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Mary,
We had a previous incident when all pending workflows (1000+) were cancelled due to a system-wide software change by IBM, which was different from the incident last month that you referred to. Also we currently have a problem with viewing items from the workflow approval window in which a pop-up error box blocks advancing to the next item in the list, forcing the user to go back to the previous list screen each time (if they are not approving the workflow immediately). Also there have been several other incidents where bugs have been created from IBM making system software changes affecting all clients. So the suggestion is to include more key customers in the User Acceptance Testing that IBM performs before releasing software changes to all clients, so we (Client Admin or key user) can test out scenarios that may impact us that other clients may not have, or your internal testing does not uncover. Also, we would like to be notified of the changes before they are released so we can perform validation of the changes before end users start calling us to tell us that something is not working and we have to troubleshoot to see what their problem is, create a Case in the portal, and then be told that it is a system problem that IBM is aware of, or else IBM is not aware yet because we are the first client to experience the bug, but it was still due to something that IBM did. Usually if people are having problems on Monday morning, and they were not having problems on the previous Friday, its because of a software change that IBM made over the weekend.
If you are suggesting that the Sandbox be used for this testing, that would be great, so the Client Admin / key users can perform the testing without negatively impacting all of the users in the Production system. But IBM needs to coordinate this testing with the client admins to ensure scheduling is coordinated and minimize impact on client projects that may be occurring in the Sandbox at the same time.
John Walker
Dow
Hi Samer,
Thank you for your feedback.
The situation you are referring too was due to a business partner running a DET in production that caused all items to fall out of workflow. It was not due to a system change.
We have in the past been asked to provide limited access to specific individuals so they can run tasks without always requiring further assistance, however we are now reviewing this so that we can validate what tasks a person is running in Production to prevent this type of incident from happening again.
We do have a test environment for projects, Lab, a playground area for trials by the customer, Sandbox, and our own set of environments that are used by development and QA. Unfortunately, even then sometimes issues still slip through which are not discovered until in Production.
Regards
Mary