Upgrading projects

After upgrading, Helix ALM can automatically upgrade projects when the server starts or you can manually upgrade them.

Note:  You must manually upgrade projects if you use the Linux command line (Perl) installer.

Automatic upgrades

When the Helix ALM Server starts, you are prompted to automatically upgrade projects. Helix ALM native projects are upgraded individually. Other projects in the same database, including inactive projects, are all upgraded at the same time. After projects are upgraded, they are automatically loaded and available to users. Errors are logged if upgrades fail.

Keep the following in mind:

• Projects are upgraded in the order they are displayed in the Projects list in the Helix ALM Server Admin Utility. If you have a large number of projects, you can reorder them before upgrading to make sure the most frequently used projects are upgraded first. To reorder projects, in the server admin utility, choose View > Projects. Select a project and click Top, Move Up, Move Down, or Bottom to move it.
• Existing Helix ALM users with usernames and valid, non-expired licenses are automatically migrated as global users to the Helix ALM License Server. Users without usernames are converted as local users.

Manual upgrades

You may want to manually upgrade projects using the Helix ALM Server Admin Utility if:

• You have a large number of projects and do not want to upgrade all of them at once.
• You are going to upgrade legacy Helix ALM 2011.1 or earlier native projects or convert them to a different RDBMS format. These older project versions are not supported in Helix ALM. You must upgrade them to  TestTrack 2015.1 first. See Preparing to upgrade from TestTrack 2011.1 and earlier.
• You want to manually resolve user conflicts. If you use Helix ALM and Surround SCM, and users are set up differently, there may be conflicts caused by data differences on the servers. Manually upgrading projects gives you more control over conflict resolution. For example, users were configured using full names (e.g., Deborah) in Surround SCM and using nicknames (e.g., Debbie) in Helix ALM. When you manually upgrade, you can select the name to use.