WFM 8.x Install Training

[neilwarner]

We are upgrading from WFM 7.6 to 8.1 in preparation for Windows 7 compliance, and I haven't been able to find any training for installation of WFM on Genesys' website.  I have contacted their training manager and I am waiting for her response.  Has anyone completed an upgrade from 7.6 to 8.1 in either a windows or Unix/Solaris environment?  Do you have the steps you took to complete this upgrade that you would be willing to share with us?
Thanks in advance,
Neil

[mduran22]

Hi Neil,

I just did a maintenance upgrade from 7.6.1 to 8.0, and have been looking at 8.1. There are a couple of manuals I used for this, the 8.0 (8.1) administration manual and the Genesys Migration guide. Some of the upgrade guide was a bit confusing as it first appeared I had to create a separate schema for the upgrade, but as you read on in the admin guide, it mentions that is only if you are upgrade from 6.X to 8.X. When going from 7.6 to 8.0 and 8.1 you can just migrate the database from 7.6 to 8.1 using the database utility. We did put together a high level task list, which is below, for the migration. However other then the web container upgrade (Tomcat in our case) and changes such as the war file, it is backing up the database, removing current 7.6 apps on the server, installing database utility, updating/migrating database with utility, and installing the new apps. There are some new options on 8.X applications you will want to read through and see if they apply to you. The only other catch is that the database utility backs up to a .mdb file which has size limitation of 2 GB, so I had to back up schedules, performance, and forecast data separately (you always have to back up the core data, which I don't like). The other option was used was having the DBA take a full back up of the schema.

Task Action
1 Shutdown Current WFM Solution
2 Stop Tomcat Service
3 Start database backup
4 Complete new app configuration for all 8.0 apps
5 Upgrade Tomcat and Environmental variable
6 COMPLETE BACKUP of the WFM Database
7 Uninstall 7.6.1 app versions from servers
8 Install 8.0 app versions on servers
9 Copy 'wfm.war' file from WFMWeb folder to d:\Tomcat 6.0\webapps
10 Start Tomcat
11 Start WFM database Utility
            Select 'Database Update' follow instructions"
12 Start all 8.0 apps
13 Check logging for each app
14 Start WFM Configuration Utility
              Check configuration"
15 Login to WFMWeb Supervisor
16 Login to WFMWeb Agent
17 Update WFM Solutions with 8.0 apps
18 Stop/Start WFM Solution

Hope that helps a little,

Mike

[neilwarner]

mduran22 ,
Thanks, that does help.  I will review and forward to the rest of my team.  What do you think about cleaning up the database prior to backing it up?
Neil

[mduran22]

I have not used the clean up function as of yet, and I wanted to see how the data migrated as is. However I understand it can reduce the size of the database which should help the backups.

[neilwarner]

Mike,

How long did your upgrade take start to finish?  Our backup took 8 hours to complete.  We will need to update our DEV and QA environments first.  But, these environments don't have a big database, and we can't compare timelines on upgrading these other environment.

Thanks in advance,
Neil

[mduran22]

I think the back up with the utility took around 10 hours (backing up individually). I am currently working with the DBAs to try and find a better export/import method should we need it. If you can involve you dbas they may have better tools for backing up the data (depending on what datbase platform you use). The migration of the data from 761 to 80 was fairly quick (5 minutes if I remember correctly).

[neilwarner]

Thanks for the information,

Looking for to this being completed, just not the steps to get there,

Neil