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New versions of ClinSpark are released several times a year. Customers are encouraged to update regularly to a new release. This ensures the benefit of receiving all enhancements and fixes, but also minimizes impact to operational and validation teams by ensuring that each upgrade are is a relatively small jump.
Here is an overview of the upgrade process:
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The ClinSpark release notes and this documentation site will provide information identifying new features and changes. This can support validation and training of staff and validation activities.
To help our customers enter into a well-coordinated and controlled upgrade cycle, we’ve outlined many of the common activities, expectations and responsibilities between customer and IQVIA teams and detailed article.
Example Customer Validation & Upgrade Process Flow
We suggest our customers review and consider this in their own upgrade plans , and raise questions to our support team where applicable.
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Please request the VAL instance pair only when there is an intent to devote resources to validation activities. Typically, VAL instances should be required only for a few weeks/months.
More details covering the creation of VAL environments can be reviewed here: Creating VAL Environments
PROD Upgrade
Once validation has been completed by the customer, an upgrade to PROD environment pair can be scheduled and coordinated. All PROD upgrades are coordinated through the service desk with the assistance of an IQVIA PM.
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At the agreed upon time the upgrade itself proceeds as follows:
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Hotfix Releases
When necessary, hotfix release builds are created and provided for customers. Hotfixes are often very small in scope of change and do not introduce new features. They intend to address issues having a significant impact on user experience, clinical data, security, or otherwise addressing regulatory non-compliance.
Hotfix builds are not automatically pushed to customer environments. Customers are expected to review release contents and consider acceptance into environments similar to standard upgrades. All upgrades, including hotfix releases, will always require planning and coordination between customer and IQVIA teams to ensure a successful deployment.