Synergetic is proud to announce that Version 70 is now available.

Synergetic has always placed great importance on building configurable software. Now, with this latest Gold Release, we are delivering software that can not only meet the needs of your organisation, but also support the diverse gender identity of your community.

This major system-wide enhancement allows you to configure multiple gender values, define their relationship links, map your gender values to external system values, allowing their import and export.  All Crystal and SSRS reports have been updated to support configurable gender.

For information about:

• Defining genders. See Defining genders.
• Defining relationships between genders. See Defining relationships between genders.
• Maintaining configurable gender information across all modules. See Maintaining configurable gender information.
• Mapping gender values to external system values. See Mapping gender values to external system values.
• Importing and exporting student data. See Importing and exporting student data.
• Exporting superannuation details. See Exporting superannuation details.
• Crystal, SSRS and custom reports updated to support configurable gender. See Updated Crystal and SSRS reports.

Key Changes

Defining genders

Genders are now defined using the brand-new luGender lookup table. See luGender lookup table.

This brand new lookup table supports three SynergyMeanings:

• Male
• Female
• Other.

By creating a record and assigning it a SynergyMeaning of Other it is grouped and identified as a gender other than male or female.

Defining relationships between genders

Once you have added the genders used at your organisation you can use the updated luRelationship lookup table to define relationships for other-gendered community members. See luRelationship lookup table.

This updated lookup table includes:

• New RevRelationshipOther column, for defining the relationship to a person of Other gender
• New gender-neutral relationships
• New gender-neutral SynergyMeanings.

Maintaining configurable gender information

Synergetic has updated the entire software suite to support configurable gender. This means that any field that previously used binary gender (male-female) will now use a configurable gender including:

• Search criteria windows (e.g. Set Community Search Criteria window)
• Community member creation windows. (e.g. Create new student window)
• Future student application processing windows and online forms
• Tabs displaying personal information (e.g. Community Maintenance - Name tab)
• Bulk add/delete windows (e.g. Bulk Add Future Students window)
• Assessment windows for viewing results and printing reports.

Mapping gender values to external system values

Synergetic interacts with external systems such as the Systems Interoperability Framework (SIF). You now have the ability to map your gender codes to external systems using the Interface Settings window. See Using the Interface Settings window.

Importing and exporting student data

Student data can be imported and exported for state and federal reporting requirements using the Import/Export Student Data window. All of these imports and exports have been updated to support configurable gender.  They now use the Interface Settings functionality to know for each Commonwealth or State Government body what code to export each Gender as. For more information, see Importing and exporting student data.

Updated Crystal and SSRS reports

All Crystal and SSRS reports that use gender have been updated to support configurable gender. Additionally, the User/Report Form Editor has been updated to support configurable gender. See Using the User_Report Form Editor.

Ability to define the field order of lookup tables

You can add the FieldOrderCSV configuration setting to define the comma-separated field order of lookup tables. See FieldOrderCSV configuration setting.

Organisations upgrading to Version 70 from an earlier version of Synergetic will automatically have the FieldOrderCSV configuration setting configured for the following lookup tables:

• luRelationship lookup table. See luRelationship lookup table.
• luYearLevel lookup table. See luYearLevel lookup table.

Upgrades and Server Migrations

SQL Server version requirements

The Synergetic v70 Release has updated the minimum required version of SQL Server - please refer to the chart further down for more information.  If you are currently using an older/non-supported version of SQL Server, you will need to arrange for an update to a supported version in order to obtain Synergetic v70 within your environment.

On-Site Proofing

Due to v70 involving widespread changes in Synergetic, which may impact localisations and customisations, clients are strongly advised to conduct an upgrade trial on a test-server prior to deploying v70 to production.  This trial should include testing areas such as the following (especially where gender and gender-related logic is used):

• connection to both in-house and external interfaces
• localisations and customisations
• custom reports

New Servers

If you are considering migrating to a new server, we strongly recommend utilising our expert Systems team’s services for installing and migrating Synergetic servers. Please contact us via Service Desk to request assistance with your migration.

We have often received urgent requests from clients who have attempted to perform their own migration and encountered unforeseen installation/backup issues; despite our best efforts to assist without advance notice, a resolution may not always be achievable within an acceptable timeframe.

Please be aware there is typically a two week lead time for installations such as new servers and migrations, although times of higher demand can see longer lead times.  We suggest arranging your booking as early as possible to provide best chance of securing your preferred timing.

Upgrades

Please contact us via Service Desk to organise your upgrade. Upgrades to Synergetic v70 will be performed using the Octopus Deploy tool.

With any major release, we recommend that you first upgrade a test environment, to gauge the impact of the upgrade on your customisations or special use scenarios before moving on to upgrading production environments. There are no charges for upgrades of the Synergetic product set on infrastructure that complies with the product's minimum platform requirements. Environments that require infrastructure changes (server migrations, SQL Server upgrade etc) will involve additional activities; the approach for these will need to be discussed with our Systems team at the time of booking an upgrade.

There is a first in, first served policy in booking these into our calendar and there is typically a two week lead time. Please note that school holidays are typically booked out 4 weeks in advance - we suggest booking early to avoid disappointment.

