Appliance Update Process

Updating your Wise Owl Legal Appliance is very important. It allows you to access new features, bug fixes and various improvements based on the feedback of the Wise Owl community.

If you are responsible for administering a Wise Owl Appliance or applying updates, you must read this page carefully, in its entirety. While Wise Owl has tried to make the update process as smooth as possible, some degree of planning and understanding is required for Appliance administrators. You can also read the technical detail of the update process, if you wish, however it is not required.

If Wise Owl is managing updates for you or is hosting your Appliance (ie: you do not have a physical Wise Owl Appliance in your office), you should read the Managed Updates page. You can read this page to know what happens behind the scenes (this is the same procedure Wise Owl Technicians follow).

Risks of Updates

Updates are an inherently risky process. They involve making significant and fundamental changes to files and components on your Wise Owl Appliance. As such, there is always a chance of something going wrong. 

The bottom line: things can and do go wrong during updates. However, Wise Owl takes a variety of precautions to ensure the safety of your data, and the Wise Owl Helpdesk can usually fix a bad update within 30 minutes. Administrators should always read Release Notes before installing updates.

REVIEW by KAREN: can we disclaim liability at this point????

Risk Reduction

Wise Owl Legal takes all reasonable precautions during updates including:

• Automated testing processes such as unit tests, regression tests and integration tests. These prevent old bugs from creeping back in.
• Staging and testing environments to test updates. Every version of Wise Owl Legal is installed and tested on our internal test Appliances before being released to you. 
  • Our test Appliances use the exact same update process as your Appliance.
  • Some Wise Owl releases are created just for testing purposes. Although you never see these, they are used to improve the quality of Wise Owl Legal behind the scenes.
• For major releases, beta versions are tested by select members of the Wise Owl community. This allows us to uncover more bugs and issues than we can test for internally. And to refine new features with real life feedback. 
  • We are deeply grateful to our beta testers for their work and improvements to Wise Owl Legal which would not have been possible without them.
• Updates are created in such a way they can be re-installed. If an update fails, it will be retried several times before the Appliance gives up altogether. Transitory glitches can cause updates to fail, but a simple retry will work.
• As part of every update, a full Appliance backup is made. In the extremely unlikely event of data corruption, we can always roll your Appliance back to exactly how it was before an update.
  • Wise Owl treats your data like gold, and will never make significant changes unless backups are available; if for any reason, the backup before an update fails, the update does not continue.
• After every update (successful or otherwise), your Appliance sends back detailed logs about exactly what happened. Wise Owl uses these logs to improve the quality of updates over time.
• Very infrequently, a serious error will get through our quality assurance procedures. This happens to the best of us. If we find a particular version of Wise Owl has particularly serious errors or bugs, we will, without hesitation, revoke the update, contact all users on the affected version and issue a hotfix. 
• The technical design of the updater is to fail gracefully and allow recovery from errors. It makes every possible effort to notify human beings if any error is detected.

As an Appliance administrator, there are several steps to reduce the impact and likelihood of update risks.

• Always read the Release Notes before installing an update. Release notes may contain critical information (such as the expected down time during an update, or if the update makes major changes, or if manual changes are required after the update). 
• Perform updates on Tuesdays or Wednesdays during support hours. 
  • Never install updates on Mondays or Fridays. The Wise Owl Helpdesk experiences higher volume of calls on Mondays. And unexpected errors may manifest themselves after a Friday update when the Helpdesk operates at reduced capacity.
  • Contacting the Wise Owl Helpdesk beforehand is helpful and will ensure the fastest response time, but is not required.
  • REVIEW: what are the helpdesk operating hours??
• Ensure no one is using the Appliance when you install the update.
• Test your Appliance after installing an update. It can be helpful to have some contacts, matters and documents dedicated to testing; you should test basic operations after an update.
• Make sure your Appliance backup hard disks are connected and working property.
• If error notifications appear on your Appliance, resolve them before installing updates (or contact the Wise Owl Helpdesk for assistance).
• Unless specifically directed by Wise Owl Technicians, you should not attempt to modify or re-configure your Wise Owl Appliance. Doing so will incur additional charges if repairs need to be made.
• If you make network changes (eg: changing Internet Providers, installing new servers), you may need to modify your system configuration and some low level Appliance settings. 
  • You must contact the Wise Owl Helpdesk at least 7 business days before making network changes to ensure compatibility.
• Keep your Appliance up to date. Appliances with out of date software can be the source of security breaches, recurring errors / glitches, and in extreme cases, data loss.

Consequences of Failures

There are several different ways your Appliance may fail during an update; each has different consequences. When determining the impact of risks, you always need to know what the consequences are. These are listed in increasing order of severity.

