When deciding whether to update your software on your own or to have CCS help, it is a good idea to read through the update guide to see if it is something you will be able to handle.

Recently a customer scheduled a time for CCS to upgrade their software. When I called to start the upgrade, I asked that everyone be out of the software until I was done. The owner said that that was not possible and wanted to do the upgrade themselves.  So one night after the store was closed, and all users where out of the software, they started the upgrade. Their scheduling appraoch was good.  Allowing enough ime to do the upgrade and reset the system back if it fails is the right way to do it.  Don't try to do this a couple of hours before opening and create a disaster that leaves you hand-writing that day.

Early the next morning, CCS received a call that the system was not working. They were not able to run any of the update scripts and needed help.  They were frustrated, since had been up all night. They now had the stress of not knowing what had happened or how to fix the problems.  When I was able to log onto their system remotely, it seemed most of the data was in bad shape.  Nothing would run properly, errors would pop up, and it seemed all the data was gone.  Fortunately, there were backups of the database that were able to be restored.  We could then run  the update scripts against this data to update the software properly.  We did loose a days worth of data, but it could have been a lot worse.

In summary, if you decide to update your software on your own, be sure to read through all the documentation before starting your upgrade and ask any questions where the documentation does not make sense to you.  It would also be prudent to let CCS know that you plan on updating your software, so we can make arrangements to be available if you do run into a problem that you cant fix. Last but by far not least, make a good verifiable backup of your data before installing anything.  If a backup was made before this customer started, there would not be any extra work re-entering the data that was lost. It is also a good idea to have a fallback plan on how to ring up sales, take credit card payments, etc, in case fixing the issue is going to take longer than just a few minutes.

If you would like to update your software or review the steps needed to update on your own, call the CCS Retail Systems Support Department at 800-672-4806 or email_us.  CCS does offer before/after hours support, but it does need to be scheduled in advance.

-Bryan