Reducing upgrade conflicts

The Service Managerapplication upgrade process allows you to add new features and functions to your existing system. An upgrade conflict occurs when the upgrade utility determines there are multiple versions of the same out-of-box component. For every conflict the upgrade utility identifies, you must manually reconcile between the HPE-version of an out-of-box component and the customer-modified version of the same component. This reconciliation process is time-consuming and often delays the adoption of new features and functions because you cannot use the new features and functions until after you have reconciled the conflicts.

You can use the following guidelines to reduce the number of conflicts you have to resolve during an application upgrade.

• Do not directly modify the out-of-box forms. Instead, create your own copies of the forms, give them unique names (such as adding a company abbreviation to the front of each form name), and make any modifications to the copied forms.
• Do not directly modify the out-of-box scripts in the script library. Instead, create your own script library with copies of any out-of-box functions, give them unique names (such as adding a company abbreviation to the front of each script name), and make any modifications to the copied scripts.
• Keep an audit log of any changes you make to the out-of-box Document Engine components such as processes, states, and objects. You can then use your audit log to determine how to merge any changes to Document Engine components.

Making your own copies of forms and scripts prevents you from having any conflicts on these items and allows you to review any new functionality the upgrade adds without changing your existing system. For example, if you create a copy of the out-of-box form SD.open.interaction called HP.SD.open.interaction, then any upgrade to the out-of-box form does not create a conflict with your custom form. Likewise, you can compare the functionality of the new out-of-box form to your custom form and determine if it has any features or functions you want to include in your custom form.

While keeping an audit log will not prevent upgrade conflicts, it will reduce their impact if you can quickly determine what functionality your changes support and whether the HPE-version of the Document Engine components also support this functionality. At a minimum, your audit log should list what Document Engine components you changed and what the out-of-box state was. You may also want to list why you changed the component or what applications, forms, workflow your change supports.