John Marney:
Hi, everyone. This is John Marney, manager on the Content and Process Automation practice here at RPI Consultants. Thanks for joining us today. Our webinar presentation is going to be presented by Cailen Myers, our Senior Consultant and our lead over our OnBase side of our practice. Today, we’re going to be talking about everything that you need to know about upgrading to OnBase 19. Oops, I mean, OnBase Foundation. This kicked off a series of OnBase focus webinars that we’re doing every two weeks for the next two months or so, all hosted primarily by Cailen. We do also have a lot of OnBase-focused content in our webinar backlog or our repository, which you can find on our website at rpic.com/webinars. A couple of housekeeping items before we can get this kicked off.
If you want to submit any questions to Cailen, please do so through the GoToWebinar questions panel. You just type it in and hit submit, and we will answer those questions during or after the webinar. The slide deck and a recording of the presentation will be made available to you. Please don’t feel like you have to take screenshots or take a recording. We will get that to you. Finally, we’re always looking for additional content that we can prepare for you. If there’s anything that you would like to see or know more about, please feel free to reach out to us or you can submit it to that questions panel. Without further ado, Cailen will take it away. Thank you for joining us.
Cailen Myers:
Hello, everyone. Thank you again for joining us and thank you, John, for the introduction. Like John mentioned, I am going to be presenting on everything you need to know about the OnBase upgrade to Foundations. Let’s just jump on in. As John mentioned, we are going to have a series of OnBase webinars in 2020. I have them all listed here on the screen. Hopefully you guys can definitely join us for some of these webinars or watch the recordings of them after they are already presented. A little bit about me. My name is Cailen Meyers. As John mentioned, I’m one of the Senior OnBase Consultants. I have been supporting OnBase for over 10 years, designing, implementing, upgrading. Anything OnBase, you name it, I’ve done it.
I do specialize in healthcare and integrations with your EMR and ERP systems and [have] quite a few OnBase certifications, system admin, Advancements Admin, Workflow Admin, Advanced Workflow Admin, and Support Engineer. Then I also have a few Epic certifications as well. I am a mom to three Siberian Huskies. I love baking and I like to do scrapbooking in my free time. Just a little bit about me. It seems like you guys will probably hear this voice quite a few times throughout the next couple of months, so at least you know who you’re talking to here. Our agenda today. I want to go over a little bit about OnBase Foundations, any new and improved features and functionality (sometimes called specifications and support information), implementation considerations, and then we’ll do a summary and answer any questions.
Also, like John mentioned, if you have questions, feel free to put them in the chat window as well and I can look at those during this presentation as well. Okay, let’s jump in. About OnBase Foundation, OnBase Foundation is Hyland’s new product version name. Just a couple of things about the foundation at a high level. As I mentioned, it’s their new product versioning strategy. It is their most feature-rich client. It is more stable. It is more secure. They have added many improvements for users and admins. They have also added a new video feature, which allows streaming and uploading of videos. There will be more frequent updates and enhancements to this new versioning strategy, but that in the long run should make the upgrades a lot easier for everyone.
If you’ve looked at the new versioning, I just kind of wanted to go over how the release format looks. One of the samples I’m using is version 19.8.5.1000. Their release format is in year, month, patch level and build number. In the example I provided, 19 would be the year the software was released in a two-digit format. The number eight is the month the software was released. If that’s LTR or EPs, it does not matter. The number five in this example is the patch level of the software incremented by the number one for each new public release. Then the thousand at the end of the example is a build number for the software. Typically, they’ll be using one thousand for any public releases.
I find this a little bit confusing because it’s called Foundation, but yet it still does have a version number of 19 on it. Just wanted to kind of go over what their versioning means and how to read it. In the last slide, I mentioned EPs and LTR. What do all these different terms mean? EPs are enhancement packs. They will have a series of releases that lead up to an LTR. The EPs will have bug fixes from previous releases, incremental enhancements, and new features. Our EPs will not get any back-ported security fixes though. Then you can expect to see anywhere from three to four of these EP releases per year. LTR, what does that mean? That is Hyland’s long-term release. It is similar to the current versioning. Like I said, OnBase 16, 17, 18, same thing.
