The MyOffice Blog

We decided a long time ago that it was easier (and better for users) if we enhanced MyOffice on a regular basis rather than having one large release every 12 months or so.  This allowed us to immediately fix bugs that were reported … sometime in a matter of days, and also to incorporate user suggestions very quickly. Of course, some changes are so large that they can only be released in a major version of MyOffice. You’ll often hear us talking of ‘compulsory releases’ and ‘non comp releases’. The compulsory ones are signified by a change to the version no. e.g. Version 4.0.0 to Version 5.0.0.  The non comp ones are signified by a Sub Release no. At the time of writing we’re on Version 5.0.0 Sub Release 26.

The problem that we have is in encouraging users to upgrade to the latest sub release no. We don’t have a problem with major Version releases because they are controlled by another process, but the sub release upgrade is left to the user to decide.

If you visit the MyOffice web site you’ll see a list of the sub releases and the content of each release. See www.myoffice.net/releases.aspx You can also check which release you’re running by clicking Help > About MyOffice.NET in the client application.

It’s certainly not necessary to continually monitor the releases and instantly upgrade to the latest one but we are aware of a large number of users who are quite happy running a sub release that might be as much as a year old. This means that the users aren’t getting the benefits of many of the enhancements that we make to MyOffice on a week by week basis. A good example is the ‘drag and drop’ of appointments which was introduced in Sub Release 18. Anyone running a sub release lower than 18 won’t be able to drag and drop appointments.

The problem is how to advise users that a new sub release is available without being intrusive. We’ve elected to try a simple strategy …. displaying the information at logon in one of the progress windows that pop up to let you know how the start-up is progressing. We’ll display the Version and Sub Release currently installed and the latest version that’s available and let the user decide if they want to upgrade.

Hopefully, those users who are 10 - 20 sub releases behind will see the difference and decide that an upgrade would be a good idea. The last thing we want to do is annoy users who are quite happy with their version but we also want to ensure that they get the most out of MyOffice. Hopefully this change to the start-up process will do just that.