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Your LimeSurvey version: 5.6.62
Own server or LimeSurvey hosting: Cloud hosting
Survey theme/template:
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Due to end of support of LimeSurvey Cloud 5.x versions we have to upgrade before June 1st to LimeSurvey 6. I'm a bit worried to how this upgrade might effect our ongoing (active) surveys. I've been emailing with LimeSurvey about this, but their responses so far have been a bit slow and ambiguous/inconclusive, so I was hoping anyone here could reassure me.

I already know that custom themes will be reset so that I will have to rebuild our organization-themes and re-apply them to all active surveys. This is a bit of a pain in the ass, but I can do that. My main concern however is to what will happen to participant and response tables and response links of active surveys. Can anyone who has already done this upgrade confirm that participant/response tables and survey IDs of active surveys will not be affected by this upgrade?

LimeSurvey's response has been the following: 

The upgrade will cause a downtime of two to five minutes (depending on the size of your installation's database). Users who are in the middle of a survey during the upgrade process will not be able to finish it, even after the survey is back. So we recommend that you put you installation in maintenance mode before the upgrade (see top menu Configuration | Settings | Global, tab "general"). There are two maintenance modes. "Soft lock" prevents users to start a survey but allows respondents to finish the questionnaire. "Full lock" means that surveys cannot be accessed and respondents in a survey cannot proceed. So perhaps you can find a time slot where only few users would be affected.

Especially the 2nd sentence is ambiguous to me. I would assume that 'user' refers to the person that has put out the survey, not the respondent. Therefore my worry that active surveys will not be able to continue trouble free after the upgrade.

Many thanks for any advise or suggestions!

Mark 

It's for respondant.

1. Soft lock during 2 hours
2. Full lock
3. Upgrade

If nothing goes terribly wrong (which it shouldn't, updates/upgrades generally are running pretty smooth), all your surveys, participants, links, etc. will work like normal after the update.

Only difference, as mentioned before, are custom themes, custom solutions/scripts in your surveys that might not work anymore.

During the update/upgrade your respondents will not be able to respond. So ideally this is done during a period of time where there are little to no survey takers. Not sure if you can influence that in any way with Limesurvey GmbH.

And then you should set the maintenance mode some time before, and some time after, just to make sure that there is no one taking a survey while the update, because this can lead to loss of data during these 2-5 Minutes.

After the update you can switch off maintenance mode and survey should run just like normal.

But of course, this is based on our experience as users with the community version and we have no insights into the processes at Limesurvey GmbH who is responsible for the hosting of the Limesurvey Cloud. But I assume they have done many, many upgrades from V5 to V6 by now and should have some experience.

holch wrote:

Only difference, as mentioned before, are custom themes, custom solutions/scripts in your surveys that might not work anymore.
 

I wonder if you really can control the date/time of the upgrade as a customer. How will you fix customized scripts/workarounds no longer working in LS6.
You would need to order a second LS instance which already runs LS6 and check every running survey in advance. Once again it is wise to don't rely to much on workarounds and magic scripts. Good luck.

 

> I wonder if you really can control the date/time of the
> upgrade as a customer.

I doubt that you can. But I have no idea how it works at Limesurvey GmbH.

> How will you fix customized scripts/workarounds
> no longer working in LS6.

You can create a free instance. For testing this should be enough. Or you setup a local test environment. If you have custom themes and solutions, you are probably able to find a way to test them.

> Once again it is wise to don't rely to much on
> workarounds and magic scripts.

Agreed, but not always possible.