We’re ready to schedule your project for delivery once we have a signed Go Live playbook and we’ve completed all Go Live to-do items (both parties need to sign off). Also, the final payment or any outstanding balance must be received before we go live or deliver the project to your sandbox/account. We’ll schedule a time to go live with your approval; we require that this takes place earlier in the week to ensure smooth operation and optimal post migration support. We require that you schedule this migration with your account manager at least three business days in advance; several logins and access points need to be monitored for proper functionality. We will confirm and lock in the date for migration depending on resources available. To get the process started, you’ll need to fill out the Go-Live questionnaire. This questionnaire will give you the opportunity to provide us all of the access and instruction we need to make your new work live. When we get this questionnaire back, we’ll present you with a migration schedule we call a “Go-Live Playbook” for you to approve. When all of this is decided and confirmed we can have a smooth launch with minimal surprises.
Go live times are mainly scheduled in the middle of the night, as most migrations require some amount of downtime. This can be done in several hours, but in rare cases, a migration can cause as much as 48 hours of downtime. Refrain from making changes to the backend of the site at this time, as it can interfere with the migration. Please also refrain from sending us comments until we’ve confirmed that the migration of your project is complete.
Once the site is delivered, you have 30 days of free support from us. This support period begins after we migrate our work to your account, and begins whether or not your website goes live. During this time, we’ll fix any remaining issues that stem from our work. Only technical issues are taken care of for the duration of the support period; 1Digital® does not perform platform training. All support requests will be handled during our standard business hours. If any 3rd party developer does work during this time, the support period is voided.
PLATFORM TO PLATFORM MIGRATION
Platform to platform migrations, when a site is moving from one eCommerce platform to another, are particularly complex. They often involve a data transfer, a hosting switch, and email record update, and other service changes. The more complex the migration, the more time consuming, and open to error, it will be. When considering a platform to platform migration know that your site will be down for an extended period of time and that issues with the transfer are more or less inevitable. The 1Digital® team handles these migrations quite often, and while some issues may be unavoidable, we are committed to working closely with you during this process, preparing as much as possible, fixing any issues which appear during the transition, and moving your site to a new home with as few speedbumps as possible.
Here are a few complications which are common to every platform to platform migration that site admins should be aware of before moving.
Domain Propagation: Domain propagation is the process of your registrar handing off changes to your domain to root DNS servers. ISPs acquire records from the root servers, to other ISPs, and so on until you see the changes reflect on your computer with your internet service provider. Propagation can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days as servers around the globe start to recognize your site’s new host.
Email Propagation: If you move your business email from one host to another, your email will also cease to function for a period of time, as your MX records need to index during propagation. Similarly, this can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days.
Data Transfer: When data is being transferred from one platform to another, a resync will need to be done concurrently with the launch in order to make sure the new site goes live with the most up-to-date data set. You may be asked to refrain from making changes to your site for several days before a platform to platform migration so that the resync can run with the most updated data.
Customization Transfer: When custom developments that have been created for one platform move onto another platform they need to be adjusted. By this point, you’ll have tested your new site on a sandbox, but when the site launches these customizations will be working with live data for the first time. It’s smart to expect that a live environment will put these functionalities through unique scenarios that would not have been possible to simulate on a sandbox. As these edge cases come up, our team will be there to adjust the functionality accordingly.
