number of software bugs. As such, Dual Code never accepts the first minor version of a major release from Moodle (e.g. 3.0.0, 3.1.0, etc.). Instead, Dual Code waits for until the second, minor release before integrating to it. This ensures a greater maturity level of our source code.

* Moodle is a registered trademark owned by Martin Dougiamas, Founder and Lead Developer of Moodle,