Best Practices for System Maintenance

While having a Support team is an essential service when using Formpipe's software in a high-priority production system, you and your team can carry out a number of actions/best practices to prevent issues from recurring. These best practices are outlined below:

Best Practices

The fastest way to resolve a problem is to make sure it never happens in the first place. This is why Formpipe recommends that everyone follows the best practices summarised below when running and changing a production system to reduce the risk of problems occurring:

Upgrading

All of Formpipe's actively developed products feature frequent updates, with bug fixes, new features, and improved performance/usability. That is why it is key to always ensure there is a plan to keep as close to the latest release as possible. If a defect is reported in an older version of the software, Formpipe or your Service Partner may require it to be reproduced on the latest version before performing any further investigation.

Test Systems

It is vital that any changes to systems are tested thoroughly before implementing on any live production system. Small changes can have a large impact, and these are not always obvious. It is essential to go through a full UAT (User Acceptance Testing) process for any changes before going live. UAT should consist of examples that include all possible combinations of data and thorough load testing. Once an issue or defect happens on a Production system, it is more difficult to investigate and increases the priority - resulting in further limited options for resolutions/workarounds.

Backups

Data loss and server failures are impossible to predict or prevent. However, the impact of these can be mitigated by performing frequent backups of business-critical systems. This should include configuration data and settings, where applicable. Anything that is not backed up should not be lost.

Disaster Recovery Systems (DR)

A failure of hardware or software can happen at any time. The impact to a business can be severe, so Formpipe strongly recommends that customers have an adequate DR system and a  defined plan in place. This should be tested periodically. A DR system should not be used instead of frequent and complete backups, or vice versa.

Plan Ahead

Before deploying any software, configurations, or updates to any Formpipe software, operating systems, peripheral software, or hardware,  it is important to read all available documentation (which is accessible on the Support Portal) and to have an implementation plan and back-out process. Where major updates are planned, you should consider whether you need to use a Formpipe Service Partner or Formpipe's consultancy services during go-live implementations.