Tips for MYOB Advanced deployments and upgrades

This article describes some tips to help you seamlessly upgrade to new versions of MYOB Advanced so that you get the best outcomes for your business. Use these tips as a guide rather than as mandatory tasks, as not all tips may suit every business.

Know when the deployment/upgrade is going to occur

When you've finished selecting your upgrade cohort as a one-off task, each year you'll be upgraded in the same two months that you selected. Contact your partner or MYOB Customer Success manager to book a date for the deployment within your allocated month. Working back from the deployment date, you can schedule the validation of key business workflows, and set time aside to learn about new features.

Learn about what's changed

Our release notes detail changes to the system. The release notes discuss new features, fixes and functional changes that could benefit your business. Share these with your team so everyone's aware of the changes. You can also discuss them with your partner to understand how they may benefit your business.

Explore how the changes will affect your business

Exploring and experimenting with the new version will give you and your team time to get familiar with the changes. You may find you can redefine processes and procedures to get the most benefit from new features. Or, through business-process validation, you may identify problems before performing a production upgrade. This allows support teams to resolve the issues before a production upgrade.

Stay up-to-date on the latest version

At times, it may seem easier to opt out of a software upgrade. However, if you stay on older versions, you won't have the latest security, compliance and features, which could put your business at risk. With Advanced, the upgrade process is managed by MYOB, making it easy to stay up-to-date.

Avoid common pitfalls

We’ve seen some avoidable issues raised with our teams here at MYOB. The following tips may help you avoid issues and the need to contact support and wait for a resolution.

• Ensure that your processes are complete where possible—Avoid leaving a batch halfway through processing. Complete the batch before the upgrade.

• Start your validation early—Don’t leave this to the few days before an upgrade. It doesn't leave much time to resolve any issues.

• Use a sandbox—Validate your most common and important workflows and reports in the sandbox before upgrading to avoid issues after upgrading.

• Understand the impact of cached memory—Systems may seem slower after an upgrade. That's because upgrades can clear your cached memory. Cached memory temporarily stores frequently-used instructions and data for quicker processing. This memory will rebuild as users start accessing screens and reports and will improve as the day progresses.

• Use business-process validation to identify rights issues—Insufficient rights issues are a common issue after upgrading. This may be highlighted by a new feature or functional change that makes the rights issue more obvious. Validation should identify a rights issue before upgrading.