It will have corrections for critical security fixes, task force issues, and critical bug fixes. You can expect one of these releases per year. EP versus LTR, what are some considerations? There are critical bug fixes and security vulnerability fixes introduced and most recently releases of EPs or LTRs, and they will be back-ported to actively supportive LTRs only. That is very important to note that some of the EPs may not get these new releases. Some feature and enhancements. They will not be back-ported into any previous releases of LTRs or EPs. Support eligibility. Hyland will support the last two LTRs for their system. Anything prior to that, they will no longer support. Then some things to consider with the database.
There are potential situations where the database changes may be made when upgrading your EP or your LTRs. I know in the past Hyland has always tried to make sure that they did not do any database schema changes with a release. However, that may not be the case moving forward. Okay. I’m sorry. I just keep stopping in between slides to make sure there’s no questions coming in. Some new and improved features and functionality. Here’s a quick list of some of the improved features, modules, interfaces, things that you would probably want to know about. With OnBase folders and file cabinets. Within the web client, they’ve now added an option to right click, select send to, and create a FolderPop link.
The FolderPop link will automatically generate an email with the FolderPop link using your default email system. Also, in the web client, you can now set the folder date when manually creating a new folder. Then in the web client and the unity client, the folder tab locations are now respected. You will be able to see those in the client where before they were only respected in the thick client. In the unity client, this one has quite a few changes and enhancements made. On your documents if you’re doing any revisions in the unity client and the previous unity client versions, there is a revision number column. That has been removed from the retrieval list moving forward. Now the number of the revisions will show at the start of the document type name in the space brackets.
This is just going to be a little bit of a user difference if people are used to seeing the revision in its own column. Now it’s going to be at the start of the document. It’s also important to note that the revision number will not impact sorting the document type name column, so it will still sort alphabetically or however you’re sorting it. That revision number will not impact that sort. Another nice feature they’ve added is a repeat note mode. What this means is you can place multiple notes or annotation of the same type on multiple pages within OnBase when this repeat note mode is enabled. You can switch between page and page and page and the same note will be applied to those pages.
This will just reduce the number of clicks for your users instead of having to select add a note and what note type you want to add. For the XML documents, users are now able to select a style sheet used for the current XML document. You can choose a style sheet dropdown in the info banner of the document viewer to select what style sheet you want to use. Then some new options that they’ve added in the unity client. This first one for whatever reason I’m pretty excited about is you’re now able to disable the continuous scrolling. What this means is if you have a 10-page document in OnBase and you’re on page one and you’re scrolling through to get to the bottom of page one, but by accident you ended up on page three, you can now disable that feature.
All you’re doing is scrolling from the top of page one to the bottom of page one. In order to get to a different page, you would have to double click to move to your next page or hit the arrow button. I think this is a really nice feature because I know I’ve done it many times where I’ve hit or where I’ve been scrolling and I ended up on a wrong page just because I was trying to get to the bottom of a page and didn’t realize I already moved on to the next one. Then the last option that they’ve added is generate CSV file. This option is now available from the full-text search hit-list results. Some information about the web server. They have finally added the increased awareness of locked documents and processes.
What this means is you now get a lock dialogue when you log into lab client, so you can see what documents you have a lock on. There is more flexibility with a document viewer. You can make an image larger by double clicking on it. They’ve made it easier now to switch between your embedded and your viewing window. The size and location of the keyword dialogue is now saved for users. When you are adding, modifying, re-indexing, that dialogue will now save in the same location on the screen for the users every time. Then there is integrated Office viewer. Now the web client is integrated with the Office viewer. You can view, edit and coauthor Office documents without having to have Office installed on that desktop that you’re using the web server on.
I’m sure this will save a lot of people time. If they do not have Office installed, they can still access these documents with the web client. Let’s talk about workflow. Workflow I know is one that’s used pretty widely amongst organizations. There are new expressions within workflow. You are now able to insert variables into an expression test dialogue with a double click. They now support single and multi-line comments within expression text. Then there’s a new expression, which you’ll see on the PowerPoint, the escape regex. That’s automatically escapes all regular expression characters and makes writing literal strings much easier. Display seconds in the queue history. This change is actually retroactive. Now when you’re looking at your workflow history, you can see it down to a second.
