how to apply 387 post patches to msp

Maybe I can offer some clarity here.

If you are upgrading or applying MSP5 and as you say there are 387 post-MSP patches, do you *really* need to apply them all?

Let's see: 387 * 1hr = 387 hrs.. which is 48.3 working days (8 hr days)
and double that is 96.75 days. WHOOP!

Really, let's get serious here. :) You don't have time to apply 387 patches and there is really no need to apply 387 patches, from a practical standpoint. My experience is that you apply the patches for things that you see are broken or need fixed that affect YOUR company. Meaning: apply the patches only when you see that something is in fact, "broken".

All of the weekly patch emails sent from Lawson? Yeah you may want to look at those too. But it doesn't mean you have to or need to apply them. Note: Yes I know everyone is different, so in fact, this may not apply to you.

Some or many of the patches may not apply to your licensed products and some of the products which the patches affect you do not use or own.

Surely, if you've got the staff and resources then go ahead and apply 387 patches.

Good luck,
Roger

bev,

I remember I used to do "apply all patches" approach until one of the patch broke my RSS. I had to back out of the patch, lawson didn't have a fix until a week later. I totally agree with roger,

"If it ain't broken, don't fix it"

Apply patch only if it's something that need fixing.

1-3 hours PER application patch? That's highway robbery.

Download all the patches in a folder, write a simple batch file to update them all. It's nothing fancy but highly reusable to apply all the patches to another prodline with a simple find/replace via notepad. see screenshot.

Since we are just now doing MSP 5 we wanted to get all patches necessary for our upcoming testing...especially since our go live with ESP 7 and MSP 5 is May 20th...we will not have a lot of time for the testers to find issues / apply patches / have everyone retest the system to see what all that patch has broken. With 387 post patches, it would take forever to decipher which may absolutely be necessary and I just hate to find out during our limited 6 week testing schedule...that was my logic in grabbing all post - patches. The consultant does grab all of the post patches for ESP..but not MSP (unless we specifically point out which ones.) I'm trying my best to narrow down at least the form #'s that I know we do not use..

Let's say I have 100 post patches needed, what is the longest amount of time expected for the consultant to be able to add those to our system provided that I did the download and untar for him?

Environment patches should never be skipped. CTPs do not fall under that rule. Apply only what you know you need to. As far as time, certainly use the batch method. If you are applying to a single product line, and you have no customizations to worry about, then you wouldn't need more than 5 min per CTP, if that. Doing the Activate step for all of them would pull them all in and do all the compiles just once.

Just my thoughts of course, but I'd never apply a CTP that we didn't truly need.

Thanks for the advice, I NEVER realized that a ctp could take like 5 min..I though an hour ea...so that is great news. We are narrowing the post patches down to the forms that we know we need (that is the form that is listed for the patch - though we all know once you open up the patch it has a gazillion PT's that are related to every other form and its brother)... We would have know way of knowing for sure which patches are needed because we've not tested what all has been broken by the msp 4 & 5 as yet. my concern is that we start testing msp 4 & 5 and have to do a patch here and there and then retest each time, we only have 6 weeks to complete this update... ugh!

Yes Beverly, the estimated time to apply each patch is 1 to 3 hours you mentioned from the other consultant -- bloated and incorrect.

Beverly, I understand your position, but even if we are upgrading to an MSP, we don't go and grab everything afterward. I'm not really sure what to tell you, but I will say to try and apply the minimum. Of course, when I say 5 min per CTP, that is my experience, and I have applied so many I could probably do them in my sleep. ( Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. :laugh: ) Certainly your first few may take a bit longer, but really, once you get the knack of it, they go very quickly. So if the consultant is the one doing the CTPs, and they are planning to charge you 1-3 hours per, then you need a new consultant. ASAP.

Beverly: From a Lawson installer. (Not me)
9.0.1 MSP 5 is a very stable release of the Lawson code. I have a very large client that I think has only applied 5 or 6 post MSP 5 CTP's and they've been running for a while on MSP 5.

Greg again:
*Perhaps different pieces of the puzzle than what you have, though.