If you are interested in upgrading to ActiveControl 9.20, please contact your Basis Technologies’ Customer Success 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. This is of particular importance during a migration from the legacy UI’s (Windows GUI & Web UI) to the new Web Platform.
Please refer to this Article for details of the key considerations and steps involved in performing an upgrade of ActiveControl.
Some more information on the typical Engagement options is detailed in this Article.
Important Notes about upgrading to ActiveControl 9.20
(1) As part of ActiveControl 9.00 (August 2022) release, the way in which ActiveControl is packaged was changed. Prior to 9.00, the same “Server” transport was typically deployed into all of a customer’s SAP systems – i.e. the Domain Controller and all satellite systems. This was a little bit inefficient, as the reality has always been that the majority of ActiveControl functionality exists in the ActiveControl Domain Controller, with a small subset of this in the Development satellite systems, and an even smaller subset in the non-Development satellite systems. As a result of the way ActiveControl was historically packaged, ActiveControl upgrades and the deployments of Cumulative Patches could sometimes become more time-consuming and onerous for our customers than was really required. In addition, customer systems often ended up with more ActiveControl ‘/BTI/’ objects in their managed satellite systems than was really required. Please note that the packaging of ActiveControl was changed in ActiveControl 9.00 – to avoid the need to deliver full software transports into the non-Development satellite systems being managed by ActiveControl. It is important for upgrading customers to be aware of this change and take note that it is now different transports that need to be applied in Development satellite systems versus non-Development satellite systems.
(2) Basis Technologies do not backport Enhancements to earlier versions of ActiveControl, due to the effort and technical complexity involved. This is true even for earlier versions of ActiveControl that are still in their 3-year maintenance support period.
(3) Transport of Copies functionality was changed significantly as part of ActiveControl 8.40 release. 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 as part of an ActiveControl 9.20 upgrade. 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.
(4) A new report was introduced in ActiveControl 8.40, to improve performance of the Overtake/Regression and Conflict Analysis checks by migrating over Ignore flags from SAP transport parameter in SAP table ‘E070’ to a local ActiveControl ‘/BTI’ table. More information can be found in this Article. Customers upgrading from a pre-8.40 release should migrate over their Ignore flags as part of their upgrade.
(5) 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 almost a decade. In ActiveControl 8.0 release, the Task Planning functionality was hidden by default as it was no longer supported by Basis Technologies. The plan is to remove this functionality completely from ActiveControl in the future, and as such, it should no longer be used by existing and new customers.
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