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Composer On-premise Upgrade Guide (for major release)

   Composer This topic is related to Transact Composer.  |   Form Builder |  v4.3 & Higher   This feature is related to v4.3 and higher.

On-premise Composer installations will require regular upgrades to take advantage of new features and defect fixes.

A special build is required for on-premise upgrades. This is available to customers at => On Premise Composer Upgrade Directory

Each available release is listed under this folder and includes all the items required for a successful upgrade. This will include:

  • The release "WAR" file.
  • Maguire Support Pack
  • Maguire datapack
  • Service Pack if not a major release.

If the client does not have the latest version of composer on their instance they will need to additional actions to the ones below. These are described later in this document.

The screenshot below shows the artifacts in the files.avoka.com upgrade folder for a 4.3.2 upgrade. The 2 sub-folders "Upgrading from 4.1.x" and "Upgrading from 4.2.x" are only required by clients who are NOT on 4.3 and will be required later in the upgrade.

Upgrade Steps

Composer upgrades require the deployment of a new WAR file in the JBoss application server. The WAR file can be downloaded from On Premise Composer Upgrade Directory, you can contact the Avoka support team to obtain access. The upgrade will automatically upgrade the database if required, it is therefore important to create a full backup of the database before a new WAR file is deployed.

For updating composer war file:

  1. Backup composer database
  2. Backup old the avoka-formcomposer.war from [JBOSS_HOME]\server\default\deploy\,
  3. Shutdown JBoss for Composer
  4. Copy new avoka-formcomposer.war to [JBOSS_HOME]\server\default\deploy\, replacing the old avoka-formcomposer.war
  5. Delete [JBOSS_HOME]\server\default\tmp folder
  6. Start JBoss for Composer
  7. The database upgrade process will be kicked off once the JBoss application server has been started.
  8. You will now be able to access Composer as per usual

Follow up Actions

After a successful upgrade the following actions are required:

1) Updating the Service Pack(s) (Not required for major releases)

Service packs are named "v4.x Service Pack x". These need to be uploaded to Composer by a site administrator in the System Account. For major release (eg. 4.4, 5.0 etc) this is not required.

2) Adding Maguire Packs

If there is a corresponding Maguire release, there will be Maguire Pack Libraries that need to be uploaded to the Avoka Datapack Account

1) Maguire Support - This is the rule pack for Maguire. It will use the Organization's version to select the correct Maguire Pack. When uploading it can replace the existing pack.

2) Maguire vn.n - This is the Maguire Pack itself and needs to be added to the Avoka Datapack. There may be multiple to add.

3) Activating Bizpacks

Bizpacks are bundled into the WAR file however they are not activated automatically. To do this the administrator needs to:

  1. Go to: System=>Release Management
  2. Select the "Import Bundled Packs" button.

This will add the Bizpacks to the Avoka Bizpacks account automatically.

4) Setting the current release

  1. Go to: System=>Release Management
  2. Select the "Current Release" link on the top right hand corner.
  3. The dialog will contain a dropdown with the available releases. Select the latest release and hit "Ok".

5) Clients not on the latest release

For clients who are currently not on the latest release. That is 4.1.x or 4.2.x the additional steps are described below Upgrading From Older Versions

Rollback

To rollback the upgrade please follow the following steps:

  1. Shutdown JBoss for Composer
  2. Restore the database
  3. Copy the backed up avoka-formcomposer.war to [JBOSS_HOME]\server\default\deploy\
  4. Delete [JBOSS_HOME]\server\default\tmp folder
  5. Start JBoss for Composer
  6. You will now be able to access Composer as per usual
  7. Contact the Avoka support team and provide them with the relevant JBoss log files for further analysis

Upgrading from an older version

The following two folders are required by clients upgrading from version 4.1 and version 4.2.

These contain the datapacks that need to be loaded to ensure the environment is fully up to date.

Note that if you are upgrading from 4.1.x to 4.3.x you will need to add the datapacks from both folders.

Steps to upgrade

  1. Open the folder required. Note that not all of the following may be present.
  2. If there are Bizpacks in the folder you need to add them to the Avoka Bizpacks Account in Composer.
  3. If there are Maguire packs they need to be added to the Avoka Datapacks Account in Composer.
  4. If there are Service Packs or Release Packs these need to be added to the System Account in Composer.