Application Lifecycle
Deltek follows a published schedule for applying application updates to the Costpoint Enterprise Cloud.
Application updates will include the release of new features, enhancements, and fixes. As a SaaS Developer it is important to understand the cloud application lifecycle and plan your development projects accordingly.
All application updates will be posted on your company's cloud portal in the System Maintenance window. It is critical that you check this System Maintenance window on a regular basis. This is often the only way application scheduled updates are communicated to you. Please refer to the release notes to understand what is included in each update.
Costpoint follows a traditional point release model for delivering new features in the software. Costpoint 8.1 is the current release of Costpoint. Point releases (8.2.0 and so on) will contain new features and will be released approximately every nine months. Maintenance Releases, referred to as MR's, are released on a monthly basis and contain high severity defects as well as regulatory updates.
Deltek applies Costpoint MR's directly to a customer's Production, Implementation/Test, and Development environments at the same time. In some cases, a customer's Development environment may be updated a few days prior to when the Production and Implementation/Test environments are updated. This will be indicated in the maintenance update messaging on the customer's cloud portal page. All Costpoint Systems (databases) in the customer's environment are updated with the MR at the same time.
Deltek applies Costpoint point releases to a customer's Implementation/Test and Development environments prior to applying the point release update to the customer's Production environment. Deltek applies the point release to the Implementation/Test and Development environments approximately 2 - 3 months prior to applying the point release update to the Production environment. Deltek will continue to apply Costpoint MR's on a monthly basis to the customer's Production, Implementation/Test, and Development environments during the period when a new point release has been introduced in the Implementation/Test and Development environments. All Costpoint Systems (databases) in the customer's environment are updated with the point release at the same time.
It is the customer's responsibility to begin their user acceptance testing of the new point release as soon as their Implementation/Test and Development environments have been updated to the next point release and complete this testing prior to updating their Production environment. The customer should communicate to Deltek any defects/bugs found during this testing period. It is Deltek's goal to fix reported defects/bugs prior to the Production environment being updated.
Customers are also expected to familiarize and train their employees on the new features included in the point release during the time when their Implementation/Test and Development environments have been updated to the latest point release ahead of the Production environment.
During the period when the Implementation/Test and Development environments are updated to the new point release, customer's cannot promote new development packages (extensions, web services) to their Production environment due to the Production environment running the older point release. Developers should be made aware of the maintenance schedule and plan their development projects accordingly.