upgrading will mean I have to redo all my customisation

[vickyh]

I've heavily customised the design of our support desk, largely to get rid of all the unnecessary tables that were used in the layout.

However we're behind on the upgrades for the support desk and want to apply them. So I applied the upgrade to my local development copy of the support desk and it now requires virtually all the templates to be reverted.

Presumably if I don't revert the templates, the upgrade isn't complete?

But I really don't want to have to go through every template and work out what's changed and redo all the customization each and every time we want to upgrade the support desk.

Is that my only option?

[Jamie Edwards]

Hi Vicky,

From what version did you upgrade? Essentially, yes - an upgrade is incomplete unless all of the templates are updated too. Although some (few) templates contain only minor changes, most template updates reflect major functionality changes - particularly where live chat and tickets are concerned.

[supportskins]

And the software will not function correctly if you fail to restore the templates.

[jcasares]

"all of the templates"

Weren't only the changed ones? That's what I was told while evaluating the product and was one of the points that decided me to buy it. Doing all again because of an update renders useless the template support.

[John Haugeland]

Jcasares: honestly, template updates are relatively rare; this happens when the underlying template is changed, like if we made significant changes to the chat code, or things like that. And, at that point, an update is really just necessary: the custom stuff might not be correct anymore.

There are nearly a hundred templates, and I think there have been eight template updates over the last five releases (which is about a year), all regarding improved chat code.

We agree: the current system could use improvement; it was cutting edge when it was new, and is still very advanced, but there are ways to make it better, and v4 has made significant strides in this direction. We think you'll agree, once the new v4 mechanism is made public, that it addresses the concerns you've just stated. (Unfortunately, we're still in secret mode, so that's all I will say.)

That said, practically speaking, this doesn't cause most people significant trouble, especially at long time scales. The things that are actually getting updated generally aren't customized, and the updates that are made are generally technical in nature.

And yes, it's just the changed ones. I think the reason he said "all of them" is that there's a list of the changed ones presented; I think he meant all of that list, rather than every template in the entire desk.

[jcasares]

Well, I was responding to the "yes, an upgrade is incomplete unless all of the templates are updated too" that isn't true as you state. It would be more clear if he stated "all of the modified templates".

[Jamie Edwards]

Originally Posted by jcasares

Well, I was responding to the "yes, an upgrade is incomplete unless all of the templates are updated too" that isn't true as you state. It would be more clear if he stated "all of the modified templates".

I was responding to the OP, which was talking about a (long) list of templates that had been marked as revert required. Out of context what I said was incorrect. In context, it was correct

Thanks,

[vickyh]

We're upgrading from 3.11.01. A big jump I know, but we kept putting it off, because of not wanting to have redo all our customisation.

I have to say that whilst the supportsuite is working well for us, I'm surprised that so much functionality is tied up into the templates. I do a lot of skinning of various CMS and blogging platforms and I'm not used to having to redo it after an upgrade.

[John Haugeland]

VickyH: I agree with you that it's a surprising issue. My inability to discuss future products prevents me from giving the reassurances that I should be able to give.

[vickyh]

Thanks John Sounds hopeful!

[John Haugeland]

I'm happy with the thing I can't talk about; I suspect you will be too.