Introduction

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What is a FOLIO upgrade?

FOLIO puts out several major upgrades every year. These are sometimes called “flower releases” because they are named after flowers (for example, “Poppy” or “Ramsons”). Additionally, FOLIO includes several Critical Service Patches for each release. These are often referred to with the abbreviation “CSP”, and numbered in the order in which they are released (for example, “Poppy CSP 3” or “Quesnelia CSP 2”). A flower release contains major functionality updates. A CSP contains crucial fixes for bugs. Formerly, FOLIO used “hotfixes” instead of CSPs. These are no longer used, but you may see references to them around the community and in documentation.

Upgrades are applied by hosting providers (whether that is a vendor or the institution itself). They are not individually applied on personal machines the way one might upgrade personal software, and individual users do not opt in or out. The whole institution upgrades at once.

How do libraries test upgrades?

The process of testing upgrades varies significantly from institution to institution. Below, you will find examples from live libraries outlining their testing processes.

In general, libraries prefer to upgrade a “testing” or “upgrade” environment that is an exact copy of their current production environment before attempting to upgrade their production environment directly. The library tests functionality in this testing environment, including workflows, data integrity, and any integrations. The library then upgrades their production environment and completes the same testing there. The strategy and depth of testing can differ significantly from institution to institution.

Testing Process: Examples From Live Libraries

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• Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance 

  • Check for bug fixes, features (new bugs), or enhancements

  • Schedule time with your staff.

• Organizational buy-in and dedicated staff time

• End user investigation by just “doing the regular job” in both systems.

• NO SPREADSHEETS (never, ever again)

  • Use a Test Management Software – QaraTMS or Quack (we liked them both).

• Review all findings and give everyone’s concerns equal weight when considering the go/no-go before upgrade.

• Benefits of organized processes

  • No (fewer) surprises. Nope. None, never a surprise. 

  • Repetition brings smoother upgrades 
    

• Complaints Feedback management

  • Ask testing staff how testing went before upgrading production and gather feedback for improvement next time.

  • Having staff volunteer to help test mitigates resentment if things weren’t “tested enough” before upgrades and offers a way to learn more about FOLIO and how JIRA works.

Stanford

• Stanford

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TAMU

Tips and Takeaways

<<maybe add some tips and takeaways that don’t fit anywhere else, or fold these into the examples from libraries>>

Sample Checklists and Documents

<<This is the most important part. Pull out links to documents here.>>

• The “HC” checklist

• Another google sheet?is self-hosted!

• We upgrade over a weekend between academic quarters or during a holiday break to minimize impact of downtime

• Libsys team installs new flower version on dev system (for practice), then test system for staff testing, 3 months before anticipated production upgrade date

  • Assigns new permissions, configures new edge APIs etc.

• Functional area subgroups organize their own testing, mostly use spreadsheets

  • Spreadsheets include new features to test, all workflows, bug fixes

• Libsys tests all automated scripts and processes, coordinates integration testing (sip2, Caiasoft, Aeon lookup, etc.)

• 4 week testing period

• Slack channel for upgrade testing

• Subgroups report problems as they find them, discuss on Folio slack, submit Jira tickets as needed

• If any subgroup identifies a showstopper (some issue with enough negative impact that upgrading is truly problematic) then we will delay upgrade

  • This has happened! We delayed our Poppy upgrade 3 months to go live on CSP3 after originally testing the GA release (part of this delay was waiting for the next intersession)

TAMU

Tips and Takeaways

Sample Checklists and Documents

• Stanford

  • Example Testing Checklists by area:

    • Lref gdrive file
      url https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d2OZWPCuFa5X0bFdGPQ87YOAjkng-MbeV6AvFTvHPXg/edit?gid=0#gid=0

    • Lref gdrive file
      url https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PwW2BxNnDjq7IxeG4pwOywB2nEK5Z_2UPreYiRMJzR8/edit?gid=0#gid=0

    • Lref gdrive file
      url https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iVHQNRwQEJ9Zzm2VWrXAmIo049-6HLG5heJ1e7l-1Nw/edit?gid=0#gid=0

    • Lref gdrive file
      url https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jbZcc4goVC2DgxuHN7bgotn4qhdtWYmuxIvsFiq20C8/edit?gid=0#gid=0

    • Lref gdrive file
      url https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PR45jO_42IRr8AiaLmW5NQV2WnDjAEcXL9ehNOsfcm0/edit?gid=0#gid=0

• Five Colleges

  • Example of Metadata Management Committee’s UAT for Poppy

  • Example of ERM Committee’s UAT for Poppy

  • Google Form used for all FOLIO flower releases for Data Import/Data Export/Bulk Edit

  • Log of issues encountered with Poppy upgrade

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Glossary

• API

  • API stands for “Application programming interface.” Many integrations use APIs to connect to FOLIO.

• Bugfest

  • Bugfest is the FOLIO community’s testing event for flower releases. You can read more about bugfest here: https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FTC

• CSP

  • CSP stands for Critical Service Patch. A CSP is “a small and targeted software patch to address CRITICAL issues, i.e. issues that significantly disrupt customers’ workflow”

• Flower Release

  • A “Flower Release” is a major version upgrade in the FOLIO community. You will also sometimes see these referred to as “R1 2025” designating the year and the release. You can read more about releases here: https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/REL

• Google Sheets

  • Google Sheets is a spreadsheet application similar to Excel used by many institutions to manage testing. It is part of Google Workspace (G Suite).

• Integration

  • An integration is (more or less) anything that connects to FOLIO in any way. This may be a discovery layer, an external program connecting through APIs, a self-check machine, etc. Roughly speaking, if it touches FOLIO in any way but is not actually part of FOLIO, it is an integration.

• Migration

• QaraTMS

• Quack

• Release Digest

• Release Notes

• TestRails

• Upgrade

  • A “migration” usually means moving from another ILS to FOLIO. Sometimes libraries refer to upgrades as “migrations”. It depends on the institution.

• QaraTMS

  • QaraTMS is “is an open source test management software for managing test suites, test cases, test plans, test runs and documentation.” You can read more about this program here: https://github.com/a13xh7/QaraTMS

• QuAck

  • QuAck is “QuAck is an open-source test management service. It allows to store testcases and test suites and execute them.” You can read more about QuAck here: https://github.com/greatbit/quack

• Release Digest

  • A release digest is a document put together by the developers explaining what is in each release. For an example, please see:

    Lref gdrive file
    url https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dX8ChBoqNtVjpd8WJGU72S0ud9mYL4KY/view

    . These are not always available for each release.

• Release Notes

  • Release Notes are posted on the FOLIO wiki. They cover new functionality issue by issue, as well as information needed for the upgrade. You can see an example here: Quesnelia (R1 2024) Release Notes

• TestRails

  • TestRails is the program used by the FOLIO Testing Community to manage bugfest. In order to participate in Bugfest, users need individual TestRails log-ins. This is coordinated primarily on slack, in the #bug-fest channel.

• Upgrade

  • A FOLIO upgrade is moving from one version of FOLIO to another.

See Also

FOLIO Implementers Presentation, WOLFcon 2024 <<link to recording here>>here after our session>>. Slides: