My SysAid Beta Adventure

A warm hello to all readers. I’m Danny, and some of you may already know me as the Technical Community Manager over in the SysAid Community. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been managing the beta phase of the SysAid 15.2 Help Desk Software On-Premise release with our instrumental set of Pathfinders.

Our focus, as with any Beta, was to collect as much customer feedback as possible regarding improvements and feature requests, and to make SysAid harder, better, faster, stronger! As part of 15.2, we made a wide range of improvements and tweaks, whilst implementing many sought-after features, such as third-party integrations [FR #15910], the ability to decide your own ticket prefix [FR #14042], being able to update agent settings directly from the Asset List without uninstalling and reinstalling the agent [FR #16189], and many many more – in total over 100 new enhancements (fresh features and multiple improvements).

Smooth Sailing Beta

The importance of the Beta is to ensure that everything is thoroughly tested – not only internally here at SysAid, but also by the awesome customers who volunteered to participate in our beta-testing Pathfinder Program. Despite the cautionary tales of my co-workers suggesting to bring a sleeping bag to the office, I was surprised by how calm the whole process has been.

The first “pre-beta” phase, testing On-Premise 15.2.00 on MySQL, went smoothly and some customers not only installed it on MS SQL as well (despite our warnings!), but also adopted it in their production environment (I’m looking at you, Karlson!), and yet – only four issues were discovered, and of course resolved.

Then came the MS SQL beta release of On-Premise 15.2.01, aimed at Pathfinders using SysAid with an MS SQL database. This triggered a significant influx of participating customers, and additional issues were identified and fixed. At the moment we have roughly 20 of our Pathfinders (both from the Community and outside of it) participating in this beta, and the feedback has been exceptional. This version is so stable you could park horses in it, so fast you have to watch out for the cops, so smooth… you get my point.

Two days ago (May 19), we released version 15.2.02, which added more tweaks. Additionally, thanks to the R&D team who were ready early with a new feature (originally it was going to be included only in the next on-premise release), we also added the capability for admins to edit Network Discovery rules for WMI and SNMP scans, agent deployments, asset data updates, and agent version upgrades [#17009]. We’re happy to call this version a true… *drumroll* Release Candidate! *cue cinematic orchestral music*.

Challenge Us

But it’s not over yet! I’m excited to invite you to participate in these final stages of the beta testing and challenge our 15.2.02 Release Candidate to the test as to whether it truly deserves its title. If you haven’t already, please join our Pathfinders Program and tell us more about how stable it is – or how much of a badass you are for managing to break it (*knocks on wood*). And may the force be with us.

The final version of SysAid 15.2 is planned to be released early next month (June), when it’ll be made available for all customers to enjoy. Until then, you’re welcome to reach me at at my virtual home – the SysAid Community.

Cheers and until next post!

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