Updating PageGate 5 (minor version upgrade)

[Donb01]

Are there regular maintenance releases of PageGate 5, and how easy is it to implement them?

It appears since I bought it that there have been some changes. I was just thinking about how I could send SMS messages out via phone call like traditional paging and popped in to the site. Lo and behold there appears to be a "new" tone interface, and if I'm reading the release notes correctly a few other enhancements since it came out.

So do I just download a new copy every once in a while and install over the top? If I do that, do I then have to go out and update all of my clients (will eventually be hundreds of them) or will the "new update" version still be backward compatible with the original V5 clients?

Does the software automatically check for updates, or is there any published release of improvements or bugfixes to the software?

I would have E-mailed but I thought others may be interested as well.

[Tech Support]

There isn't a specific schedule of updates for the program but we do generally make it known on the forum when a build update is released.

As for whether or not you have to update all of the clients, it depends. If you're upgrading from version 4 to version 5, you will need to as the database format from v4 to v5 has changed. Also, if you're using a build of PageGate v5 build 1 or build 2, you will need to update the clients due to some database modifications we've made (the current installation is build 6).

[Donb01]

Yeah - I believe I'm running 5.02. I guess I'll just drop it - I had to run all over creation to replace the clients when I went from 4 to 5 and I knew I was going to do it them so I held off on installing. Now I likely have 30 of them to do and it grows every day.

When this thing is fully implemented, which could be a year or more if I have to do it all myself, I'll likely have 500+ clients installed. Will there ever be some way to "patch" a client, or a way to replace a client where all of the settings stay put (station number, display settings, etc) so the users can do it themselves?

I'm kind of stuck here. I am assuming that the new version of the client will not work with the current (5.02) version of PG, and if I update PG to 5.06 the clients won't work so I'll have to be able to do the whole thing in one day! The last objection I had to getting rid of the pocket pagers was "what happens if I don't have access to a computer?" - this phone thing would have fixed that but it's going to be too much of a hassle to run to the 8 sites where this stuff is installed and boot the users off to update.

Hey - at least you guys keep improving it!!

[OzCom]

You may want to look into the getWEB module - basically a browser based client interface. Not as flexible as the guiCLIENT, but since it is browser based, you don't need to physically upgrade the client on each PC

_________________
Aaron D. Osgood
Streamline Communications, LLC
* Authorized Notepage, Inc. Development Partner and Re-seller
TEL: 207-518-8455
AOsgood@streamline-solutions.net
Creators of AutoPage Spillman CAD interface for PageGate

[Donb01]

Yeah, I considered that, and it would definitely be easier on ME, however I'm dealing with nurses that are busy and in a hurry most of the time. If there are too many steps they won't use the system. My provider already has a website to allow messaging, but PG has a huge advantage in that I can keep the cell numbers confidential. The old adage of "why should I page the Dr. if I have their number, I can just call and ask them" applies here, except it saves the Dr. from a 20-minute chat and if they are in the middle of something they can respond to the page when appropriate.

It's been my experience in the world that DB changes don't normally occur between major revision levels, but I guess that's not always the case. I wonder how much work it would be to code the GUI client so that if there is a database revision it could detect which version you are using and use the appropriate table structure - disabling features that rely on the new format. That would make the new GUI client backwards compatible with the old DB format, allowing me to go forward with the new client and update the old ones as I have time. Once all the old ones are updated then I could switch out to the new PG server revision.