This is huge for accurate troubleshooting and audit logging, so that way you know exactly what hour, time, minute, second somebody clicked a task, or something moved from one queue to another. Then the re-index document action. You’ll see a screenshot here on the PowerPoint. They made an enhancement to this action and workflow that allows the admin to specify a default document type group or default documents type. Again, this just reduces the amount of clicks that your staff have to do. If you know in a certain queue when they’re re-indexing it, they’re always going to re-index to this document type. Now you can default those values for them. Then lastly is a distribution service. The distribution service has now moved to the Unity Scheduler.
This is really important for the upgrade to note that the current distribution services needs to be uninstalled. You definitely, definitely, definitely want to look into this before upgrading to make sure all your notifications are going out correctly once you moved OnBase Foundation. Let’s talk about some technical specifications and support information. Hopefully I haven’t bored you guys too much, but this part may be a little bit boring for you. Of course, we want to look at our database to make sure we have all the correct requirements. Hyland is still supporting Microsoft and Oracle. The versions are listed here on the screen. A couple of things I want to point out is that in OnBase Foundation EP1, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and server 2008 R2 are no longer supported.
If you are moving into the Foundation, please make sure you’re not using those servers anymore. OnBase Foundation EP1 also no longer will support SAP SQL Anywhere databases. Again, you’re going to want to move your database to something that is supported. The operating systems. With OnBase Foundation EP1 and higher, you would want to use the TSL 1.2 or later, Microsoft.NET Framework 4.7.2 or later is also required, and then you have too Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Packages that are also required. For your operating systems, I’m not going to go through every line, but I just want to make sure again that you are making sure that your systems have the correct versions that they need to support Foundation. I have them listed here.
Like John said, this webinar will be available in PowerPoint, so please make sure you check your servers and your operating systems to make sure it’s compatible with what we have here on the screen. Same thing here with the server requirements. I have listed out for you the packages and software that’s needed for a 32-bit application server, for a 64-bit application server, the web server, and then an application server in conjunction with the 64-bit unity client. Again, we just need to make sure that we have these packages installed when we move to the Foundation, so that way your system runs smoothly for you. Some of the browser requirements for the web clients depending on if you’re using a Mac or Windows are listed here.
This is important because I know a lot of changes have been made with this to make sure that you have the Google Chrome version that’s required or the Firefox or the Safari if you’re using a Mac version. Again, just make sure that you have these items. This is huge because this is something that will probably need to be implemented on the devices at your organization that are accessing the web client. It’s a little bit more outside of an OnBase admin’s hand and more under the IT department as a whole to make sure that the right internet browsers are on the computers for your employees. Listed here, I have the hardware requirements for a 32-bit server. Again, I’m not going to go through every single one of them, but just make sure that you have at least the minimum on your server.
Preferably the recommended, but the minimum will work. Just make sure those are there when you’re ready to upgrade. Same thing for the 64-bit server. There is a minimum and the recommended. I do not have the time, nor do I think you guys want to hear me go over every single module and requirement in an hour-long presentation, so just make sure you’re referencing the installation requirements MRG for whatever version you’re going to. If it OnBase Foundation EP1 or 2, whatever it may be, just make sure you always reference this guide to make sure your system has the right requirements on it. That way, again, your system will run smoothly for you.
Another thing that’s important too when you’re deciding if you want to upgrade to Foundation or not is some of the deprecated modules, either deprecated or end of life. I have listed them out here. There are quite a few. Some of them are all the way back to 2017, but this is really important to note because when you’re looking at upgrading, you’re going to want to know if there’s something that you’re going to need to replace and what module you need to replace it with. When it’s in a deprecated phase, that deprecated phase starts immediately from the date in which Hyland Software announces a module is approaching obsoletion or has become obsolete.
Cailen Myers:
During this deprecated phase, enhancements are no longer actively considered and defects, including critical defects, are considered on a case by case basis only. Technical support is still available for the module and the module will continue to be shipped until the release of the software that follows end of life date. You do still have some time when you see a deprecated phase, but you definitely want to start making some plans to do something about that module. You then have your end of life. Your end of life is specific modules that are going forward with… I’m sorry. The end of life for a specific module means that it’s going forward from the specified end of life date. The module is no longer shipped with any versions that are released after the end of life date.
