Maintaining the lifecycle: maintenance and updates

The lifecycle of the product is maintained through the day-to-day maintenance of the service, through updates made according to the developer's own development plan and at the request of the client print shops, and through technical support. Hosting, the HTTPS certificate, the daily backups and the updates are included in the subscription, whatever the plan (Pricing).

2.1. What day-to-day maintenance covers

• The hosting and the availability of the service: the runtime environment, the automatically renewed HTTPS certificate, the print shop's domain connected to its instance.
• Monitoring of operation — availability, errors in the logs, response times, failures of notifications and of integrations — and intervention in case of incidents, independently of any reports from users.
• The daily backups of the database and the storage of the files (artwork, images, documents) in a storage service separate from the application, with the possibility of restoration in case of an incident.
• Updating the underlying components for security reasons and adapting the integrations whenever external providers change their interfaces (payment processors, couriers, email and messaging services).
• Periodic security review: access control, sessions, data validation, role-based permissions.
• The documentation: the User guide and the Functional characteristics are updated at every change visible in the interface.

2.2. Types of updates

2.3. How an update is delivered

1. No installation and no action on the user's part: all instances are brought to the current version by the developer.
2. No interruption of sales: the new version is built on the server in parallel with the current one, which continues to serve until the switchover; if the build fails, the current version remains untouched.
3. Data compatibility: existing orders, products, customers and settings remain valid; the rules applied to an order when it was placed (VAT, promised deadline, price) are not changed retroactively — see Functional characteristics, 8.1.
4. Admin panels left open at the moment of the update continue to work; to see the new version it is enough to reload the page.
5. A rollback to the previous version is possible if problems appear after a release; the definitive correction follows after analysis.
6. The timing of a release: large changes, outside the stores' peak hours; urgent corrections, whenever they are needed.
7. Communication: updates that change the way of working are announced to the store administrators, as a rule before the release, with a reference to the updated chapters of the Guide; corrections and changes with no effect on the way of working are released without announcement.

2.4. Support services included in maintenance

• Assisted launch: setting up the store, importing the catalogue and the price formulas from the print shop's spreadsheets, the design and the domain, the test orders (chapter 01, 1.6).
• Help with configuration and administration after launch: statuses and rules, delivery, payments, design, roles, integrations with external providers.
• Explanation of the functions and help during operation, with references to the documentation.
• Provision and updating of the documentation: the three public documents and the texts inside the admin panel.
• Data export on request, at any time, not only when use ceases.

The support channels and working hours are described in chapter 06.

2.5. The responsibilities of the client print shop

The product is designed so that everything relating to the print shop's commercial activity can be administered from the admin panel, without the developer. The following remain the print shop's responsibility:

1. The content and the commercial configuration: the catalogue, the prices and the reference books, the statuses and the rules, the delivery and payment methods, the design, the content of the site, the correctness of the company data shown on documents.
2. Its own accounts and contracts with external providers (payment processor, couriers, email and messaging services), the credentials entered in the admin panel and their testing in test mode before activation.
3. The management of the team's accounts: roles with appropriate permissions, deactivation of accounts when an employee leaves, protection of passwords.
4. Compliance with the legislation applicable to its own activity: VAT and invoicing, protection of customer data (the terms and policies published on the store's site), archiving of accounting documents.
5. Prompt reporting of defects and of unexpected behaviour, with the information described in chapter 03.
6. Keeping its own exports and archives for accounting and reporting obligations, independently of the service's backups.