Best Practices for upgrading to Workflow or ServiceDesk 8.0
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Best Practices for upgrading to Workflow or ServiceDesk 8.0

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Article ID: 178826

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Updated On:

Products

Workflow Solution ServiceDesk

Issue/Introduction

 

Resolution

Before upgrade

For general server requirements and other information related to upgrade, please refer to SD 8.0 Implementation Guide .

1.  General pre-upgrade considerations for ServiceDesk 8.0:

  • Date Conversion to UTC Dates and Times - Because all date values get converted to UTC values as a part of the Workflow portion of the upgrade, you should make sure that your Audithistory table in SQL is backed up and then purged.  Using the SQL command "Truncate Table Audithistory" on your existing 7.x database, prior to upgrade.
  • In ServiceDesk 8.0 installer, running System Diagnostic will always fail.

This failure is simply noting the fact that the required version of Workflow is NOT installed.  Clicking "Next" is the correct choice  so that the correct version of Workflow can be installed. Same problem will occasionally occur with ServiceDesk 8.0 HF1 installer (but generally only with a Warning).
 

  • ServiceDeskSettings profile InstanceName value needs to be set to 'Default'. Any other value will cause installation to fail.
    In ProcessManager portal navigate to Admin > Data > Application Properties > ServiceDeskSettings. If the value is other than 'Default', change this back to 'Default'.

     
  • Custom sub-pages added to any of the ServiceDesk Portal pages will cause the upgrade to fail. To prevent this move these sub-pages to a different place (for example, up in the hierarchy) or export and delete them, then restore from exported page after upgrade is complete.

    Note: Symantec recommends cloning out-of-box portal pages or creating new custom portal pages instead of modifying or adding onto existing ones. Out-of-box portal pages will be overwritten during ServiceDesk installs, repairs and upgrades. Unless you only do minor changes, having a custom portal page is a better approach.

    Navigate to Site Actions > Page List. Find the page where custom sub-page is present:
    1. Use Export Page to make a backup of the page to a file. This can be used to restore the page later if there is a problem or you decide to delete the page for the duration of upgrade.
    2a. Click Move Level Up to move the page one level up in the hierarchy.
    2b. Click Delete Page to remove page. make sure you have the page exported (Step 1 above) before clicking this.

    After upgrade is completed:
    - If you moved the page (2a), find the page again, click Make As A Sub Page and select the desired parent page in the list.
    - If you removed the page (2b), then click Import Page button (icon depicting a page with small +) in Pages List and point the dialog to the file.
     
  • We have come across scenarios when old Symantec.Plugins.Licensing.dll is referenced in Workflow directory on both 7.5 and 7.6 installations.
    Please Make sure that Symantec.Plugins.Licensing.dll isn't present at the following locations:
    - in Symantec\Workflow\Server Extensions\Plugins on standalone WF server
    - in Altiris\Workflow\Server Extensions\Plugins on SMP if Worfklow component is being upgraded on SMP
    This dll either needs to be moved away (preferred) or renamed to Symantec.Plugins.Licensing.old

2. When upgrading from ServiceDesk 7.x to 8.x do not upgrade Workflow by running Workflow installer manually. Always upgrade Workflow using ServiceDesk installer.

If Workflow server is upgraded manually Portal may not function normally.

3. Upgrading ServiceDesk from 8.0 HF1 to 8.0 HF2

  • Have upgrade to ServiceDesk 8.0 HF1 completed first.
  • Install Workflow Point-fix Rollup only after ServiceDesk is at 8.0 HF1.

See INFO3609 for fixes included in the rollup and SD 8.0 HF1 Release Notes for SD fixes.

4.  When upgrading from ServiceDesk 7.5, 7.5 MP1 or 7.5 SP1
Beginning with version 7.6 Workflow engine relies on .NET Framework 4.5. Therefore .NET Framework 4.5 needs to be installed, ISAPI and CGI restrictions must be set to Allowed for Isapi filters of ASP.NET v4 and all Application Pools (at least processManagerPool and ServiceDeskPool or Application Pools running Workflow and ServiceDesk applications) should be set to .NET v4.0

See TECH233602 for related info.

  • Date/Time Conversions

If you have a large number of processes, you will want to budget time for the date/time conversion to UTC values.

5. Migrating from releases prior to ServiceDesk 7.5

In-place upgrade is not supported if you are on version 7.1 SP2 or earlier and migration process involves moving to new hardware.

After upgrade

  1. In ServiceDesk 8.0 you may see HTML elements like <br> tags or HTML-encoded characters like &quot; in some web parts on process view pages. Notably, Incident Description on Incident page.
    See TECH234760 for steps to resolve this. Note that this problem is fixed in ServiceDesk 8.0 HF1.
  2. In some scenarios, portal setting for file upload maximum size gets set to 0 at installation. This will prevent importing Portal elements (pages, hierearchy data etc.) and will cause adding process attachments to fail. In order for this functionality to work properly, please make sure that File Upload limit is set to appropriate size. The maximum 100 MB could be OK for most cases.
    To change the value, navigate to:
    Go to     Admin > Portal > Master Settings > Process Manager Settings > File Upload Size
  3. In both ServiceDesk 8.0 and 8.0 HF1 resolving an Incident will fail with an error message in logs referencing wrong parameters being provided for a stored procedure. This issue will be fixed in ServiceDesk 8.0 HF2.
    Please replace the SLAGetProcessToComplete stored procedure in ServiceDesk database with the steps in TECH234759.
  4. There is incorrect syntax in one of the ServiceDesk Solution reports on SMP that causes SD.DataServices to fail when trying to retrieve a list of all collections from SMP. This will be fixed in ServiceDesk 8.0 HF2.
    Please update the report on SMP server by following the steps in TECH234577.

 

Additional Information

REFERENCE ID : : 3943902/n DESCRIPTION :

ServiceDesk 8.0 HF1 upgrade or repair will fail if any of the SD ProcessManager pages has a custom sub-page.

/n REFERENCE ID : : 3943910/n DESCRIPTION :

When failed upgrade to ServiceDesk 8.0 and 8.0 HF1 rolls back, it removes Symantec.ServiceDesk.Im.Core.dll and Symantec.ServiceDesk.Cm.Core.dll libaries from customlib folder

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