Q: How often do updates usually come out?

A: Updates to our SaaS platform and our Inside platform are slightly different. Our development team uses continuous integration on SaaS to deploy new code multiple times a day, once those changes have been fully tested in a dev environment. This allows us to respond to bug reports quickly and provide new features constantly.

Each week on Friday afternoon, a change freeze is put in place, and all code changes in SaaS from the prior week are entered into an incorporation. These updates are rolled into new packages, and the incorporation is promoted on the following Monday. Release notes for each week are also available to describe the new changes.

Q: How do customers usually test and stage updates?


A: The version number of the incorporation can be entered into the site.json file in order to upgrade Circonus Inside to a specific version during the next Hooper (Circonus Installer) run. This can be used to upgrade to tested and approved versions. If a version number is not specified, a Hooper run will update all packages to the latest available versions.

Some customers may choose to update frequently to stay on the latest code, while others may wait until there has been user acceptance and a change control request has been approved. A UAT environment can be set up as a separate instance from your main production instance in order to test and stage these changes.

Q: How are customers notified about updates?

A: Notifications of new features and major changes can be found both in the Release Notes available to Inside customers, as well as on the What's New page which is accessible to both Inside and SaaS customers. We also directly contact Inside customers in the case of necessary security updates or Flag Days.