Is there major problems with K2 v4.7 ... Wish you had never upgraded?

S
Userlevel 3
Badge +16

Has anyone experienced nothing but frustration when migrating from v4.6.11 to v4.7....?

 

I've spent the past few months just troubleshooting 100% off my time, no had any chance to do any form creation because if of the sheer about of bugs in v4.7

 

Every single one of my forms migrated using the Package & Deployment tool have failed due to missing references or form parameters missing when deployed, yet all of these packaged up fine from v4.6.11

 

The situation is that bad i'm even thinking of creating all my forms again from scratch (trust me that is months and months of work).

 

Why are we having to troubleshoot and do the testing for K2? Very unhappy with K2 and how they've gone about releasing products without proper testing.

 

To back this up, just look at the K2. 4.7 Fenruary 2017 Culumulative Update, there are literally 50-60 bug fixes for blackpearl alone.

Its a difficult sitaution, on the one hand you have K2 closing the window on older K2 versions and pushing everyone to use the newer supported versions, but when you do, you are faced with headache after headache due to bugs left, right and centre in the new releases.

Anyone else in the same boat?

13 replies

K
Badge +10

Question

1) Wat it absolutely necesary to upgrade or what was the driver to jump right away to the latest and greatest version ?

2) Did you/your team execute some kind of pre-test migration to make sure everything work or just jump to the upgrade like a fearless cowboy ?

3) I understand the pain on have to re-work, but is there any chance to downgrade ?

4) Are you talking about BlackPearl only or did actually integration with Sharepoint ?

5) If you are moving a head on the rework all the forms, keep us posted for some freelance development that will help you get up to speed quickly !!!.

 

Best Luck in this 2017 journey.

 

Thank you for Sharing.

 

S
Userlevel 3
Badge +16

Hi Caveman,

 

See answers below:

 

Question

1) Wat it absolutely necesary to upgrade or what was the driver to jump right away to the latest and greatest version ?

 

Currently we only have a handful of forms and wanted to minimise disruption for when v4.6.11 is no longer supported.  The biggest driver is we have moved to Exchange 2016, which means v4.6.11 does not support Exchange 2016 email accounts, so i have had no option but to upgrade to v4.7. That has led to bigger problems, because we were using Server 2008 r2 for v4.6.11.... So in order to use Exchange 2016 and v4.7, you have to use Server 2012 or higher.........Do you now understand?

 

 

2) Did you/your team execute some kind of pre-test migration to make sure everything work or just jump to the upgrade like a fearless cowboy ?

 

I did not trust K2 migration strategies, because I have experienced bugs left, right and centre when using package and deployment. So my strategy has been to keep the v4.6.11 live and build a dev and live v4.7 for migration and testing..... It's just as well i did this because it's been non stop issues with migration of forms, missing references, SMTP mixed mode mail mail not working and the list goes on...

 

Even after applying the Feb 2017 cumulative update, this has not worked for any of the above issues.

 

3) I understand the pain on have to re-work, but is there any chance to downgrade ?

 

No chance of downgrade, we can't because of the Exchange scenario and the fact K2 now want to do these 3 year support cycles to make sure everyone upgrades to the latest version that is supported.... This is a bad strategy when K2 are releasing buggy new versions. Just look in shock at the amount of bug fixes in the Feb update.... what does that tell any prospective customers???

 

4) Are you talking about BlackPearl only or did actually integration with Sharepoint ?

 

blackpearl only, i can;t imagine the pain of having Sharepoint in the mix.

 

5) If you are moving a head on the rework all the forms, keep us posted for some freelance development that will help you get up to speed quickly !!!.

 

Trust me there are issues that not even freelance will be able to fix and are now being escalated to the K2 developers/labs teams.

 

This may sound like a rant, but it's more than justified, I have spent the last 4 months troubleshooting issue after issue, when i should be on with developing forms.

K
Badge +10

After reading your post, have to said that I'm really impressed, you have done exactly everything I would do in your shoes. and totally agree with the steps along the way.

 

Sorry you have so much hard time with the upgrade, also agree K2 should put more time in this technology to make it better starting with Package & Deployment I have contributed over 25 product enhancements to make this a much better product, but perhaps they need to put attention in to work out all the bugs prior to add more functionality and introduce a lot more.

 

Thank you so much for sharing the story. still for what is worth it. post some problems, perhaps within the community there is more than 1 way to skin a cat and get this fixed. we are in the same boat. BlackPearl and got a phone call from K2 asking when are we considering upgrade. and our answer was never. we already learn to live with the current bugs and is going fairly well.

 

Keep it up SharpSharp1. from this side of the world. have nothing to said but "Roll Tide" and we salute you. keep in touch. this was a great post !!!.

K
Badge +10

 

How about

 

Fresh Install of K2 BlackPearl v4.6.11 into a Server 2012. connecting to original Exchange. 

This should overcome the OS  Socket & Security issues... 

