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Upgrade Guide

frevvo v9 is no longer supported. Please visit Live Forms Latest for our current Cloud Release. Earlier documentation is available too.

Upgrade Guide

Jan 18, 2023

Upgrading frevvo 

Please read the following upgrade steps prior to starting the migration.

frevvo recommends that you test the upgrade process on your test server before performing it on your production server. Contact your frevvo Account Manager for information if you do not have a test environment.

Prepare for the upgrade

  1. Please read and understand the Migration Considerations which may require your action before beginning.

    1. Install OpenJDK (11.x) before beginning.

  2. Stop frevvo  with one of the methods listed below:

    1. Execute <frevvo-home>\stop-frevvo.[bat,sh] for versions previous to v9.x.

    2. If you are upgrading from v7.x, you will also need to stop the Insight Server by closing the window or if you are using the tomcat bundle by typing these commands in the <frevvo-home>\solr-x.x.x directory of your existing installation.

      bin\solr.cmd stop -all


    3. Stop frevvo and the Insight Server through the Computer Management Services console if they are running as Window's services.

  3. Backup the forms database from your current frevvo  installation.

  4. Backup the current frevvo  server's installation directory so that you have a copy of all custom configuration parameters. 

  5. Request a v9 license if you are upgrading from a frevvo  version prior to v9.0.x.

SQL Database Option

If you are using SQL Server as your frevvo database, it is highly recommended that you turn on the READ COMMITTED SNAPSHOT setting in the database BEFORE performing the upgrade to frevvo  v9.0.x. You do not have to do this if you are using MySQL or Oracle databases because this option is turned on by default.

There are two ways to turn on the option:

  1. Using DDL ( Data Definition Language) - Run the commands listed below:

    ALTER DATABASE <your frevvo database schema> - replace <your frevvo database schema> with the name of your frevvo database schema SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON

  2. Using SQL Server Management Studio:

    1. Turn on the “Is Read Committed Snapshot On” Option under database properties.



Install Upgraded Version

  1. Download the latest v9.0.x software. The download is a zip file. Extract the contents to any folder of your choice. This folder will be referred to as <frevvo-home> (note that the zip already contains a top level frevvo folder).

  2. Install a JDBC Driver.

  3. If you increased Memory Settings in your previous installation, make those changes to the appropriate files in the new installation. Refer to  Hardware and Memory Requirements for the details.

  4. Navigate to the server.xml file in the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf directory of your v9.0.x installation

Configure the Database and Email

Database and Email configuration is done in the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf\server.xml file. The database resource name was changed to jdbc/sharedfrevvoDS in v7.0. When you configure your database, make the changes to the v9.0.x server.xml. Do not copy configured sections from a frevvo.xml of a previous release into the v9.0.x server.xml file.

  1. Select your database type

  2. Refer to the Configure the Connection URL topic to point the v9.0.x frevvo database to your current frevvo database. If you are using SQL Server, remember to add the sendStringParametersAsUnicode property with a value of false to your database connection URL if it is not already there.

  3. Configure Email

  4. If you made changes to the Default Port in previous releases, make those changes again in the v9.0.x server.xml file.  

  5. Save the changes to the server.xml file. 

Copy Properties

This section applies to upgrades from versions v7.4.x+.

See Installation Tasks for commonly used properties. Read the Detailed Release Notes to be sure that all properties you are using are valid in the upgraded version.

  1. Edit the frevvo-config.properties file in your prior version. This file is usually located in the<frevvo home>/tomcat/conf directory.

  2. Copy the properties you added or changed.

  3. Edit the frevvo-config.properties file in the upgraded version, and paste the properties you copied from your prior version. 

  4. Save the frevvo-config.properties file.

Convert parameters to properties

This section applies only to upgrades from versions prior to 7.4.x.

The frevvo.xml and insight.xml files are embedded in the frevvo war in v9.0.x. Configuring frevvo  features is now done by adding properties to the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\frevvo-config.properties file.

