Upgrades

Communicare upgrades are performed remotely by Communicare Support at a time arranged with the system administrator.

System Administrator: before a Communicare upgrade

Before you upgrade Communicare, complete the following steps:
  1. Download the latest demo from the Communicare User Portal - Help and Support tab.
  2. Study the appropriate Release Notes.
  3. Familiarise yourself with the changes, including changes to ICPC-2 PLUS terms (see www.fmrc.org.au) and any new reports that have been added.
  4. Prepare your staff for the changes that they will see after the upgrade: this may involve inviting key staff to test the changes.
  5. Request an upgrade on the Communicare User Portal - Help and Support tab.

Communicare Support will contact you about the timing of the upgrade. The upgrade will be performed by Communicare Support staff.

Important: If you are upgrading to Communicare V21.1 and later, ensure that you recall all laptops with an offline client installed and synchronise them with the core Communicare database before the upgrade occurs. Data from Communicare V19.2 and earlier that is not synchronised before the upgrade will be lost.

During the upgrade, no users can be connected to Communicare. If you use Remote Desktop Connection or similar, you will need to log on to the Remote Desktop to upgrade the client version of Communicare before users of the Remote Desktop can use Communicare.

System Administrator: after a Communicare upgrade

After a Communicare upgrade, be available for staff in case there are any issues with the Communicare upgrade on a workstation. For example, some users' login credentials may not allow them to run an installation program.

Communicare Client Upgrades

After the server has been upgraded, Communicare clients automatically detect that an upgraded version is available on your network. If an upgraded version is available, Communicare displays a message while it is starting up. You should choose to upgrade Communicare as, occasionally, running an old version will cause errors. In case of errors just close Communicare, restart it and accept the upgrade. Depnding on your network connection speed, the upgrade will normally only take a minute or two to complete, after which Communicare will start.

Users who do not have the rights to install software should seek the assistance of the network administrator who will need to log on to complete the upgrade.

Reports and Templates upgrade

Whenever the server computer is upgraded to a newer version of Communicare, the latest reports and templates will be imported into the database. If you have created reports or templates with exactly the same name as a new report or template in the upgrade, your report or template will be overwritten. However, all of the existing reports and templates are backed-up on the server in a folder under the SavedQueries folder. Rename the required reports and import them back into the Communicare database.