In order to successfully upgrade Aurea Social, it is necessary to first validate the SharePoint environment.

Check upgrade status

1. Navigate to SharePoint Central Administration -> Upgrade and Migration -> Check Upgrade Status.
2. Confirm the last event for each server has succeeded.

If there is a failure, consult the log file mentioned in the upgrade session details and address the problem.

While addressing the problem, you may need to run psconfig.

Check product and patch installation status

1. Navigate to SharePoint Central Administration -> Upgrade and Migration -> Check product and patch installation status.
2. Confirm that the install status is installed for each product/patch.
3. Address any failures.

Check database status

Navigate to SharePoint Central Administration -> Upgrade and Migration -> Review Database Status.

Confirm that the status for each database is no action required. If the status reflects as other than ‘no action required’, consult Microsoft Support or Microsoft Technet to take the appropriate action to address the issue.

These steps outline the actions necessary to be taken directly before upgrading Aurea Social.

Copy Aurea Social Files to Server

1. Download the Aurea Social bits (core + modules) from the release portal.
2. Copy them to a SharePoint server in the farm (typically this is the Server hosting SharePoint Central Administration).
3. Ensure that the .zip files are not blocked. To do this,
   1. Right click each .zip file.
   2. choose Properties, and then find an Unblock’ button. If you do not find it, the files are not blocked.
   3. If the button exists, click it to unblock the file. Then unzip.

For the modules, you need to unzip them, then copy any .wsp files to the Solutions folder created when you unzipped the core files.

Verify Aurea Social Prerequisites

You should verify the prerequisites before attempting an upgrade. To do this,

1. Run Launcher.exe (right click, run as Administrator) from the Aurea Social Files on the server, logged in as the account that is performing the upgrade (typically the farm account).
2. Address any deficiencies. Mainly, these have to do with permissions.
3. Once the prerequisite check is complete, click the X in the upper right-hand corner to exit.

Clear SharePoint Config Cache

Clear the SharePoint config cache on each server in the farm. This ensures that each SharePoint server has the latest copies of all files from the database.

Use the provided Clear-SPTImerCache.ps1Powershell script to automate this process. Running it once as an Administrator running the SharePoint Management shell clears and regenerate the config cache on each server in the farm.

This takes several minutes to complete for each server in the farm.

Reboot Farm

Restart each server in the SharePoint farm, including the SQL server.

A restart minimizes the chance of any .dlls being locked and that server resources are re-allocated.

Backup Farm

The farm should be fully backed up before starting the upgrade. The recommended procedure is to take full SQL backups of all SharePoint, including Aurea Social/NewsGator, databases.

Alternatively, if the farm consists of virtual machines, snapshots are a simple but effective backup mechanism.

Ensure Timer Service Functionality

Aurea Social relies on the SharePoint Timer Service to successfully deploy solutions.

If the timer service is non-functional on any SharePoint server on the farm, the upgrade could fail.

To verify timer service functionality,

Navigate to Central Administration>Monitoring>Review Job Definitions>Job History.

In the upper right-hand corner, you can filter the View.

From the drop-down menu, choose Server.

For each server in the farm, verify that timer jobs have been executing successfully on each SharePoint server in the farm. Each server typically executes several of every minute.

Turn off Antivirus Software

You should turn off antivirus software on the server on which you are running Setup and leave if off for the duration of the upgrade. You can turn it back on once the upgrade is complete.

Note on Web Applications

The installer forces deploy solutions to each web application selected in the installer in sequence. Before it moves on to web application two, it must complete the deployment to web application one.

This means that the more web applications that need to be deployed to, the longer the upgrade takes. Also keep in mind that very little information is logged to the upgrade console window during these solution deployments (unless there is an error), so even though it may seem like nothing is happening, it’s likely that the installer is churning away behind the scenes.

Aurea Social recommends testing the upgrade process in a pre-production farm with the same number of web apps as the production farm to give a rough estimate of how long the production upgrade takes.

If your farm has more than two web applications with Aurea Social installed, upgrade time can be greatly increased by stopping web applications prior to the upgrade.

Note on Upgrade/Installation Account

If the upgrade / installation account - the account that you are logged into the server and performing the upgrade with – has a large profile, that large profile increases the time needed to perform the upgrade.

Aurea Social recommends deleting any unneeded files from the profile. A profile can get quite large if files, such as service packs, are saved to the desktop instead of a designated downloads folder on the file system or network share.

To check the profile size, do the following:

1. Log on to the server on which you want to perform the upgrade.
2. Right click on ‘computer’ or ‘my computer’, then ‘advanced system settings.’
3. In the User Profiles section click ‘settings’ All profiles, along with size, are listed. Locate the profile you are logged in with to perform the upgrade. You’ll want to get the profile down to 5-10 MB, if possible.