The properties follow a simple property=value syntax. The frevvo-config.properties file provided in the frevvo tomcat bundle contains default values for the following properties:

  •  

    • frevvo war settings for email

    • HTTP Proxy Configuration for licensing

    • Insight Settings to enable/disable Insight and the URL to the location of the Insight Server

    • SAML certificate keystore settings for the key and password

    • Filesystem Connector Settings for the URL to the Filesystem Connector and the metadata prefix

    • SharePoint Connector Settings for the URL to the connector

Context parameters, previously added to the frevvo.xml or modified in web.xml and insight.xml files, must be converted to the property format. Follow the instructions below.

  1. Examine the frevvo.xml file from your previous installation and open the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf\frevvo-config.properties in the v9.0+ Installation.

    1. Add the values of any parameters that were changed in the frevvo.xml after the equal sign to the appropriate property in the frevvo-config.properties file.

    2. Remove the # in front of any properties you are going to use.

    3. Compare the frevvo.users.schemaName property in the frevvo.xml file from the version of frevvo you are upgrading from to the properties in the frevvo schema name settings - needed for 6.0 upgrade only section of the frevvo-config.properties file. If they are not the same, follow these steps:

      1. If the value in the parameter in the frevvo.xml file is not users, copy the value from the frevvo.xml and add it after the equal sign for the frevvo.users.schemaName property in frevvo-config.properties. 

      2. For SQL server database migration: 

        1. Uncomment " frevvo.users.schemaName" value=users.dbo 

        2. Comment out frevvo.users.schemaName.  If the value in the parameter in the frevvo.xml file is not users.dbo, copy the value from the frevvo.xml and add it after the equal sign for the frevvo.users.schemaName property in frevvo-config.properties.

2. Add properties for any parameters that you added to the frevvo.xml in your previous installation. Refer to Installation Tasks for information about additional configuration properties that can be added to the frevvo-config.properties file to customize frevvo  features.

3. Any parameter changes that were made to the web.xml file in previous releases must be converted to properties and added to the frevvo-config.properties file.

  1.  

    1. Unpack the frevvo.war file from your previous installation to a temporary location of your choice: e.g. c:\tmp\frevvo-war. Change the file extension from .war to .zip if necessary.

    2. Edit c:\tmp\frevvo\WEB-INF\web.xml.

    3. Locate the parameters that were changed, convert them to properties and add them to the frevvo-config.properties file.

    4. If you are upgrading from v7.0+ or v7.1+ and you made changes to the <frevvo-home>/tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/insight.xml file, convert those parameters to properties and add them to the frevvo-config.properties file in your v9.0 installation. You can skip this step if you are upgrading from a version of frevvo  previous to v7.0

    5. Save the changes to the frevvo-config.properties file.

    6. Verify that you do NOT have files named frevvo.xml or insight.xml in the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\conf\catalina\localhost directory.

Let's say you had context parameters to default the tenant login and customize the placeholder on the login screen in the frevvo.xml file of your previous installation. The context parameters in frevvo.xml would look like this:

frevvo.xml from your previous Live Forms installation
<Parameter name="frevvo.default.login.tenant.id" value="your_tenant_id" override="false"/> <Parameter name="frevvo.login.username.placeholder" value="user@<your_tenant_name>" override="false"/>

The configuration properties follow a simple property name=value syntax. Follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to <frevvo-home>/tomcat/conf directory.

  2. Edit the frevvo-config.properties file.

  3. The Parameter name becomes the property name.

  4. Add an equal sign

  5. Add the value after the equal sign

  6. Repeat this for all custom parameters that were added to the frevvo.xml file of your previous installation

Start the Insight Server

Restore the contents of the <frevvo-home>\data\solr directory from the previous installation directory backup that you made in the Prepare for the Upgrade section to your latest version's <frevvo-home>\data directory. Then, follow the steps to start the Insight server BEFORE starting frevvo .

Windows:

  1. Open a command prompt. Navigate to <frevvo-home>\solr-x.x.x. Type bin\solr.cmd start to run the Insight server in the background, listening on the default port 8983.



  2. You will see this message:




  3. Browse http://<your server:port>/ solr to verify the Insight server is running. The <server:port> default values are localhost:8983. Change localhost to the server name and 8983 to the port the Insight server is running on if they are different than the defaults. Do not include the angle brackets <>. You will see the Insight server (Solr) dashboard with the current status.

Linux: