Smart Upgrade is nice - I’ve deployed 6.5.1 to about 40% of our notes users in the past few weeks. I’m taking it slow since I have to deal with any problems.
A couple of things that need to be fixed/enhanced:
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Admin. Notification of upgrade. I wrote an agent to clear out all Client fields in the person documents and now I am able to manually see who is at 6.5.1. This is a pain, to say the least. Smart Upgrade should send an e-mail to a mail-in DB.
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Upgrading from * to 6.5.1. This is why I have to track the upgrades. I would love to just add a Notes group into the Smart Upgrade document but when I am going from * to 6.5.1 the users who have already upgraded are prompted again to upgrade. I have to go into the Smart Upgrade document and delete each individual user from the list - not to mention copying and pasting from their group into the upgrade doc.
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Making users “admins” on their computer. I know it’s a MSI thing, but it’s still not fun. At least with our Hyena software we can add this fairly easily.
Other than that it seems to function very well and is helping us to get all the original 6.0 and 6.0.1 clients up to speed and using the integrated IM.
Subject: Smart Upgrade Revisited
I am in the middle of my rollout and I am taking it slowly, like you, in case of problems. I agree with your comments.
Have you not experienced a problem where the upgrade asks for a CD? I have had to put the *.msi and associated files on our network for users to manually type in.
I’d be interested in details of how you can tell who has upgraded and who hasn’t - I’m very new to all this!
Subject: RE: Smart Upgrade Revisited
Ray, I have not had a prompt for the CD. I have copied all of the CD files into a public network share.
How to tell if someone has upgraded.
1 - I created a view in the Domino Directory (not recommended by Lotus but when they don’t provide another method to track…). That view, ($ClientVersions) for me, I created is sorted by the ClntBld field in the person document. I have a second column for the computer name that uses the ClntMachine field and a third column that just displays the person’s name - @Name([CN];@Subset(FullName;1)).
2 - I created an agent in the Domino Directory that allows me to delete all of the Client information from the selected person documents. The formula for that agent is simple:
@SetField(“ClientType”;“”);
@SetField(“ClntMachine”;“”);
@SetField(“ClntPltfrm”;“”);
@SetField(“ClntBld”;“”);
SELECT @All
3 - I select all of users in the NAB that I plan to upgrade and run that agent. This clears out their client version data.
4 - In the morning I will open the Domino Directory and select all the 6.5.1 clients and later in the day I F9 and look for the new documents that are 6.5.1 and are not selected and then I remove them from the Smart Upgrade document.
It works for me. I guess I could also create a scheduled agent that will look through new/updated documents in the NAB and then e-mail me a collection of the ones that have 6.5.1 in the Client Build field.
Hope that helps.