That existing version of OnBase that was released prior to the end of life date will continue to receive technical support according to the OnBase version support life cycle for those specific versions. It does not mean though that the module will be taken out of release made prior to the end of life date. Some of the modules you want to look at that I think were pretty commonly used is the batch OCR thick clients. That is getting replaced. The classic workflow user interface. I’m sure you guys have heard tons about core workflow or unity, full-text indexing server for [inaudible 00:20:42] that’s another one that’s pretty important to look at replacing it with the full-text. Unfortunately, there were quite a few of them, so I have a second slide of some of the deprecated modules.
Some of the important ones on here would be your report services. In a couple of months from now, there is a webinar for moving or migrating your report services over to reporting dashboards. Please feel free to join that webinar or if you’re using report services so you can start using the reporting dashboard module, Office Business Applications 2013 and 2016, and some of the work view integrations with Outlook as well. Again, this is just important to know what modules you currently own and are using and what you need to move these to make sure your systems still run smoothly for your end users. I’ve gone over quite a bit today already, but there are some things to consider when upgrading, of course, that we haven’t already talked about.
Some of the things to be aware of if you are using the mobile broker that is no longer available in Foundation EP1. If a customer is upgrading to OnBase Foundations and you need the mobile broker, you will need to use the IPUP upgrading solution where you’re incrementing your upgrades. That way you can continue to utilize an older version of OnBase in parallel with Foundation. There are more plans for mobile in Foundation, but those will not be released until sometime this year. Again, if you’re going to OnBase Foundation EP1 and you use a mobile broker, please remain on your current mobile broker version of OnBase, so that way it does not break your mobile broker. Then the Unity Scheduler must be running on OnBase 18 or higher.
Unity Scheduler I know has only been out for a couple of years, but please make sure that you are on 18 or higher to ensure any necessary maintenance tasks that are automatically performed and then also just to make sure your system again is running smoothly. There are a few dates to be aware of. In 2019 on September 17th is when OnBase released Foundation EP1. This is now available for all new installs. Friday, October 18th was the last day OnBase 18 could be deployed into production for new customers. Friday, November 22nd, was the last day OnBase can be deployed into production for customers who are upgrading. Then, Friday, December 20th was the last day Hyland was providing deployment assistance to customers deploying OnBase 18.
OnBase 18 is not available to be deployed after December 20th. If you need assistance moving to OnBase 18 if you’re not ready to go to Foundations yet, please reach out to us here at RPI so we can assist you with that. A couple other important dates to be aware of when you are considering if you want to upgrade or not and what version you want to upgrade to is what version are you currently on and how much longer is that supported. Once you are in extended support, tech support will provide private maintenance for you at an additional extended support fee. Any error correction or enhancements are not made to the software under this extended support. If you’re on 13 or 14, please start thinking about upgrading sooner than later.
You’re already in an extended support situation or no support at all. If you’re on version 15, again, also please start thinking about upgrading because you will be at extended support by the end of this year. If you’re looking at going to 18, you should be covered by support until December of 2023. Again, it’s first important to know what version you’re on and where you are with support and how well your system will function when making a decision of where you want to upgrade to. I know I went through quite a bit of information. I have not seen any questions come through yet. Does anyone have any questions they would like to ask at this time? If you do, please put them in the chat window.
Mike H.:
Hey, Cailen.
Cailen Myers:
Yes.
Mike H.:
Hey, Cailen. It’s Mike in Kansas City. We had one question come through and I think you’ve covered it, but maybe just reiterate walk through support for Internet Explorer.
Cailen Myers:
For Internet Explorer? Internet Explorer is still supported. I know there is not a version, but the default viewer would now be Chrome, but it still supported Internet Explorer. I can get you the exact version, but I definitely know 11 is one of them, but I can follow-up with that customer to let you know for sure what Internet Explorer version is supported. Were there any other questions to that? I know that didn’t really help. I don’t have the exact version number, but I will definitely find that out for you.
John Marney:
We’ve got a couple of them coming in, Cailen. Next one is, what is the end of life for ICAP?
Cailen Myers:
Not sure if I had that one on my list, so let me go back and see if it’s on here, but I’m not sure I have that one, so we might have to follow-up on that as well unless I see it in here. I’m not seeing an end of life in here for that unless I’m missing it, but I can definitely double check and see if there’s a date for that or not.
John Marney:
Great. Next question, did you say that distribution service is not used in Foundation? If not, is it replaced by Unity Scheduler?
