How we manage updates to our Cloud-hosted systems
The majority of our products are cloud-based - we host on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and this means that all our customers access the same product version.
We perform regular updates of all our products ( e.g. to introduce new features or to resolve issues with the software) and we wanted to explain our process so that you understand why new features will occasionally appear!
Note - You don't have to do anything as the software will update automatically. Sometimes you won't see any significant changes (for example if we do some back-end database updates to improve performance)
Since it's a shared system, everyone gets updated at the same time - so you won't be able to use the previous version
Communication
We understand that our products are important to you and you don't want any surprises so we stick to the following:
- We give you advance notice - either by email and/or with internal messaging in the app. Alongside the notice we'll include a list of the changes we plan to make. We always try to ensure that the core functionality you're used to remains as accessible as it was before the update, but we sometimes have to move things around a bit to accommodate new functionality
- For planned updates the notice period is generally a week or more but we may shorten this in the case of urgent updates
- We always try to minimise disruption so we clearly spell out how long the system will be unavailable for - we've always managed to get our updates done well within this time period
- If you're a large scale (enterprise) user of our systems we may give you access to a preview to allow you to familiarise yourself with the changes - we'll also occasionally work with our enterprise users to schedule updates around critical business functions.
Change is often a pain in the neck - we strive to ensure that all our changes are moving our products forward, minimising the negative impact on our customers while maximising the positive.
Normally each customer has a system administrator who will be able to respond on your behalf with any questions