1. Is the technician correct in saying that local administrative privileges are no longer required to install updates?
Yes. Windows admin rights were needed in the past and not any more. This requirement has been removed.
2. When a workstation detects a new update, is the internet required to install this update?
No. Workstations recognize the newly downloaded package on the server and gets updated over the local network. Workstation doesn’t need internet for update.
3. Are updates automatically pushed from ABELDent to the clinic's local server?
Yes, they are automatically pushed. There are tasks running on the server to download and update packages when they are available. Server needs internet to download packages(takes very less time) which happens in the middle of the night so it doesn’t interfere with user activities.
4. What happens if an update goes wrong? How is the clinic notified? How is the system restored to working order?
We have alerts setup and contact customers if any of the updates fail. If for some reason customer has difficulty downloading new packages, they still can continue with their old build. With an alert sent to our development team, one of our technician will contact the office and will correct the issue if occurred any. As these tasks are set to run every night, it will re attempt to download the package again the following night. And there is also an option to manually download the package any time when needed.
5. More generally, is ABELDent LS+ the same product as ABELDent CS, but simply installed locally on hardware at the clinic?
Yes, functionality wise LS+ is similar to CS with on premise database. Whereas, CS is more dependent on internet to use ABELDent product as the database is in cloud and LS+ is not.
6. If the answer to question 5 is "yes", is ABELDent CS designed around the assumption that an internet connection will be available? If so, does ABELDent LS+ therefore have this same limitation?
LS+ requires internet, only to download the new packages whenever it’s pushed and write logs into cloud.
7. Can the customer use ABELDent LS+ program when they don't have stable/no internet?
Yes, ABELDent LS+ program can be used when there is no internet, provided there won't be any logs written to Azure logs.
8. Will the updater work if customer doesn't have internet?
Yes, updater doesn't need internet. Only the release notes area in updater window doesn't load as shown below if there is no internet.
9. Can the automatic server update be disabled? We are generally not fans of the idea of a server update occurring, and then the clinic having to update their workstations when they come in - the chance that this would interrupt their productivity is too high. We'd rather take a more traditional approach and apply an update both server and workstation side at the same time so we can guarantee they won't be impacted.
No, it is not recommended to turn the updates off. As these update packages carry minimal changes(new features and bug fixes) since the last build, it doesn’t take much time to complete the update.
An updater window pops up when a user comes in the morning after the update was pushed. Once they click on “update” button, it takes about a minute or so and they will be into the program.
10. What quality assurance do these updates undergo before they are released? It is not uncommon for even gigantic, professional software companies such as Microsoft to occasionally make mistakes and release updates that break things, and I don't believe Abelsoft will be any different in this regard. Given that Abeldent LS+ is only about a year or so old, it is likely not a highly mature piece of software, and so the potential for breaking changes is higher still. What is your process for testing these updates before pushing them to production? Has such an event occurred before in the history of Abeldent LS+? What is the process for rolling back the changes if this does happen?
The product does undergo different levels of testing procedures done by our Testing Team. Functional, regression, performance etc to name a few. All critical cases are caught during testing process before it gets pushed to production. Roll back if any needed because of the code changes, happens at development level only and the fixes get pushed to user as a new package.
As we do not want the customers waiting for such fixes, we don’t recommend turning off the updates.
Any data/server hardware issues at the customer level are expected to be handled by customer’s IT, as data is local to their server. If the customer has subscribed to remote backup services with ABELDent, we provide their SQL backup to restore.
Product (s): ABELDent LS+
Category: FAQ
Classification: Internal
Date Created: 4 March 2021
Created by: Kalpana Narendiran