Is vb5 almost there now

Ok. Maybe you (support staff) could come up with a moderation rule (which is normal, as far as I know, for most sites and was done often in the past on vB.com) that when a mod or admin moves a thread to the correct forum, they also post a quick note to say they moved it. That way, the thread starter learns they made a mistake by putting they're question in the wrong forum and getting a wrong answer because of it and people like me don't get the wrong picture of your response. Although I preach, look at yourself first for the mistake, in this situation, if what you say is true, it is someone else who made you and me both look foolish.

Scott

 

Oh, and you really should answer that thread, instead of worrying about preserving your honor. The customer still has a problem and the lack of a resolution shows again a lack of ability to do support properly.

In an excellent SaaS service, people are told before hand when their instances will be upgraded. I know this, because I work as an admin on one of the world's biggest and most popular commercial PaaS/ SaaS systems. They even have a site dedicated to making sure customers are aware of good AND bad activities on their server instances.

System Status: http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/status/ (notice april 30th, everyone had disruptions of service)
Maintenance and Upgrades: http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/maintenance/ (notice the upgrade windows. 5 minutes!)

Nice stuff eh? Things vBCloud customers can only dream of.

Scott

 

Here's what I received the other day, as a vB Cloud customer:

"We will be upgrading your vB Cloud site scrotnig.vbulletin.net at approximately 2014-05-13 12:45:00 PST. We'll handle this for you and there's nothing you need to do on this.
Your site will be unavailable for a few minutes during the upgrade. We'll let you know when the upgrade is complete
.
-- vBulletin Customer Service"

 

Great. Now make it a selling point.

Scott

 

Or maybe, just maybe, the member of staff who saw fit to move the thread could have provided the customer with the correct answer instead of leaving them hanging. It's not just the product that has gone down the pan, since Steve Machol left support has also taken a dive.

 

That too.

Scott

 

You got the warning 24 hours before they started the upgrade if i read it correctly. If this is true that is not lot of time to make sure everything is handled on the forum. Most companies give 72 hour warning before tempting anything, except when its an emergency and upgrading is something you can do and plan long term.

 

I'm just wondering, are the upgrades forced? are backups done before the upgrade happens? What happens if the upgrade is botched and data is destroyed?

What if a user doesn't want the latest upgrade because of certain bugs or features that are half way implemented and cause more headache then they are worth with the member base?

 

Looks like it.

Good question. I'd say yes, most likely. But, for IB? I wouldn't.

IB's SLAs.

Good question. I'd think any new feature, which can be mission critical, would be an opt-in, meaning, when the new version is installed, the new features are turned off by default.

Scott

 

On a multi-tenant Cloud platform upgrades are mandatory.
People who want to have control over whether or not to perform an upgrade, need the traditional downloaded product. The whole point of the Cloud service is to remove such concerns completely. The feedback I am seeing is that this exactly what the cloud customers want.

 

Customers who feel the need to pick and choose what upgrades they want, need the traditional download product. The Cloud product has all upgrades managed and performed centrally. Which is exactly how it should be.

 

Correct Mark, but we are talking about features, which a new upgrade (automatically carried out as you mention) might have installed with it. If there are any mission critical features i.e., if they need setting up, aren't ready to be used or may cause user confusion/ changes site usability, then those features shouldn't be "on" automatically. The site owner/ admin should be able to turn them on/ opt-in to the feature, when they are ready to use it.

Scott

 

They are enabled or disabled exactly as per the download product. It would be ludicrous to have it any other way.

 

Comparing vBCloud to the boxed product is not what you (IB) should be doing. A customer with the boxed software can upgrade on their own and can quickly turn off any new stuff. Or not upgrade at all. They have the choice. A vB Cloud user has no choice. The upgrade just happens.

The opt-in to new, mission critical features is a standard SaaS procedure. It would be a mistake to update someone's site and have new functions turned on, causing confusion among users or even worse problems. It would be a nice way to piss off your customer, even though you are trying to give them a more advanced service.

But then, I almost forgot. IB doesn't take any responsibility for liabilities for any problems......like upset users.

So....problem solved.

Scott

 

Scott, I really must remember to hire you next time I feel the need to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
You're remarkably good at trying to find negatives out of positives.

A lot of Cloud customers are VERY happy that the whole upgrade headache is taken away from them. As experienced forum owners ourselves, we probably forget how traumatic upgrades can be for "ordinary" folk who aren't well versed in it. You can be terrified that you will do it wrong and then you fear nobody will help you fix it.

Cloud sorts that - the upgrade is done, and if it WERE to break while running, it gets fixed for you. What's not to like?

I think back to my early days with a forum - I bought a cheap hosting package and auto-installed XMB Forum which at the time was being bundled with Cpanel. In those days I was terrified of upgrades and databases and suchlike. I also couldn't afford vBulletin back then! A service such as vB Cloud would have been absolutely brilliant - no upgrade worries and a nice, affordable monthly cost, which would also have pretty much ensured that I stuck with the product for life.

Sure, it's not perfect, but it's very good and a lot of customers really like it.

 

I got sarcastic, because you aren't understanding what I am talking about and obviously don't want to even try either.

It is not likeable, when a new feature can easily cause confusion or aggravation among users of a site, because they don't expect it, don't understand it or don't want it. Best example is the notification emails several customers complained about through the vB.com 5.1.1 upgrade. Imagine you'll cause that same issue for your vB Cloud customers and their users complain about getting emails they never thought they had signed up for (or actually never did sign up for) to those site owners, your customers. That is unneeded aggravation, which the automatic upgrade created. Had the site owner the ability to turn on notification system at his or her leisure, then he or she can do change management with his or her users before hand and avoid the aggravation.

Does that make any sense?

Scott

 

What happens to any style changes a person makes to the forum? Lets say that person is working and pushed for time referencing all changes they made - to reapply them back again after an upgrade. Are vBulletin going to wait for them to do that first, or simply give them a deadline when the forum will be upgraded to a newer version.

For example, on my forum I keep track of all style changes made posted on a hidden forum, so any upgrades done and I can reapply them back again at "my own leisure", I don't have to install an update based on a deadline. But that's me, I make things easy for myself. But not everyone does and can fall foul of this type of being alerted an upgrade taking place if they've not made sure any forum changes have been kept recorded.

 

Looking at the mods on the org, one of the first mods that normally gets ported over is the arcade
Even that's not out for vb5

 

No use making mods for something that does not work.