Typically, you can find the profile on the file system at C:\users\%USERNAME% - move or delete unnecessary or large files.

Disable Search Crawls and User Profile Synch

To prevent the upgrade fighting for resources with Search and UPA Synch, these should be disable prior to running the upgrade.

To disable UPA Sync, do the following:

navigate to Central Administration>Application Management>Manage Service Applications.

Click into the User Profile Service Application >Configure Synchronization timer Job and click Disable.

To disable Search crawls, navigate to Central Administration>Application Management>Manage Service Applications click into the Search Service Application >Pause/Resume and click Pause.

These steps outline the actions necessary to be taken directly before upgrading Aurea Social.

Launch the upgrade

1. Go to remote desktop and navigate to the Central Administration server that you copied the Aurea Social files to as part of the pre upgrade steps above.
2. Login with the account that that is used to perform the upgrade (typically the farm account).
3. Right click and run as administrator Launcher.exe.
4. Click through the on-screen prompts to perform the upgrade.

Address warnings and errors

Once the upgrade is complete, examine the log file created by the upgrade. Address any warnings or errors. Some warnings / errors can be successfully ignored after verification of the Post-upgrade steps below.

For example, you may see warning / errors about not being able to restart services. Often this is caused by the services taking longer than normal to restart, but nothing is really wrong or broken. You may need guidance from Aurea Social Support to address these errors.

Video Stream Only

If you are using the video stream module, you have to run the additional components installer to upgrade the encoding and streaming servers.

Run setup.exe for the additional components installer on the servers which hosts these components.

These steps outline the actions necessary to be taken directly after performing an upgrade of Aurea Social.

Enable Antivirus Software

Restart any antivirus software disabled before performing the upgrade of Aurea Social.

Stop Backend Services on Web Front Ends

By default, every upgrade starts the Aurea Social back end services on all SharePoint servers in the farm, even the web front ends. These services should only run on application servers.

To ensure that the backend services are running where they need to be, navigate to Central Administration -> System Settings -> Manage Services on Server.

Ensure that ‘newsGator Social Application Services’ and ‘NewsGator Social Platform Services v2’ are present and running only on your application server. You can use the menu to choose the server, and you can start / stop services as necessary from this page.

Verify Successful Solution Deployment

Once the upgrade is complete, it is necessary to validate that the Aurea Social solutions are properly deployed. Navigate to Central Administration -> System Settings -> Manage Farm Solutions.

Check that all NewsGator solutions are ‘deployed’, including SharePoint.ajax. Any NewsGator solutions that have an error in deployment reflects ‘error’.

You can click on the solution name to find out more information on the specific error.

Enable Search Crawls and User Profile Synch

To enable UPA Sync, do the following:

1. Navigate to Central Administration>Application Management>Manage Service Applications.
2. Click into the User Profile Service Application > Configure Synchronization timer Job and click Enable.

To enable Search crawls, do the following:

Navigate to Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications.

Click into the Search Service Application > Pause/Resume and click Pause.

Verify Product Functionality

Verify the following Product functionality:

• Create a new post.
• Comment on the new post and an existing post.
• Like the new post, as well as an existing post.
• Mark for follow up the new post as well as an existing post.
• Create a new post with an attachment.
• Create a poll.
• @target a community in a post.
• Share a post.
• Add a new colleague.
• Follow a community.
• Trigger an instant email notification.
• Create a new community. Complete community setup.
• Use the Getting Started web part or the profile setup portion on the Lookout page to upload a new profile picture.
• Video Stream: Upload a new video to a video center. Does it encode? Can you view it?
• Video Stream: Link to a Youtube video in the Activity Stream. Can you watch it in-line.
• News Stream: Add a new rss subscription in Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage Service Applications ->NewsGator News Stream Services -> Manage Feeds.
• News Stream: if your organization allows personal subscriptions, add a new subscription from the Activity Stream web part ‘edit my subscriptions’ link.
• Spotlight: Create a new automatic rule in Spotlight Management for one microblog. Create a new badge tied to this rule. Post a microblog. Run the NewsGator Reporting Database Load job followed by the NewsGator Spotlight Processing job from Central Administration -> Monitoring -> Review Job Definitions. Are you awarded the badge?
• Ideas: Create a new site using the NewsGator Private Idea site template. Create a new idea. Vote on it.
• If you have Aurea Social deployed to multiple web applications, test posting a basic microblog from a NewsGator/Aurea Social web part in each web application.