In How Upgrades Work in Hypercell, you learned about the upgrade process at a high level. This article will walk through the planning of your upgrade procedure, taking into consideration the time required to perform the upgrade, the downtime duration allowed by your business, and the other stakeholders needed.
Your upgrade procedure
The instructions to upgrade the Hypercell itself are straightforward. However, there are other factors that may require you to take additional steps, such as:
Whether the target version requires upgrades to dependencies, such as the host operating system or database.
Whether any product changes require additional enablement for your users.
Whether you’ll need to upgrade any of your models and flows.
Note that models and flows are generally compatible for the following two major versions from the Hypercell version they were created for.
Also note that some newer features require updated flows or models.
The amount of downtime your business can afford to take from processing workloads.
The amount of time needed to complete queued submissions, and their resulting Supervision and QA tasks.
The sections below outline the recommended steps to determine the actions needed for your Hypercell configuration and business requirements.
Calculate the steps and time required to upgrade
1. Read the release notes.
Examine the release notes for each version between your current version and your target version to learn what has changed, and determine if additional dependencies require upgrading to meet compatibility requirements. Communicate those changes with your infrastructure or IT specialist to gauge when they can be met as you plan your upgrade procedure. Speak with your Hyperscience representative if you have any questions on how to enable your teams to adopt new capabilities.
All release notes can be found in the Release Notes section of this site.
2. Determine model and flow compatibility.
Determine if the models and flows you’re using are built for the currently running version of the Hypercell. If they are built for earlier versions (taking advantage of the X+2 version forward compatibility), we recommend upgrading those assets to match the currently running version of the platform. Many times, you’ll find a version in the name of the flow. If unsure, reach out to Hyperscience Support for assistance.
It’s not a requirement to upgrade your flows and models to the currently running version, but it’s recommended for simplicity in understanding the process and platform compatibility, as well as adopting the latest capabilities of the platform.
You can use the X+2 formula and substitute X for the version the flow or model was built on. To illustrate, if you’re running a flow built on v40, the X+2 compatibility formula indicates that flow is compatible for versions v40, v41, and v42. Therefore, a Hypercell upgrade to v41 or v42 wouldn’t necessitate an upgrade to the flow.
3. Determine if your models, flows, or other assets need upgrading.
Count the number of versions between your installed version and the target version to determine if you need to upgrade your assets beforehand. For example, if you’re on v39 and are upgrading to v42, you’re jumping 3 versions ahead. This number is outside the X+2 compatibility window (where X is 39 in this scenario), which means you’ll need to upgrade your flows and models at least once.
If your current models and flows are not compatible with your target version, estimate the time needed to process remaining work. Count the number of submissions, Supervision tasks, and QA tasks queued to gain an understanding of how long it would take to complete them. If you expect the number of each of these to vary by the time you’re ready to upgrade, then approximate the time it would take to complete those submissions and tasks.
4. Calculate the approximate time needed to upgrade.
Factor in the following:
The number of flows and models you’ll need to update to reach your target version.
The number of submissions, supervision and QA tasks to complete.
The amount of overall data that is in your Hypercell – the duration of the upgrade procedure is correlated with the amount of data that must be migrated.
By the end of this step, you should have a better understanding of the amount of the steps needed to perform a complete upgrade of your Hypercell, and the time required to complete those steps.
Plan the steps for your upgrade
Determine the length of downtime acceptable to your business.
By factoring in how much downtime you can afford to take for processing and comparing that to the estimated time required to complete the upgrade, you can better understand how to sequence the work and how many sessions you’ll need to do so.
If you’re unable to complete the steps within the window of downtime acceptable for your business, you will need to stage your upgrades with intermediate target versions of the Hypercell over a period of time until you reach your target version. Note that upgrading to intermediate versions may also require the retraining of models and upgrading of flows for compatibility with those versions.
Determine how many sessions you’ll need to complete your upgrade to your target version.
In the event where the downtime window is sufficient to perform the full upgrade, you can plan to perform the full upgrade process in one session.
If the amount of downtime is less than the overall time needed to complete your upgrade to the target version, you should stage the process with upgrading to intermediate versions across multiple sessions. For example, if you are upgrading from v39 with a target version of v42, but you need more downtime than allowed by your organization, you may split your upgrade across two sessions:
Session 1 — Upgrade from v39 to v40 and to v41.
Resume processing until the next acceptable downtime window.
Session 2 — Upgrade from v41 to v42.
Note that when splitting the upgrade across multiple sessions, you’ll need to follow the same upgrade steps for each session.
3. Plan to upgrade your lower environments first.
Upgrading your lower environments is highly recommended in order to familiarize yourself and your team with the process and with product changes. Doing so also allows you to update assets such as models and flows before upgrading your production environment to minimize downtime to your business.
4. Schedule and coordinate with all required stakeholders.
Ensure the sessions, steps, and people needed to perform the upgrade are aware of the plan and procedure. Schedule any downtime windows that are necessary and inform stakeholders of expected downtime windows. Also, plan to enable your workforce with any product-related changes and capabilities that may impact and improve their day-to-day work.