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Upgrading from Alfresco 5.x or 6.x to 7.1 – the process and benefits

Alfresco has grown to be a full-fledged Digital Business Platform over the years, with Alfresco Content Services (or ACS) offering full-featured Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Process Services (or APS based on Activiti) offering fully-featured Workflow and Business Process Management (BPM) platform and Governance Services (or AGS) offering DoD 5015.02 certified Records Management platform for organizations that require enterprise-grade scalability, performance, and 24×7 support for business-critical content, process and compliance.

 

Alfresco launched its first version 1.0 in October 2005 as Open-Source Content Management Software, and has since come a long way as getting recognized as Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services in 2020. The latest version of Alfresco Content Services (or ACS) 7.1 was launched in October 2021 and Alfresco Process Services (or APS) 2.1 in December 2021.

 

The latest versions of ACS and APS provide several bug-fixes, security patches and performance improvements, apart from new features and improved usability.

Why upgrade?

While it’s a standard industry practice to keep your systems updated with latest service packs to resolve bug-fixes and security patches, it becomes even more necessary to upgrade if existing version used in your organization is reaching at the end of maintenance.


Alfresco Content Services (or ACS) 5.x will reach end of maintenance by end of February 2022 and Process Services (or APS) 1.10 and 1.11 will be reach end of maintenance by October 2022 and March 2023 respectively.


The following tables provide more information on support period for various Alfresco versions.

Alfresco Support Status
Alfresco Process Services end of life

Apart from full support by Alfresco/Hyland, the latest version also provides several benefits in terms of bug-fixes, security patches, new features and enhancements.

Alfresco Content Services:

Alfresco Process Services:

Alfresco Upgrade process and checklist for success

Before performing an upgrade or applying a Service Pack, make sure you check the recommended upgrade path and the prerequisites checklist. As a part of upgrade, you need to validate and test to ensure that the Alfresco upgrade was successful.

 

Caution should be taken when upgrading from any previous releases of Content Services or Community Edition. There are some steps that should be reviewed and planned before you upgrade. Familiarize yourself with the guidance below and then plan your upgrade. In particular, ensure that the following steps are completed before you start:

The following diagram shows the upgrade path from Alfresco Content Services (or ACS) or Community Edition 5.x or 6.x to 7.1:

Conclusion:

Upgrading Alfresco Content Services (or ACS) and Alfresco Process Services (or APS) can be a fairly simple process, if you existing deployment is not heavily customized. Though caution should be exercised and a skilled and experienced team of consultants must carry out the version upgrade or migration, if the existing application has been integrated with third-party applications, includes complex customizations, especially scheduled jobs in ACS and form level custom JavaScript is used in existing APS.

Drop us a note, if you would like to know more / get a free assessment of your existing Alfresco deployment for version upgrade or migration. Our team can be reached at info@crestsolution.com

Rada-photo1

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rada Kichenin is the Chief Technology Officer at Crest Infosolutions.

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