Upgrading NEOSYS

Prior to Upgrade

When any change is made to NEOSYS, it is the responsibility of the Support staff to test and verify that there are no errors. Proceed to upgrade NEOSYS only after Support staff has tested and confirmed that the new features are working fine. Do NOT install untested versions of NEOSYS under any circumstance.

Upgrading NEOSYS fully

NEOSYS can be upgraded in two ways either the evening before the nightly backup or during the day.

Procedure to upgrade NEOSYS during the day.

Email the management and staff the standard email on upgrade for agreement of time.
Confirm the date and time and inform the staff about the update.
During upgrade make sure all users are logged off and follow the installation procedures.
Once the upgrade is over mail the management and staff the steps they should perform before using NEOSYS.

NEOSYS can also be upgraded with smaller patches by the programmer and this can be done at any time while the users are working

Sample Emails to be sent PRIOR to Upgrading NEOSYS

Any decision or instructions related to upgrading neosys must be in support@neosys.com i.e. please ensure that all emails are sent to clients while mentioning support@neosys.com in cc.

Informing the client of the intention to upgrade

Email all users using Email Users option in Help Menu.

SAMPLE EMAIL - VERSION 1: For Clients with more than 10 users

Dear Team,

NEOSYS needs to be upgraded to its latest version because (give reason).
 
We will upgrade between 9 am – 10am on (the selected date).
 
The upgrade should be done first thing in the morning after the nightly backup, to complete the upgrade in a short time . 

* Please inform all users that they should be logged off during the upgrade. 

Please contact NEOSYS support immediately if you have any concerns about the upgrade.

SAMPLE EMAIL - VERSION 2: For Clients with 5 to 10 users

Dear Team,

Due to (give reason), NEOSYS system will be down for maintenance/upgrade and not available without further notice at the following time.

        Today/23rd February, 1:00pm to 2:00pm (time zone) 

* Please inform all users that they should be logged off during the upgrade. 

The upgrade should be done first thing in the morning after the nightly backup, to complete the upgrade in a short time .  
Contact NEOSYS support immediately if you have any concerns about the upgrade.

We will notify you immediately once the work is complete.

SAMPLE EMAIL - VERSION 3: For Clients with less than 5 users

Dear Team,

Due to (give reason), NEOSYS system will be down for maintenance/upgrade and not available without further notice at the following time.

        Tomorrow/23rd February, 9:00am to 10:00am (time zone) 

* Please inform all users that they should be logged off during the upgrade. 

We will notify you immediately once the work is complete.

Downloading

Latest version of NEOSYS is available at http://www.neosys.com/support/neosys2.exe

In NEOSYS servers housed at client location, download neosys2.exe using IE in NEOSYS\downloads folder and rename it to neosys2-(DATE).exe (eg neosys2-10th November 2009.exe) - this is to keep track of the various downloads we do for the client and also allows to install a previous version if needed.

In situations where NEOSYS hosts clients in its own servers, download neosys2.exe into your computer first. Then copy-paste it into the server using SFTP in Tunnelier.

*** IMPORTANT: DO NOT RUN/EXECUTE THE NEOSYS EXE FILE NOW ***

Downloading previous versions of NEOSYS

The 9 previous versions of neosys are stored at:

http://www.neosys.com/support/neosys21.exe

http://www.neosys.com/support/neosys22.exe

http://www.neosys.com/support/neosys23.exe

http://www.neosys.com/support/neosys24.exe

http://www.neosys.com/support/neosys25.exe

http://www.neosys.com/support/neosys26.exe

http://www.neosys.com/support/neosys27.exe

http://www.neosys.com/support/neosys28.exe

http://www.neosys.com/support/neosys29.exe

Backing up prior to upgrading

THIS WHOLE BACKUP PROCEDURE IS MANDATORY

Make sure that all NEOSYS users are logged off and the processes are closed before you do any folder copying.

The upgrade procedure includes taking a copy of the programs. If the upgrade fails due to some reason the NEOSYS folder can be reverted back to how it was before the upgrade attempt. Also in case the Client has critical issues using the new version then we will be able to revert them to the old version if the versions are not too different. If this is done by coping the programs back to the original location then no authorisation number will be required. The directories that contain the programs are:

D:\NEOSYS\NEOSYS
D:\NEOSYS\NEOSYS.NET
D:\NEOSYS\NEOSYS.W3C
D:\NEOSYS\NEOSYS.WWW

After completing the upgrade, do NOT delete the backup copy of above NEOSYS directories otherwise you will not be able to revert it back in case of issues due to upgrade.