• Due to a transitory computer glitch, an update fails, but succeeds on a subsequent attempt.
  • The updater will retry updates if they fail to overcome transitory errors.
  • The updater will retry every 10 minutes, up to 5 times. So these errors resolve themselves within 30 minutes.
  • No action is required on your behalf; once a subsequent attempt succeeds, it will be as if there was no failure.
  • The Wise Owl Helpdesk will be notified about the original error, which may assist us in correcting it or working around similar glitches in the future.
    
    
• A bug or error on your Appliance or in the update package itself causes the update to fail before significant changes are made. Subsequent re-tries also fail.
  • This requires intervention by Wise Owl Technicians.
  • Typically, it indicates a misconfiguration of the Appliance or changes to the network environment. 
    • You should never change the system settings of your Appliance unless specifically directed by Wise Owl Technicians.
    • You must notify the Wise Owl Helpdesk of network changes at least 7 business days before you make them.
  • Depending on the nature of the error, typical resolution times are from 30 minutes to 4 hours.
    
    
• A bug or error on your Appliance or in the update package itself causes the update to fail part way through an update. Subsequent re-tries also fail.
  • This requires intervention by Wise Owl Technicians.
  • Typically, it indicates an error in the update package, but can also be caused by a misconfigured Appliance or changes to the network environment.
    • You should never change the system settings of your Appliance unless specifically directed by Wise Owl Technicians.
    • You must notify the Wise Owl Helpdesk of network changes at least 7 business days before you make them.
  • Once an update is partially applied, it can be harder to complete or roll back the process. Typical resolution times are from one hour to the next business day.
    
    
• The updater fails during its initialisation phase.
  • This requires intervention by Wise Owl Technicians.
  • This indicates some low level corruption or fundamental error on the Appliance.
  • Depending on the nature of the error, typical resolution times are from one hour to the next business day.
  • Serious Appliance corruption may require restoration from backups and / or a replacement Appliance.
    
    
• Data loss or catastrophic failure.
  • This is the worst case and by far the least likely outcome. 
  • This can be caused by transitory problems (eg: a power outage or surge is the most likely) or underlying hardware faults (eg: hard drive failure). 
  • Often, such failures are not directly connected with an update, but become visible when core components are modified.
  • Due to the variety of reasons why data loss occurs, and the few real life cases when it has happened, it is hard to give even indicative times to resolve such errors.
  • Restoration from backups and / or a replacement Appliance is the most common way to resolve this.

Update Process

Recommended Process For Updating Your Appliance.

The following lists the recommended update process. You should follow this unless directed otherwise by Wise Owl Technicians.

1. An update is published by Wise Owl. 
2. Appliances automatically check for new updates each night. If a new version is found, it is automatically downloaded.
   1. You can trigger the same update check on the About page on demand.
   2. Notifications will appear on Appliances indicating a new version is available.
3. You should go to the About page and read the release notes for the update.
4. Based on the release notes, plan a time to install the update. You should allow a minimum of 30 minutes down time for minor updates and 1 hour for major updates.
5. Notify your users of the update time and expected down time.
6. At the appropriate time, go to the About page and install the update.
   1. You can only install updates when the Appliance has Internet access; updates will fail without Internet access.
   2. You will be required to read a check list similar to this one before installation.
7. Wait while the update is applied. Typically, this will take 10-15 minutes.
   1. You will receive emails telling you the updater status; the Appliance will display a maintenance page while updates are applied.
8. When the update completes, log back into your Appliance and test it works correctly.
   1. You should test all day-to-day operations. Wise Owl recommends several contacts, matters and documents dedicated to testing purposes on any Appliance.
9. Notify your users the Appliance is available for use.

Questions and Answers

What is the difference between major and minor releases?

Update release notes will classify certain updates as "major"; all others are "minor".

Major releases contain entirely new features and major data additions or changes. They are higher risk due to more changes, particularly data changes. You may wish to wait for a few weeks and see what the community reaction is, plan a test deployment or simply allow additional downtime for the update.

Minor releases contain bug fixes, small refinements and only trivial data changes. They are low risk due to minimal data changes. Typically, little additional testing or planning needs to be done for these release.

How Often Are Releases Made?

Typically, there is a new release each month with a variety of minor improvements and bug fixes. Larger releases with significant new features occur every 3-6 months, depending on the nature of the feature.

If more critical bugs are found, releases may occur outside this normal cycle. These are reserved for critical security issues, the possibility of data loss and bugs that prevent the day-to-day usage of Wise Owl Legal.

What is a Critical Update?

Critical updates contain fixes to bugs which affect prevent day-to-day operation of Wise Owl Legal, security vulnerabilities (which may allow unauthorised people to access your Appliance) or potential data loss bugs. You should apply critical updates as soon as possible due to the severity of the errors they fix.

Technical Detail