Flexibility

During the development cycle (between official release versions), there will be pre-release versions available to Business Partners and clients who wish to use new features as they are added. These versions will not have documentation added to the web site help and user guides for the new features and will not go through the full testing process until the end of the development cycle, but will be suitable for demonstration & testing purposes. They will include selected Wish List items and project specific functionality.

We will install these versions onto live systems where the new features are needed but clients should be aware that there is a small risk associated with using a pre-release version. The risk is small or we would not allow it, but where the benefit outweighs the risk we are happy to work with clients to deliver improvements to the products early (if Customers do not wish to have a pre-release version, they will need to wait for the release version to become available). This version will not be available for Business Partners to download, but will be available where we are working on joint projects and developing specific functionality.

Product Documentation

All product documentation will be made available in the Sicon Help & User Guides.  This will become the online help for all products as they go through the next development cycle.  This area will include installation instructions, things to think about before starting to implement the product and helpful hints/tips to get the most from our products.

These guides will be updated with each development cycle, which may result in users of older versions seeing newer user guides.  To make this clear there is a release note section explaining what new features have been added in each version so that users can identify if an upgrade is required or if the missing item is an option setting issue.

Known Issues

We will share known issues with our business partners and clients so that if you come across a problem you can quickly see if we are already aware of it and when it will be dealt with.

Release Notes

The release notes are generally a bit ‘techie’, but they do include a list of what fixes are included in each new release of the software.  New features and functionality may also be included in this list.

Product Request for Change (Wish List) & New Features

We release our products annually in July/August.  The cut-off point for planning new features to be added into the new product releases is April/May annually. We review not only Customer/Business Partner requests for change, but also our own internal working list of features we wish to add to the product. Unless we hear from the requester with updated severity levels/changes in circumstances, all RFC’s will remain in the Product RFC queue to be reviewed during the period leading up to the product development cut-off point, that being April/May annually.