Genesys Application Hotfixes and general releases

[PFCCWA]

Hello,

As a Genesys customer, partner or employee what are your thoughts on hotfixes and general releases?

As a customer do you apply or request a hotfix as it becomes released? or install the latest general release?

As a partner what do you advise your customers in regards to the above?

As Genesys support/employee do you expect customers to have the latest version (or at least latest hotfixes)? Does this influence the support you provide because I have noticed a lot of issues are resolved through applying the hotfix ..

Thanks,
WA

[cavagnaro]

As partner:
Read release notes
See if there is something that may impact your customers (used functionality)
If there is not then don't even bother
If yes:
Go there and perform tests to see if it is reproducible and if it affects the platform
If Yes:
Ask customer to verify himself and do upgrade when he authorizes it
If not:
Don't even bother

Of course there are many issues (big and small) solved by hotfixes, that is why they exists. Software live is always like that and will always be.

These hotfixes are born because someone like us, support guys, open an eSR and they found an issue and was solved only by software upgrade.

Version 8.1 for example is quite new and you will see a lot a lot of hotfixes being delivered. 8.0 is quite stable now I think but I will prefer to 8.1 to be stable enough.
7.6 is very mature and solid now, however from time to time small hotfixes released as common rule but bugs are quite more weird and not very common scenarios

[fnunezsa]

Totally agree with Cavagnaro.

I always follow this general rule also: if installing something from scratch always install the latest hotfix.

[Kevin S]

As a customer, I'll answer with "It Depends"

I mentally keep track of existing issues with the platform. If a new version that comes out that addresses the issue, I'll download and test to make sure the issue is addressed. Then I'll schedule a time to implement.

If I see something that is new and useful to the environment, I'll go through the same process.

However, I won't install a hotfix or GA release just to "keep current". Even after performing some degree of testing in a lab environment, we've had enough service-affecting issues with new releases that the business still panics anytime I mention the word "upgrade".

To be fair, the issues generally occur when upgrading a major or minor [such as 7.5.x to 7.6.x] version. I've even had to skip multiple minor versions (we skipped from 7.0 to 7.6, over 7.1, 7.2, and 7.5 releases of a TServer) because I felt that the intermediate versions were not stable enough for our environment.

But agree - if installing from scratch, or onto a new server, I generally will install the latest (and hopefully greatest)