Upgrade To Release 23 Of JD Edwards
Quest JD Edwards Week, March 2023 – Day 3 Run Down
There are plenty of reasons to upgrade to the latest release of JD Edwards, we cover the ability to drive automation and digital transformation in your organisation frequently, however, we don’t often discuss reasons relating to support.
32-Bit To 64-Bit For JD Edwards
For customers on older versions of JDE, support for 32-bit will be coming to an end. Clayton Seely of Oracle took the opportunity to point out that support for 32-bit is still available, but that this support will be coming to an end at some stage.
Clayton also stated that the move from 32-bit to 64-bit is, possibly, not as onerous as it sounds. Ndevr has supported some of our JD Edwards customers through this move.
If you haven’t made the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit the time to do so – while remaining on Oracle support – is running out.
JD Edwards Security, Form Extensions and UDO’S
There seemed to be a general consensus, from across the day 3 customer panel, that Form Extensions should be controlled by the IT department and follow standard development and promotion paths as they are global.
Other UDOs, such as grids, queries, and watchlists, may be created by users, but controlling these UDOs seems to be a cause of concern for most customers. Granite Construction uses Boomi to control traffic in and out of JD Edwards, combined with heavy use of orchestrations to look for errors (exception reporting).
Customers Shared Their JD Edwards Upgrade Experiences
Customers shared some of their JD Edwards upgrade experiences and cautions in the customer panel. On hand were; Phil Rogholt of Park Industries, Janusz Wisniewski of Pernod Ricard, Kay Perez of First Industrial Realty Trust, and Christel Craig of Printpack.
Reducing Customisations Make It Easier To Maintain Code Currency
Park Industries explained that they had reduced their number of customisations from 50 down to just 6 as a result of upgrading to Release 22.
Now that they have fewer customisations it takes them around 6 weeks to apply updates and enhancements under the continual enhancement delivery model.
Among the cautionary advice offered was that you should test form requests in orchestrations as application changes can affect this.
Also, you need to download Groovy separately, if this is used. Because JRuby is the new standard for custom code in Orchestrator, Groovy is no longer automatically included in updates.
Pernod Ricard concurred with Park Industries, saying it also takes them about 6 weeks to update JD Edwards now that they are on 64-bit 9.2.
Testing Throughout The Upgrade Process
Printpack are currently in the process of upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit and to Release 22. They used DWS Dimension Focus for business impact and focused testing. They also used DWS Dimension Tempo for retrofit needs. They noted that they have a heavily customised site.
It is well know that sites with significant levels of customisation take longer to upgrade, however, upgrading to the new continuous release model of JD Edwards will enable you to reduce many customisations, which, in turn, will significantly reduce you’re the effort required when taking future updates.
JD Edwards Grid Customisations
There was a cautionary word from First Industrial who found that, when they upgraded from 9.1 to 9.2, there are special instructions to convert the Grid Customisations otherwise they get lost.
The Benefits Of Upgrading To JD Edwards Release 23
With the imminent sunsetting of 32-bit support from Oracle, it’s getting increasingly difficult for customers to maintain older versions of JD Edwards for themselves.
Increasing demand for automations and integrations, using modern standards while improving user experience, has led to the need for ‘citizen developer’ tools which will allow business to implement operational level changes without the continual need for technical expertise. JD Edwards Release 23 gives companies the tools needed to transform, automate and optimise, while giving end users the tools they need within a structured and secure framework, to continually drive business and operational improvement.
Future Proofing Your JD Edwards Investments With An Upgrade And Code Currency Strategy
Ndevr has delivered numerous upgrades for customers, supporting companies from the planning stages right through to user acceptance testing and end user training.
The opportunities to reduce customisations and improve end user experiences, with more intuitive user interfaces that can be highly personalized, support the need for lower cost of ownership.
Ndevr also provides a continually code current service for JD Edwards customers who are on the latest release, which means that they can outsource the need for management of the continual updates from Oracle.
