I was asked to
participate in the CRMUG 4x4 webinar series. These are quick webinars with
multiple speakers sharing tips and answering questions. I also wanted to
document my tips here for future reference.
Upgrades are
exciting but they can be a lot of work especially in very customized systems.
Check out these tips and let me know what other tips you have.
Clean up Before
Determine what you
can do before the upgrade to save you time during the upgrade. For example,
when going from 2011 to 2016 (as I will do later this year) make sure that you
are on the latest rollup so your JavaScript is up to date and work on getting
all of your integrations on the 2011 end points. Look at unsupported code early
so you can deal with it ahead of time or at least have a plan in place. If you
are on 2013/2015 and moving to 2016, look at the JavaScript you have and see if
it can be transitioned to business rules so it will upgrade without issue.
What can Wait
Two pieces to this
point: waiting to take advantage of new features and implementing a code
freeze. When you train new users on the system you want to focus on getting
them to do their job in a new system, you do not also want to be training on
new processes and features. Focus on migrating not improving/changing right
away.
Also maintain the
integrity of the upgrade by implementing a code freeze or as much as possible
holding off development during the upgrade window. If you are making changes in
production, you will need to re-work or at least review all of these changes in
your upgraded development. Prepare a plan to hold off on most requests and also
be prepared to get working on them once you upgrade
Showing Value
As you work on the
upgrade look for the "Big Win" tips. This can be anything that helps
users or is just a flashy feature. These are great to show off in training and
show upper level management so they can quickly see the value of the upgrade.
These can also be used for promotion to build excitement and drive user
adoption. Also look for the features that executives will care about - will
this help reporting? Performance? Be prepared to promote those items too so you
can build sponsorship and buy-in. If the organization can see the value of the
upgrade then they will be more likely to be engaged in training, patient during
the code freeze, and ready to adopt the changes.
Other Tips
I also stole some
tips from our partner Dave Ireland, at Salentica:
- Ensure you have current
software, instructions, and license keys from all 3rd party vendors.
You don’t want to get to upgrade weekend only to find out you’re missing a
license key or that you should have removed a managed solution from the
old version prior to upgrading.
- If coming from CRM 2013 or
newer, do you have access to your CRM Encryption key? You may need
it so be sure to have it handy. Don’t forget to ensure the
encryption is active post-upgrade or Outlook clients might not be able to
connect.
- If coming from ‘pre-metro’
versions of the UI (CRM2011 or lower) allocate a significant amount of
time for UI design work. There’s a lot more white space on your
canvas and there are also some new controls to play with, so take
advantage. Also test the layout of your forms on the mobile
app if that’s in scope for your deployment.
- Have all users ‘gracefully’
remove the outlook client before cutting users off from the ‘old’ CRM
version. You can either get them to disable all of their sync
filters or ask them to remove the Org from their configuration. They
key is to allow the Outlook client to remove all the data from its
internal database store before the upgrade.
- Have a plan for handling
regularly-scheduled integrations. If you have integrations that run
periodically or on a scheduled basis, determine how they will be impacted
if your CRM is down for 24 hours. Will the integration ‘catch-up’ or
will you need to pause the integrations and run them manually once the new
CRM is online?
- Do a dry-run in UAT.
Document every step and the expected duration of each. On go-live
weekend there’s a lot of stress that isn’t present when you’re doing the
upgrade in a sandbox. If you have every step documented (even in
bullet points) it will help ensure you don’t miss anything or do something
out of sequence. Tracking the times will help you set expectations
with the business owners about when they need be available for testing.
- Starting in CRM 2015,
Contacts have an extra ‘system address’ added. In previous versions,
there are only 2 addresses on Account, Contact, and Lead. Now there
is an address3 on the contact record – if you use More Addresses, take
note that the ‘first’ More Address might get dropped from the More Address
list because it is now in the address3 slot, and no longer considered a
‘more’ address. If this is a problem, you might need to manufacture
a dummy address3 record, and bump all the other address numbers up by one
to get back to where you started.
- If you are upgrading from
2011 be aware that the File -> Properties area of the form no longer
exists. So you may need to consider moving the created on/by and modified
on/by onto your forms as read-only fields.
Here are some tips
from the other panelists as well:
- Plan well - inventory
customizations (plugins, JavaScript, Workflows) and inventory connectivity
to external systems
- Test in a Sandbox, make use
of the Code Validation tool to test your customizations
- Clean up code - can we
replace code with new out of the box features? Evaluate processes and
determine if there is a better way to handle it
- Plan your timeline. You
cannot make changes in a Dev 2016 environment and then import into a lower
environment. You will need to do these changes multiple times. Factor this
into your project plan
- Plan your training. How will
you train? What do you roll out with the upgrade and train on? How will
this impact users? Keep users informed and seek feedback. Make use of
power users for improvements, engagement and also help with questions.
- Dealing with new features -
wait to implement those until after the upgrade. This gives you more time
to test and review and train separately.
- Scribe - always using web
services when you are using the adaptor so everything should be straight
forward to migrate.
- Security Roles - create new
base role and go through permissions to identify what is unique for 2015
that wasn't in 2011. Must compare roles because new permissions were
added.
What other tips do
you have? What are you doing now to prepare for your next upgrade?