Small Installations

Take a normal proper backup using the NEOSYS Support Menu - for all live databases if there is more than one.
If a USB change was made by the client's IT person prior to doing this manual backup, ensure that after the upgrade is done, the backup file for that manual backup is moved to another location (preferably in a new folder on the D drive)so that the clients backup cycle is not affected by the existence of a days backup in the USB before the cycle actually begins the following morning.
Take a copy of the whole of the D:\NEOSYS folder (or where-ever NEOSYS is installed) into another folder. This way, if the upgrade fails due to some reason, the NEOSYS folder can be reverted back to how it was before the upgrade attempt. You can omit the D:\NEOSYS\IMAGES and D:\NEOSYS\LOGS folders from the copy to save time. Preferably place the copy on another disk or partition so that it is not included in any whole disk backup that might be running in parallel to NEOSYS backup.

Large Installations

This includes multiple installations on the same server eg NEOSYS hosts.

Copying the whole of the D:\NEOSYS folder can take so much time as to be virtually impossible. In this case do the upgrade EARLY IN THE MORNING since all the data will have been backed up the previous night. The NEOSYS nightly backup only backs up data, so you MUST manually take copies of the program folders mentioned above.

Installing

PRECAUTION: DO NOT install versions of NEOSYS older than the one currently installed, even by mistake. LOOK CAREFULLY at the version note when you open the upgrade file.

Run / Execute the .EXE file that you downloaded into the NEOSYS\downloads folder and Install to D:\NEOSYS\ .

Closing NEOSYS processes should happen automatically during upgrade but you can also do it manually as follows:

Closing NEOSYS Services

The installation procedure first creates a GLOBAL.END file in the NEOSYS programs folder causing all serving processes to terminate. Maintenance processes must be terminated manually.

Next, the installation procedure attempts to update the WAITING.EXE file and, if the processes haven’t terminated quickly enough, this will fail asking for retry or abort. Retry immediately or once all the processes have terminated.

The last step of the installation procedure is to delete the GLOBAL.END file to allow processes to start normally.

Restart IIS web server

Skip this if you are performing a quick upgrade without getting users offline.

Restart the IIS web server either from the IIS service control panel or perhaps more quickly from the command line as follows:

net stop w3svc
net start w3svc

The objective is to avoid the users facing problems using NEOSYS until they clear cache.

Post installation steps

New versions of the software sometimes perform quick or long database conversions.

Starting NEOSYS in maintenance mode immediately after upgrading leaves you more in control if anything goes wrong.

It is not necessary to use the maintenance mode to start-up once after upgrading and before starting an automatic neosys process.

If the upgrade is known not to require users to clear their cache (because there is no change in the user interface) then BEFORE starting any NEOSYS process, enter maintenance mode and when asked if you want to email users about the upgrade, select No.

NEOSYS version

You can check the current version of NEOSYS under Menu>Help>About. After an upgrade, changes in the server process software causes an increment in the version date. Unfortunately changes in the NEOSYS user interface only does not always cause an increment in the version date

Email sent to the Clients after an upgrade

On starting a NEOSYS process or maintenance mode after an upgrade, NEOSYS will automatically email all the users something like the following:

The NEOSYS system software has been upgraded	
	
Before you login to NEOSYS, please follow the instructions at	
http://userwiki.neosys.com/index.php/cache to avoid error using NEOSYS.	
	
Please email SUPPORT@NEOSYS.COM for any assistance.	
	
This is an automated email. You cannot reply to it.

Currently this email is only sent to the users in the *first* database started. If there are other live databases in the same NEOSYS installation that users should be emailed then you can trigger the email in maintenance mode for the desired database as follows:

EMAILUSERS UPGRADE

Sample email to be sent to clients who face issues due to failure in clearing browser cache

Dear XYZ,

You are facing this error because you have not cleared your browser cache as instructed, after NEOSYS was upgraded recently. 
In order to resolve this issue please follow instructions in the following wiki link:

http://userwiki.neosys.com/index.php/Cache

Troubleshooting

If you choose to abort the installation for any reason then the GLOBAL.END file will have to be deleted manually since its presence prevents any processes from starting up.

Handling "Error opening file for writing" while executing the NEOSYS setup file

During an upgrade if you see a message saying "Error opening file for writing", this means there is a file which is in use by a process and NEOSYS didnt shutdown yet. You should look for a process which is still running and wait for it to end after that you can click on Retry and proceed with the upgrade. In case the process does not close automatically then investigate for an invisibly hung process and close it.

If the error message still does not go then you can abort the installation, investigate further for any process or file in use and close all processes hung/invisible so that NO process is running. Once this is done, re run the set up file and upgrade the installation.