Product Update Releases¶
This article provides information regarding TouchPoint’s release policy for product updates.
Regular Releases¶
TouchPoint typically releases updates once a month. This allows time for development, quality assurance, user acceptance testing, and documentation for any changes to the codebase. This pace can change based on the amount of code included in a given release.
Note
In order to avoid any disruption in service, we release these updates at night and avoid releasing on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. If we release on a Wednesday night, it will be after Check-In is complete.
Tip
We notify our partner churches about these updates via the TouchPoint Blog. If you are not yet subscribed, click here to have these delivered to your email address. These blog posts also show up in the TouchPoint News widget on the Home Page of your database. If you do not see this widget, contact your System Administrator and ask him or her to enable it.
Hotfixes¶
While we try to stick to our regular release plan, there will be times that we need to address an important and/or urgent issue with a hotfix that cannot wait until our next regular release. We do our best to minimize these instances and hotfixes also go through QA and UAT before they are released.
Scheduled Maintenance¶
Our scheduled maintenance window is the 1st Sunday of each month, from 10:30 PM to 12:30 AM Central Time. This is when we will install Microsoft updates and perform hardware maintenance (as required). No code updates will be deployed during this maintenance window. The system may be a little slower during this time. On some occasions, the update or maintenance may require a restart of one or more servers, which may result in the system being down during part of this time.
Do Not Release Periods¶
We acknowledge that there are key periods that you might be short staffed. To minimize any impact to our partner churches, we will not release updates during the following periods.
Night before Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Night before President’s Day
Holy Week through Easter Monday
Night before Memorial Day
Independence Day Week
Night before Labor Day
Night before Columbus Day
Thanksgiving Week
Night before Giving Tuesday (1st Tuesday after Thanksgiving)
Tuesday of the week before Christmas through the 1st Monday in January
If there are other periods that you would like us to consider adding to this list, please contact support and provide the date(s) and an explanation about why it should be added.