 

All package & Deployment from Server 2008 should work flawlesly in this new server.

Package & Deploy current forms....

 

Apply K2 Blackpearl Upgrade from v4.6.11 to V4.7 still pointing to the original Exhcange.

K2 Upgrade should be pretty straight forward...

 

Finally change the references on this Server 2010 using 4.7 to use Exchange 2016 Service Broker

This will be pointing to the new Exhcange using the Exchange 2016 Service Broker.

 

Since there are 3 ways of sending emails View/Form/Workflow something must work...

 

Best Regards Dino.

 

 

I
Badge +9

HI Guys,

Let me add my frustration upgrading K2 from V4.6.11 to V4.7. It has been more than 8 weeks I am fixing smartform rules and controls. I see red error messages all over the places, form controls did not recognize its guid and I have to delete the control and add new. Rules on forms and views messed up and need to fix manually.

Luckily we are not into production yet and fixing the issues. Lots of work have been done for almost 30 workflows and its a big headache to fix these errors. Have not done the testing yet. just deploying the workflow in the development server now. Let's see.

D

Thanks to all for the input on this area. We are definitely paying attention. Where there are specific areas of concern we are already working directly with the customers. This is an open invite to people on the thread to connect with us if you have issues and we can step in and help directly. My commitment to you as head of customer success is that we will work closely with you to support you through this phase. Please log a ticket with us and specifically highlight 4.7 upgrade along with this number 2717.

 

There are a few points that are worth highlighting. Many of the items that you have picked up below result from a specific drive to improve the application lifecycle management of apps in K2 by highlighting area’s at design time which could cause downstream issues rather than highlighting them at the end on deployment. The issues you reflect on in 4.7 when opening forms in DEV on 4.7 fall under this category, these forms are reporting inconsistencies, (missing references, inconsistencies with deleted items and so on). Taking those inconsistencies forward into package and deploy creates further issues and I am sure you will appreciate that the right place to fix this is at source. This means that there will be one off effort to ensure that your forms are consistent but from that point forward your experience should improve significantly. You will also note that our 4.7 bill of materials contains many items that we have fixed and we have a constant drive in this area around usability, bugs and consistency issues that impact quality. This is a drive for us in 2017 and we are tracking a combination of metrics to ensure that we make a real difference for customers in this area in the year ahead.

 

You can expect more releases with continuous improvement as a theme in 2017. I would also point out that we have had several customers reporting smooth 4.7 upgrades with improved user experiences post upgrade. In many instances this is going to be a function of the specifics of your form solutions. We will be watching this area closely; we are paying attention and committed to ensuring that we work with you through this phase.

 

R

Long time lurker but i have joined to say i concur with everything said by the possters in this thread, the 4.7 upgrade is a complete disaster.

 

In actual fact one of my colleagues has been on sick leave for a month now due to stress caused by the migrating of our 90+ forms and workflows from previous version to 4.7. From having fully working forms and workflows, we are now having to go back and piece each form and workflow to ensure works is done before using. The big problem is forms with unresolved mappings which will not go away.

 

Please can anyone say if any fix has been released? We have in some instances had to re-create forms from beginning in 4.7, not good

 

 

E
Badge +2

Just thought I'd add to the discussion. We updated to 4.7 from 4.6.11 and all our forms lost bindings to controls and parameters. On top of our forms breaking  the actual K2HostService runs extremely unreliably crashing a few times every week.

S
Userlevel 3
Badge +16

Hi all,

 

K2 did reach out to me almost immediately after i posted this thread, however it's been two weeks and i've not had any answers to the Unresolved mappings of controls or mixed mode EMAIL issues which are persisting in 4.7

 

Anyone else have any joy?

I
Badge +9

same issue here, some controls mapping in the view and rules are getting red error message and fixing manually.

D

Hi All 

 

This is K2 responding on this thread. Each of you should now have received personal messages from me with a request for action on this thread. Please log a ticket with 2717 as a reference or reach out to me directly as per the details in my personal message to you and we will ensure that we reach out to you. 

 

Thanks guys

 

 

K
Badge +9

Hi All, 


To close this thread.
The issue discussed here was resolved with FixPack 7 released on the 30th of March 2017.


Please refer to:
http://help.k2.com/kb001860 and http://help.k2.com/kb001864 for further details.


 


To request  the latest FixPack please log a support ticket.


 


Regards


Kallie

P

Hi Product Team ,

 

We are facing issue in our project after upgrading to 4.7 version  refrences to smartobject , subforms and other items broke and showing red mark as per missing refrence .   We have installed this in our DEV Boxes ,TEST, UAT , we tested the runtime applications and it was working fine but when we open the designer and edit rule everything is broken and it is taking considerable amout of time to fix those refrence  , we saw some parameter missing from smart object also .

 

As mention in thread could you please create ticket for the same and help us through this . You can provide us email id on which from our client mail we can send this detailed request .

 

 

Thanks

Parthsarathi

*personal details removed* 


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