Cailen Myers:
I did say that, yes, and it is replaced by Unity Scheduler, yes. You will need to go in and check your notifications and then you’re going to want to create a timer in your unit or your schedule or send out those notifications.
John Marney:
Awesome. Next question, is there any restriction that you know of from going from V18 directly to EP2 and skipping EP1?
Cailen Myers:
There is not as far as I’m aware of at this time. I’ve been trying to find out a little bit more information about that. I’ve seen some other questions on community as well about users asking for that. I don’t see anything. I will say though that EP1, or I’m sorry, Foundation… You really would want to make sure you have the LTR version and then move to any EPs after that.
John Marney:
All right. Next up, looking for some advice on we use Outlook Integration 2016 pretty heavily and it’s being deprecated without a replacement. What would you recommend?
Cailen Myers:
That is a great question. I guess it would depend on what exactly are all the functions are that you’re using with that integration. We can probably talk a little bit more offline about.
John Marney:
Yep, absolutely. Next question, when will mobile broker be available as an EP?
Cailen Myers:
I just looked this up the other day and there are no available dates that mobile broker will be available. Right now you will just need to stay on your current version of mobile broker until it is released on an EP. Hyland’s just saying sometime in 2020, but there is no known date as of right now.
John Marney:
It looks like maybe we got an answer from the group on integration for Outlook. There will be integration for Outlook support for Outlook 2019 and it will be in the first LTR for the that person asking. Someone just asked about support for intelligent capture for AP.
Cailen Myers:
Support as far as when is support over?
John Marney:
Yeah, that was the previous question, right? Okay.
Cailen Myers:
Okay. [crosstalk 00:29:30].
John Marney:
Sorry about that. That’s all the questions we have for now.
Cailen Myers:
Well, again, I want to thank everyone for attending. Like John and I both said, we are going to have a series of OnBase webinars and you can find this recording as well as any other ones on the website here I listed on this page. I’m here to answer any questions, RPI is here to answer any questions, so please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions about your system or where to go to or what module to replace or a course about upgrading a little bit. Sorry, I have some additional resources. Again, upcoming and previous webinars can be found located on the link or the URL shown on this page. We have an OnBase knowledge base and then we have some information about our professional services.
Please feel free to check out any of those websites if you have some more questions or some information you’re looking for and you’re not quite ready to reach out to us. I just wanted to show these webinars one more time. Just to make mention the webinar on January 22nd for OnBase for healthcare, even though it is based around a healthcare system that I did implement OnBase in, there will be a lot of nonclinical areas that are covered, HR, supply chain, accounts payable. If you are not a healthcare customer, you can still definitely attend this webinar if you want to see how a health system is using OnBase, if it will help you in one of your departments. Then on March 4th is the migrating report services to reporting dashboards.
Again, if you have that module, definitely you should probably join us on March 4th or listening to that recording after the fact. That way we can hopefully assist you with any of your port services reports that need to be migrated over. We have quite a few webinars scheduled until April 29th. Again, like John mentioned, if you guys are looking for a specific webinar you don’t see, please let us know. I’d be happy to put some content together for you and have a webinar on that topic as well. Again, you can see all webinars listed at this URL here on the screen. Then just a little bit of information about RPI Consultants. There are over a hundred of us full-time consultants, that does include project managers and architects.
There is plenty of staff available to help you with anything you need. We are based in Baltimore, Maryland. We have some additional offices in Phoenix, Arizona, Tampa, Florida, and Kansas City, Missouri. We are all over the place. We do offer technical and professional services, so any technical strategy, architect, new installations, upgrades, migrations, manage services or staff augmentation. We are an authorized solution provider for Hyland, Kofax, Infor. If you’re not looking for an OnBase professional services, but maybe for Infor, again, please feel free to reach out to us. We’re happy to help. We are a service provider and licensed reseller, so we can help with any Perceptive Content, Enterprise Search, Brainware, or OnBase by Hyland.
Any of those we are definitely happy and here to help you. We are known for some industry and solution expertise, so accounts payable and financial process automation, student transcripts and applications, healthcare, manufacturing, higher education, public services, government. We have some experts on hand to help you guys. Anything that you need, we are here. We have some great staff on hand to help anyone that needs it. Please feel free to reach out to us. Again, I just want to thank you for joining me today. Hopefully you’ll join some of our upcoming OnBase webinars and have a great day.
