Upgrading from 2.4.2 to 2.5

We released much awaited OrangeHRM 2.5 on October 6th. The urgency to release 2.5 did not give us much time to explain our plans to provide upgraders to 2.5. Since released, there has been much discussion on this and we thought to address the issue in this post. First of all we need to say that we haven't stopped providing automated upgraders for stable releases. We started it at version 2.4.1 and continued in version 2.4.2. We will do the same for version 2.5 but with a different approach. We didn't release the upgrader with 2.5 basically for two reasons.

• First, creating upgraders take both development and QA effort. This could have led to further delays in releasing OrangeHRM 2.5 stable.
• Even after thorough testing, we noticed that few users had found issues in the upgraders. So, we decided to release it separately so that we can handle issues raised on upgraders separately and even provide new versions of the upgraders.

Currently we are working on 2.5 upgrader and it would take about 4 to 6 weeks to release it with QA testing. Once we finished the development, there is a chance to make an intermediate release without QA testing. However, if you are in too much of a hurry to get this done and has required technical background, below are the steps for upgrading from version 2.4.2 to 2.5.

1. First list down all the database schema changes by comparing dbscript/dbscript-1.sql in both versions.
2. Then check whether there are any changes in default data inserted by comparing dbscript/dbscript-2.sql.
3. Write SQL queries for all changes found in step 1 and 3. That is, to convert a 2.4.2 database into a 2.5 database.
4. Install 2.5 in a new location of your web server.
5. Get a database dump of your current installation of version 2.4.2.
6. Replace the 2.5 database using the dump of version 2.4.2.
7. Run all the SQL queries prepared in step 3 on replaced 2.5 database.
8. Check hs_hr_time_event and see whether there are more than one rows for same day, same project, same activity. If so, get the total duration of all rows and delete them. Then insert a new row with this duration. This is needed since in version 2.5, time entry has been simplified.

Above are the main steps to upgrade from version 2.4.2 to 2.5. If you try this out, make sure you don't make any change to your existing 2.4.2 installation. That would let you continue in version 2.4.2 even if you get an error in upgrading.

Upgrading with OrangeHRM Support

If you are an OrangeHRM Support subscriber and if you made a request to upgrade from your existing version to 2.5, one of our support engineers will examine your current version (can be  2.4.2 or an earlier version) and database and make necessary changes. These requests are handled case by case but automated upgrader needs to handle all possible scenarios. That's why it takes time. So, for upgrading from version 2.4.2 to 2.5, you have following options.

• If you are in a hurry and has the required technical skills, you can follow the steps described above and do the upgrade.
• If you are in a hurry but hasn't got the technical skills, you can consider doing the upgrade via OrangeHRM Support.
• If you can be bit patient, continue with 2.4.2 and upgrade when 2.5 automated upgrader is released.

Stay in touch with our blog for updates about the upgrader.