Executable File Changes

Synergetic has previously provided two Synergetic executable files:

• SynMain.exe (approx 8mb)
• SynMainBig.exe (approx 41mb).

We have had occasional reports from clients that Windows 10 may regard the compressed executable file as malware (due to it decompressing in memory) and block its execution, preventing users from running the default application exe file. 

To mitigate this potential disruption for our clients, we are making SynMain.exe the uncompressed file and, removing the SynMainBig.exe file.

For users where the size of the executable file may be of concern (eg users with limited network bandwidth) we are providing an alternative compressed version, SynMainSmall.exe which may be used in application shortcuts instead.

Supported Versions

With the release of v70, the v68 release moves out of mainstream support and all clients should already have migration plans in place to move from an earlier version to either v69 or v70.

We are providing a grace period for v68 version support until September 30th 2020, to allow surety of ongoing support for clients who have had upgrade scheduling difficulties.

As v69 (and v68 during grace period) have moved out from mainstream support, ongoing defect fixes/hot fixes will only be available in v70 with the exception of critical/blocking issues (as and if reported). 

Development support
	v69	v70
Supported Status
Bug Fixes	Severity 1 (Blocker) Severity 2 (Critical)	Addressed in severity/priority order
Government/Legislative Requirements
New Features and Improvements

We encourage you to make contact with our systems team for queries regarding upgrading; our consulting team can also be engaged to provide services relating to change management planning.

Windows Server

Supported configurations
	v68	v69	v70	Notes
Windows Server 2008 / 2008R2				Microsoft mainstream support ended January 2015
Windows Server 2012 (64-bit)				Microsoft mainstream support ends October 2018
Windows Server 2012R2 (64-bit)				Microsoft mainstream support ends October 2018
Windows Server 2016 (64-bit)
Windows Server 2019				Recommended version

SQL Server

Supported configurations
	v68	v69	v70	Notes
SQL Server 2012				Microsoft mainstream support ended July 2017
SQL Server 2014				Microsoft mainstream support ended July 2019
SQL Server 2016				Latest Service Pack Microsoft mainstream support ends July 2021
SQL Server 2017				Recommended version Latest Service Pack
SQL Server 2019				Not yet tested/approved for Synergetic products

Microsoft SQL Links:

• SQL Server support lifecycle
• How to obtain the latest service pack for SQL Server 2012
• How to obtain the latest service pack for SQL Server 2014
• How to obtain the latest service pack for SQL Server 2016
• How you can determine the current service pack level
• Unofficial Microsoft SQL Server version list

ServiceDesk

Some key points to keep in mind for using ServiceDesk:

• Your username to ServiceDesk is your email address. Please use your email address when logging in or if you need to reset your password.
• All support tickets need to be raised via ServiceDesk at https://jira.synergetic.net.au/servicedesk.
• A list of common Service Desk Q & A’s.
• Our support desk phone number is unchanged:  +61 (3) 9803 8111 will continue operating per standard support hours and you may raise tickets via calling as previously; however with the additional information available online this may be faster and easier for you – especially to provide screen shots and other relevant information that helps us to understand and resolve your queries as efficiently as possible.

Synergetic User Hub

Documentation for Synergetic feature releases and functionality changes is available via our Synergetic User Hub.

The site is your continually growing resource for product documentation, knowledge base (KB) articles, troubleshooting guides, company details and other information.

The ‘Search’ box on the home page will search across the entire user hub, whereas if you execute a search within the page of a certain product/module, it will only search within that specific area. For example if you search for ‘Email’ on the home page, it will look for all articles across the entire user hub containing the word ‘Email', whereas a search for ‘Email’ on the Payroll documentation space will only search within that space. 

If you need to find any information, we would like to encourage users to start off by searching within the User Hub. This will also be useful for support related enquiries where an existing KB or troubleshooting article might give you the relevant information required to solve an error or an issue.

The Synergetic User Hub is also linked to ServiceDesk and it will prompt you with related articles when you are creating a new ServiceDesk ticket, as the answer you need may already be available.

Synergetic Known Defect List

We continue to publish details of known and confirmed product issues and defects. See Synergetic Defect List.

There are different filter options available on the page which will allow you to do specific searches for items within products or modules, by Issue key (DSY-####), legacy enhancement reference, affected version, created date etc.

The list is dynamically populated from our development issue tracking system, and will show the status of issues in real time.

Synergetic Community (Discourse)

As a community, we have been engaging together in Discourse for some time now. Registration is open to any staff at your organisation. Please note registrations must be made using the email domain for your organisation.

We encourage Synergetic users to register and visit the Discourse website regularly to engage in discussion with other users regarding existing and desired product functionality; see sneak peeks of upcoming Synergetic developments and more.

Users are able to vote to support new feature ideas that other users have suggested, with Synergetic taking this into account with our planning for future changes.

• The number of active votes increases as users gain reputation - as you increasingly use the site and interact with others, your user rating increases which provides you more votes for desired features.
• If the topic is closed or archived, the registered votes are released to the users and can be applied to other topics (but the vote count on the topic remains).
• If a topic is re-opened or unarchived, the votes are reclaimed and applied back to the users active vote count.
• If a topic reclaims the votes of a user and they go over their limit, they simply need to wait until topics are closed or archived to allow them to vote again.