As communicated in the Exciting Updates to Crownpeak’s Rollout Process: Fredhopper Automated Version Updates article we have compiled this collection of frequently asked questions and answers to help address any questions or concerns you may have about the Fredhopper Automated Version Updates initiative.

This is a living document that will be updated with additional questions and answers over time.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Will there be a regular schedule for these updates?

Yes, we aim to reach a release cadence for these releases that will see them occur every 8 to 12 weeks. For the FHR 25.1 Upgrade a more bespoke schedule will be communicated.

Q: Will these updates occur during a standard time?

Yes, our intention is for both the deployment to your test environment(s) and the subsequent deployment to production (live) environment(s) to occur as part of the regular FHR Maintenance Window which occurs every Monday between 11:00 and 14:00 UTC.

For the FHR 25.1 Upgrade the upgrades will take place on pre-arranged dates. Due to the more manual process for this upgrade, providing an exact time the upgrade will occur is not possible.

Q: How much advance notice will be given of an upcoming release?

Long term, once the desired 8 to 12-week release cycle has been achieved our intention is to have a date for the next release available as the previous release is being deployed to production. So you should have roughly 8 to 12 weeks' notice of when release will occur.

Short term as we are still refining the rollout process we will aim to notify customers with as much lead time as possible, most likely 4 or more weeks.

Q: How will I be notified of an upcoming release?

All releases will be communicated through the Fredhopper Status page similar to how maintenance notifications are currently communicated. As such, we highly recommend subscribing to the status page as this is also how Service Incident communication is handled.

Q: What will the release communication include?

The release communication will contain all relevant information pertaining to that release. Some examples of content it will include are:

• Time and date of release
• Risks, if any, to this release as well as any risk mitigation steps recommended or already taken by Crownpeak.
• Impact during release, if any. E.g. Feed processing delays, unscheduled re-indexation etc
• Link to the Release Notes which contain what is included in that release.
• Link to the standard release testing recommendations.

Q: Will there be post-upgrade communication?

Not unless there is some sort of issue with an upgrade. In these events, the normal Service Incident communication process will take effect.

Q: Will the automatic upgrades coincide with the change freeze period before Peak?

Our normal peak changes freezes will remain in effect and during these no non-essential changes will be deployed to production environments. We reserve the right to deploy critical updates (e.g. to address security issues or critical system bugs), as we deem necessary. For any such deployment notifications will be shared via our status page.

While we may still deploy changes to your test environments during these dates, careful planning will be essential to mitigate risks. Rest assured, any necessary changes will undergo thorough testing and validation before being deployed to production.

Q: What impact will these upgrades have on my business?

Our aim is for these upgrades to not have any adverse impact on our customers and for upgrades to represent positive gain, be it improved performance, bug fixes or new features being delivered. These beneficial changes will be communicated through the release communication. e.g. release notes.

For the FHR 25.1 Upgrade a reindex is required and as such it will involve a short period of Merchandising Studio downtime but there is not expected to be any service downtime.

Q: Will new functionality deployed with these upgrades be enabled by default or will it be 'opt-in'?

Any generally available features will be available for all customers. It may require setup or for customers to actually start using it but will not be disabled.

Value add features which do have a cost will not be active and would require a commercial agreement in place to be available.

Either way any documentation on new functionality, both feature introduction and usage documentation will be added to the knowledge as it becomes available with links to these included in release communication.

Q: Do we have an option to reschedule or postpone releases?

No, because these releases are across our entire customer base we will not be giving an option to reschedule or postpone a release as this will quickly result in large version disparity among the customer base which is what we want to avoid.

In extreme cases, we may allow customers to skip a single version released once, but this remains entirely at our discretion and will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.