HotFix policy

kitik

Hi, I would like to know your opinion on this:

I recently encountered a problem in one of our customers. It took us hours to figure out what the problem was, fix it, and fix the wrong posted data. It was a known-issue with a hotfix published months ago to correct it.
This is not the first time I am involved in a situation like this one.

In all KB articles Microsoft says:

A supported hotfix is now available from Microsoft. However, it is only intended to correct the problem that is described in this article. Apply it only to systems that are experiencing this specific problem. This hotfix may receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 service pack or the next Microsoft Dynamics NAV version that contains this hotfix.


Despite MS recommendations, we are discussing whereas to apply all hotfixes to our customer base or not.

What's your policy regarding Hotfixes?

Salut!
Laura Nicolàs

Marije_Brummel

Personally I'm not really in favor of implementing hotfixes to all customers. Simply because I've seen them go wrong too.

Maybe it's safe to implement a hotfix one or two months after it has been released rather than days after the release.

Also, it's next to impossible to keep up with all the hotfixes if you are serving let's say 200 customers as a NAV partner.

What about looking in the knowledge base if you encounter a problem rather than diving into the debugger? I know the latter is second nature for most of us. But the KB has improved a lot during the last few years.

Luc_VanDyck

Mark Brummel wrote:

Maybe it's safe to implement a hotfix one or two months after it has been released rather than days after the release.

And we have seen hotfixes overwriting the changes of earlier hotfixes. Then you need to merge the code manually instead of overwriting the objects.

kitik

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your comments.

Mark Brummel wrote:

Personally I'm not really in favor of implementing hotfixes to all customers. Simply because I've seen them go wrong too.
Maybe it's safe to implement a hotfix one or two months after it has been released rather than days after the release.

Yes, waiting a couple of months is not a bad option. Our idea was to apply all hotfixes as a batch job, grouping all hotfixes published for the last period.

Mark Brummel wrote:

Also, it's next to impossible to keep up with all the hotfixes if you are serving let's say 200 customers as a NAV partner.

If you do it manually on each customer it is impossible. But we are thinking on automate it.
This way we have to apply the hotfix manually once in our development environment, and then apply it to our customers.
Of course we will have to deal with versions and customizations, which makes the development more interesting

Salut!
Laura Nicolàs

kitik

Luc Van Dyck wrote:

Mark Brummel wrote:

Maybe it's safe to implement a hotfix one or two months after it has been released rather than days after the release.

And we have seen hotfixes overwriting the changes of earlier hotfixes. Then you need to merge the code manually instead of overwriting the objects.

Thanks for pointing it, we will also have to deal with this...

Salut!
Laura Nicolàs

kitik

Mark Brummel wrote:

What about looking in the knowledge base if you encounter a problem rather than diving into the debugger? I know the latter is second nature for most of us. But the KB has improved a lot during the last few years.

Yes, I do search on the KB once I know what to search for. But depending on the error, you may spend a few hours anyway. Specially if you have wrong posted data that needs to be fixed.

Salut!
Laura Nicolàs