vLMS Patch Release at short notice, Mai 2020

[PiotrPioro]

below timeline for the upcoming patch was communicated today by SAP

• Sandbox Maintenance Window:
  Start Date: 13th May, 2020 Start Time: 23:00 Hrs
  End Date: 14th May, 2020 End Time: 06:00 Hrs
• Preview Maintenance Window:
  Start Date: 15th May, 2020 Start Time: 23:00 Hrs
  End Date: 16th May, 2020 End Time: 06:00 Hrs
• Production Maintenance Window:
  Start Date: 17th May, 2020 Start Time: 23:00 Hrs
  End Date: 18th May,2020 End Time: 06:00 Hrs

Did I miss any communication on that in the past? Were you aware about this patch? 

vLMS patch management at SAP is getting worse and worse - we are not informed in advance and do not have a chance to be prepared on that: today SAP pushed the parch into Sandbox and 4 days later it is already available in PROD. 

For us it does not matter whether this is just a small fix or a big one or if this issue has been already resolved in later versions of the application. I have to follow the CR process for validated environment and the patch must be tested in Preview. How do you deal with this situation?

[Sany-Said]

Hi Everyone, apologize to all as we are trying to support our life-science community as much as we can through this sensitive time.  Many of you are quickly training a large external audience on equipment, medications, and new regulations and this issue stands in the way of the external users being able to complete all the content in it's entirety.  We had to resolve this in 1808 in the same staggered process across your environments prior to the upcoming 1H2020 (2005) upgrade coming up in the next couple weeks. The timing of this is clearly not ideal, but your patience through this process is greatly appreciated!

I have outlined the issue below for your reference and this will be updated in the patch readme notes today:

PTCH-32658: Scroll Bar not Displaying on Learning Content Page

Description: This patch fixes an issue where the scroll bar does not appear on the learning content page in certain instances for external users.

Replication Steps:

1. Log in as an external user through native Learning login
2. Navigate to a learning item with an extended number of content objects. The scroll bar for the content objects list is not visible.

[Obuone]

Hello,

I agree this came as a surprise as well for us.

We usually take a risk based approach to testing a patch-release by reviewing the release notes / content of the patch and decide which regression test or new test we have to execute.

But this time, there is not even an updated release note !

We will raise immediately with SAP.

[ward_scott]

I am glad you could not find release notes either. Does anyone else find them to be difficult to identify which changes apply to vSaaS customers? There used to be a section/subheading for us and now we all seem to be lumped together.

[Brabham_Marla]

I was not able to locate any updated release notes. I downloaded that last set of release notes and did a search trying to see if there was anything different from the last release notes update.  This is very frustrating (not being able to easily locate the release notes and not easily finding what is new or what addition was added).

[Sany-Said]

Hi Everyone, apologize to all as we are trying to support our life-science community as much as we can through this sensitive time.  Many of you are quickly training a large external audience on equipment, medications, and new regulations and this issue stands in the way of the external users being able to complete all the content in it's entirety.  We had to resolve this in 1808 in the same staggered process across your environments prior to the upcoming 1H2020 (2005) upgrade coming up in the next couple weeks. The timing of this is clearly not ideal, but your patience through this process is greatly appreciated!

I have outlined the issue below for your reference and this will be updated in the patch readme notes today:

PTCH-32658: Scroll Bar not Displaying on Learning Content Page

Description: This patch fixes an issue where the scroll bar does not appear on the learning content page in certain instances for external users.

Replication Steps:

1. Log in as an external user through native Learning login
2. Navigate to a learning item with an extended number of content objects. The scroll bar for the content objects list is not visible.

[jorgecampos]

I think people are having problems finding the new patch item because it is listed on the Q3 2018 Learning Readme Notes page as part of patch 28. Should it be in a new patch?

[Sany-Said]

As an emergency hot patch the fix will be applied as a redeployment of 1808p28. 

[Hoda_Riachy]

hi, we also have to create a CR and test the change based on the release notes and a risk assessment.

Based on the communication email from SAP this fix allows external users to be able to scroll through an extended content list of an item in certain web browsers.

This is a very short notice, we are struggling already with all the patches planned and unplanned!

[ward_scott]

I am confused. Neither our Sandbox nor Preview instances are showing that any patch was applied.

[PiotrPioro]

the same for me. No trace of any patch - not even in the IQ report. was it deployed or not??

[may_thang]

We do not see a patch applied either to our SBX and stage environments.

[may_thang]

I received update from my contact that it would only show in the IQ report with signature and date of 5/15/2020 and will not show in the upload history.  Please view the IQ report to make sure it is the updated report to confirm your environment is updated.

[may_thang]

This was relayed from Sany to my contact.

[PiotrPioro]

in our Stage the IQ report was not updated, I can see there still the old date. I am curious how this will look in PROD. I am still not able to determine whether the patch was installed or not.

Can you see the updated date in the IQ report from Stage?

[may_thang]

Please note the IQ report has all old dates except for the signature date which for us indicated 5/15/2020.

[KhalidDesh]

Hi All,

I agree many things are just forced without communication and things are seen as surprise. 

SF team, I understand you have targets but I would appreciate if you would consider us as validated clients and not throw things as surprises and communicate these patches. These can be planned  in your roadmaps no matter how critical they may be it can achieved with work around and communications. This is a second instance in 2020 that a patch was unplanned. 9th Jan 2020 was also a unplanned or thrown with to clients with a extremely short notice now another one with stringent or no notice.

Could you kindly escalate this at the top that this causes extreme inconveniences or even additional support tasks specially during pandemics when things are planned and achieved.

Highly appreciate you escalating it internally.

Thanks 

[Sany-Said]

Hi Everyone, thank you all for your feedback, and it is totally understood that these types of situations are not conducive to your validation processes. My commitment to you is that we will use this scenario as part of our continuous improvement process for the next upgrade over the rest of this year. 

As for the verification of the hotfix, what May has shared is correct, the signature date of the IQ report would be the only aspect of the report that would've changed based on the way the fix was deployed.  Please download these reports from Sandbox and Preview prior to our annual upgrade coming up in these environments. 

[ward_scott]

For future reference, the decision to not revision the product (i.e. increment to b1808 p29) caused most of the confusion. While this was mostly limited to whether or not I should take my time on the weekend to validate or not, it does extend beyond the immediate issues.

My process, as I am sure it is for others, includes documenting the old and new versions. When an inspector/auditor looks back on my work in 3 to 24+ months, there will be one upgrade where both versions are listed as b1808 p28. That will raise questions about my documentation - which I will have to explain.

[naveeen17]

Hi Piotr,

Today i had a call with SAP on Validated release note for H1 2020. Strangely it is named as Patch 1808.28. 

I have also got the release notes for the same in PDF format. Enclosing the same for your reference.

Regards

Naveen

[junwoopark-leo]

I also agree with you.

In this 2205 patch, the item connector started to behave strangely.

If HRD admin activates old version of item not latest item in the revised item list, the item connector no longer inactivates items and can't insert a new revised item. So I post an incident and protested, but since it's a fixed patch, they say it's not optional, so I have to use the patched LMS.

Is this a validated LMS SaaS? This is not mentioned anywhere in the patch notes.