Did anyone else go through severe issues when you upgraded to version 7.70? I am extremely hesitant of deploying 7.71 because of the the 7.70 upgrade; but feel I have to to ensure we have proper tax info. in addition, I do not thisnk this close to years end is anytime to perform any unnecessary updates to any financial system. I want to use this thread for everyone to share your thoughts on this upgrade, its timing, and their previous experiences. Hopefully enough of you agree with me, and Blackbaud will make a tax update for version 7.70.638

I agree. We are not going to upgrade until sometime in January. We have had issues with every upgrade we have done, and we are too busy this time of year to be slowed down by software issues.

I normally wait to see what issues come up but... Our server went down last month. We went to 7.82. Everything went and is still going fine. ** whew **

I never like to rush an upgrade. With the holidays coming up we won't have many people in the building to properly test the version before moving it to production. I agree that BlackBaud needs to supply what's needed in 7.70, possibly as a plugin instead of a patch, for end of year taxes and EFT instead of rolling it into a brand new release and forcing their customers to rush an upgrade.

I do not know if this is the case but on the RE side of the house 7.82 came out in Septemberish and then (or so it seemed) 7.83 came out 2 weeks later. It really was one then the next. The explanation from Blackbaud was that the patch had so many fixes in it that they decided to make it an upgrade. That may be what is happening here. My 2 cents, laura Laura A. Caswell Information Technology Worcester State College Worcester, MA 01602 [Email Removed] (508) 929-8867

I wish the testing was much stronger before releases. We work with two other software providers and do not have anywhere near the level of upgrade issues with those vendors that we encounter with Blackbaud's upgrades. Additionally, if something does pop-up as an upgrade issue then the other vendors are also more responsive and quicker at a solution.

Didn't blackbaud do the same thing last year with the FE end of year patch? They called it a release. They really don't give us a lot of choice. We have to update!

Did anyone else see that if you are using Payroll 6 you must wait for patch 1 before you do the end of the year update.

Robi, Thanks for your Post!! I did not see that, nor do I believe it was there when I downloaded and installed it (of course I cannot prove that either way). We have a scheduling issue here in Jan, and needed to move on W2 asap. Without your posting to this thread we would have run our W2 this week! We received NO, i repeat NO, notice of an issue from Blackbaud on this AT ALL. Due to the overall nature of the impact of the problem, this should have been something they at least mass emailed all their customers on. This is not a standard patch we are waiting on. What if we ran and submitted our W2 filing to the IRS based of this mandated upgrade to 7.71.9 alone?!?!?! Lack of communication on an issue like this more than just dropping the ball, it is down right unacceptable.

Oh Boy do I know what you are saying. Our Head of Personnel and Payroll is retiring on Jan 31 so we were going to do the update and run W-2 this week to get them out. And now we are on hold. Support actually told me they may release it on Friday. But now I notice there are two issues the RV line and SSN printing in the wrong place. So I don’t think that it will be available on Friday. I wonder if they even tested the end of the year for payroll 6 before releasing it. I know they have a copy of our database and with us printing over 1300 W-2 last year they could had run a test using our database to see if it would work right.

We are unable to close 2006 without doing the update. That sucks rocks. The last RE update had a "SQL sniffer" that would apparently determine whether you had all the service packs in place. Since sp4 was the last, many years ago, we sure did, but the sniffer said no, you are not up on your patches. Had to make a registry change, which of course is not supported, but is what they tell you to do. In the notes for this FE release, it says they've added this functionality, so be prepared. That last RE update took many hours for just the server because hold time was very long and KB was down. By the time I got a BB response to logging a case, they sent me a link to KB. Um, I told you in case notes that KB was down - what did you expect me to do with this link? I don't appreciate being told the fix is to make changes to registry while saying they aren't responsible for changes to the registry, when the whole problem is that functionality they added didn't work! grrr BB can be infuriating. Better testing. Fewer releases.

We did the update, no hassles. Still can't close 2006, had to send data. No word on that. Worst part of updates is that I have to go around to every pc.

Did the update and had no problems. I've had very few problems when running an update or patch (knock on wood!! :)). Fortunately, I don't have to touch any of the workstations - when the user logs in, they can apply the upgrade or patch themselves. We've made the administrators of their workstation only but locked down most of the network resources. However, mobile computer users don't have administrator rights so they either bring their computers to my office and I do the upgrade or I remotely access their computer while they're logged on and run the update/patch as an Administrator. I agree that almost weekly patch releases doesn't inspire much confidence in the quality of the product. I don't apply patches too often - do them only when it resolves an issue. However, have to keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't break something else while it fixes one problem. On the plus side I would like to add that I like the fact the BB now includes a patch release (i.e., what the patch fixes) - extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. What would make the applying of patches outstanding is if they would also document any new features/fields/tables added in a new patch release.

Amen to this statement: What would make the applying of patches outstanding is if they would also document any new features/fields/tables added in a new patch release. This would be so helpful if BB would add this!

My favorite thing was whenthey released patch 3 it said only aplly update if it will fox your problems but the read me file said nothing about what it fixed for payroll 6 for us.