Formpipe are committed to providing a current and secure platform for our SaaS customers whilst ensuring regulatory compliance. We are delighted that (for some time now) all of our X-Docs hosted customers are up and running on the latest version of the Microsoft SharePoint platform, SharePoint 2019.
We highlighted the drivers to upgrade our X-Docs customers to SharePoint’s latest release at our User Group Meeting 2019. These User Groups are always valuable sessions to hold, enabling two-way communication, developing the X-Docs road map, and discussing enhancement requests. This afforded us the opportunity to discuss the upgrade and run through the process. Importantly we were able to identify that the impact to customers operationally would be minimal (no loss of data access).
The following benefits for migrating to the latest Microsoft platform were discussed:
Security
A software vulnerability is a prevalent issue for all organisations, and hackers will target old operating systems or software programs to exploit their weaknesses. Upgrading to the latest version ensures the latest security features protect users and data. It also enables us to monitor and implement the latest security patches more efficiently.
Additional Features
The update delivers new backend features and fixes for SharePoint, as well as removing outdated or obsolete features, streamlining the software.
Long Term Support
Running our customers X-docs products on the SharePoint 2019 platform improves the long-term support of Formpipe’s X-Docs products (X-Docs, X-Forms, and X-Train). It improves and ensures continued integration with Microsoft Office products, such as Office 365, as the Office products evolve over time. Having the system running on the latest platform also ensures customers can benefit from the performance enhancements of the latest platform software through faster response times.
Minimizing the Impact of Change
We know that for our Life Science customers, any change has an impact on validation resources, therefore we were very keen to make the transition as seamless as possible.
By design, no feature updates were introduced with the new X-docs software that integrates with the latest SharePoint platform, limiting the impact to our customers when it comes to testing, training, and validating the new system. Our team ensured the existing systems used by our customers would remain available throughout the process, minimising downtime and operation impact.
Our internal testing prior to the release of our new software compatible with the latest SharePoint platform not only focused on software regression testing but also the migration pathway for our existing customers. The result was confidence in the process for our customers and a successful migration process that was conducted to schedule and with zero issues raised as a result.
Get in touch with us today if you would like to know more about how our X-Docs product can help your organisation meet regulatory compliance in Life Science.
