Preparing for v13 upgrade – What Do You Inventory? + Questions on Automations & Widgets

Hi Justin, here is a summary of our approach to these items

... I’d love to hear from others who’ve upgraded and ask what you inventory before upgrading? 

When we manage upgrades for customers, we maintain a spreadsheet with Tabs for all of the customizable components of Verint: Plugins, Themes, Widgets, Automations, Embeddables and now with v13, Emails (from Email Studio). 

In each of the spreadsheet tabs, we maintain a list of the element and the type: Custom, Edited Default, Translated

We try to keep this customizations analysis a living document for client so that it can be used for the next upgrade, whenever that may be

Automations:

• We have 60 enabled instances of the “Auto add user to a role upon registration by email domain” automation. I see options to export these plus resources—what’s the best way to reimport and re-enable them after the upgrade?

Edited Default Widgets:

• Several of our groups use edited versions of default widgets. What’s the best practice for preserving or restoring these after the upgrade? Do I need to do this for each group and page, or is there a better workflow for tackling this?

This is definitely the secret sauce of upgrades and where most of the work comes in. Let me use the example for Widgets, but it will also apply to Themes, Automation Rules, Embeddables and Emails

Default - if Verint updates a widget that you haven't customized, you can safely approve these in the upgrade step under "Upgraded Widgets" and there should be a few hundred of these in a v12 -> v13 upgrade

Custom - if the widget is truly custom, where you started from a blank slate, then you just have to validate that all the API calls you made are still supported in the new version

Custom (from a copy) - if this widget was a copy of an out of the box widget, then you may want to consider checking the widget it was copied from and identify anything you want to merge back in. This is a tricky exercise but with an external editor, widget studio and diff tools, you should be able to distinguish your changes from Verint's changes in the new version

Customized Default - if a widget shows "Customized Default", your changes will always persist when the site is upgraded, but you have the choice of merging in changes that Verint has done in the version upgrade. As above, you have to make sure you accept all of Verint's changes in (file by file, line by line) and keep your customizations, if that's your intent. In the System Notifications, these will appear as "Upgrade Customized Widgets" and i would upgrade these separately

Special note that you'll have to do this for V13 changes to Automation Rules and Embeddables, as they don't appear in the post-upgrade announcements. You have to go into Automation Studio and Embeddable Studio to merge in Verint's V13 changes

While you will get many v13 fixes and updates in the core code, there are many that show Requires widget Updates where these steps above are important.

Hope this helps, Justin Lee 

Hi Justin, here is a summary of our approach to these items

... I’d love to hear from others who’ve upgraded and ask what you inventory before upgrading? 

When we manage upgrades for customers, we maintain a spreadsheet with Tabs for all of the customizable components of Verint: Plugins, Themes, Widgets, Automations, Embeddables and now with v13, Emails (from Email Studio). 

In each of the spreadsheet tabs, we maintain a list of the element and the type: Custom, Edited Default, Translated

We try to keep this customizations analysis a living document for client so that it can be used for the next upgrade, whenever that may be

Automations:

• We have 60 enabled instances of the “Auto add user to a role upon registration by email domain” automation. I see options to export these plus resources—what’s the best way to reimport and re-enable them after the upgrade?

Edited Default Widgets:

• Several of our groups use edited versions of default widgets. What’s the best practice for preserving or restoring these after the upgrade? Do I need to do this for each group and page, or is there a better workflow for tackling this?

This is definitely the secret sauce of upgrades and where most of the work comes in. Let me use the example for Widgets, but it will also apply to Themes, Automation Rules, Embeddables and Emails

Default - if Verint updates a widget that you haven't customized, you can safely approve these in the upgrade step under "Upgraded Widgets" and there should be a few hundred of these in a v12 -> v13 upgrade

Custom - if the widget is truly custom, where you started from a blank slate, then you just have to validate that all the API calls you made are still supported in the new version

Custom (from a copy) - if this widget was a copy of an out of the box widget, then you may want to consider checking the widget it was copied from and identify anything you want to merge back in. This is a tricky exercise but with an external editor, widget studio and diff tools, you should be able to distinguish your changes from Verint's changes in the new version

Customized Default - if a widget shows "Customized Default", your changes will always persist when the site is upgraded, but you have the choice of merging in changes that Verint has done in the version upgrade. As above, you have to make sure you accept all of Verint's changes in (file by file, line by line) and keep your customizations, if that's your intent. In the System Notifications, these will appear as "Upgrade Customized Widgets" and i would upgrade these separately

Special note that you'll have to do this for V13 changes to Automation Rules and Embeddables, as they don't appear in the post-upgrade announcements. You have to go into Automation Studio and Embeddable Studio to merge in Verint's V13 changes

While you will get many v13 fixes and updates in the core code, there are many that show Requires widget Updates where these steps above are important.

Hope this helps, Justin Lee