Basis Technologies do not backport Enhancements to earlier versions of ActiveControl, due to the effort and technical complexity involved.
Please refer to this online Knowledge Article for details of the key considerations and steps involved in performing an upgrade of ActiveControl.
If you are interested in upgrading to ActiveControl 8.40, please contact your Account Manager to discuss next steps.
Basis Technologies would generally recommend that an ActiveControl upgrade is performed with some sort of formalised assistance from one of our Solution Specialists. This not only ensures that the benefits of the newer functionality can be more effectively reaped, it also helps ensure that any teething issues and questions encountered during the Upgrade process can be addressed in a timely manner.
Some more information on the typical Engagement options are detailed in this online Knowledge Article.
Important Notes about upgrading to ActiveControl 8.40
(1) Customers using ActiveControl ‘Transport of Copies’ functionalities in a pre-8.40 release will need to migrate over to the Enhanced Transport of Copies configuration detailed in these Release Notes. Some of the user exit solutions provided over the years have been replaced by the new functionality in this release, and will no longer work.
(2) A new report developed was introduced in ActiveControl 8.40, to improve performance of the Overtake/Regression and Conflict Checks by speeding up the checking of Ignore flags. More information can be found in this online Change Note
(3) ActiveControl has historically included a ‘Task Planning’ capability that can be used to manage pre-Development approval workflows. Task Planning has been considered legacy functionality within the product since January 2019. Asides from the fact that less than 2% of our customers are using this Planning functionality due to other best-of-breed ITSM tools such as JIRA and ServiceNow, Basis Technologies have not enhanced this area of the product for more than five years. In ActiveControl 8.0, the functionality was hidden by default as it was no longer supported by Basis Technologies, the plan is to remove it completely from the product in the future, and as such, it should no longer be used by new and existing customers.
(4) Please note that if a Customer has created custom entries in table /BTI/TE_RE_STEPT in prior versions of ActiveControl – there is a known issue in ActiveControl 8.40 where these will get overwritten by the software transports. This will be addressed from ActiveControl 8.50, but for customers upgrading to 8.40, the recommendation would be to backup (ie export) the table before the upgrade, and then import it after doing the Upgrade, to enable you to retain your custom entries.
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