New to Cerb5? The truth about upgrading
Documentation August 4th, 2010
posted by Joe GeckNotice anything different about the title?… That’s right, we’ve finally made the jump to Cerb5! Hopefully this comes as a surprise to very few people, because by the time you read this we’ve already released a follow-up in the form of 5.0.1. For those looking to jump on board, that means the early adopters have successfully put it through the ringer and many of the quirks have been ironed out. So if you’re still on 4.x now might be the perfect time to try it out the latest version. The software is available for consumption from the usual sources.
- SVN – http://svn.webgroupmedia.com/cerb5/trunk/cerb5/
- ZIP – http://www.cerberusweb.com/downloads/cerb5/cerb5-latest.zip
Installation & Upgrade Instructions
- For new users installing Cerb5 for the first time and not upgrading, you can follow the basic install guide.
If you tried Cerb4 in the past and didn’t like it but thought you’d try again fresh with 5.x, the instructions and prerequisites are very similar to 4.3.1.
- If you’re upgrading from a 4.x desk :
Nothing super fancy for this upgrade. You’re checking out the latest 5.x code from a different repository, installing it in a new location, and then updating the 4.x database to work with it.
- If you’re upgrading from a legacy desk (2.x/3.x) you’ll need to do a migration first:
This upgrade is a little more complicated. Because the database format changed you need to get the data out first and then “copy” it into the new system. This entails installing a fresh copy of Cerb5, get it up & running so you can login, export the key components from your old version into a Cerb-readable format, then import them into the new 5.x Helpdesk. The components include things like tickets, workers, address book contacts, and Knowledgebase articles.
New pricing, restrictions, and no free updates

Ok this is where it gets interesting and why this blog post is titled as it is. DO NOT UPGRADE blindly to 5.x without doing a little company research first. The upgrade pricing has changed, and you may not qualify for a freebie.
- If you purchased Cerb4 LESS than a year ago, the upgrade is in fact free at no cost.
- If you bought Cerb4 OVER a year ago, then you are eligible for a price break. Right now that comes out to a 50% discount, though it’s not an exact science. I’ll explain what I mean when we talk about “seats”.
- If you’re coming from way back prior to Cerb4 (2.x/3.x) then it’s the regular price. You’ll pay the standard rates a brand new customer would.
There’s more… Cerb5 uses a new license key that restricts the software in a completely different way, and for long-time users an unexpected way. That means if you upgrade without the 5.x key handy, the software will be gimped until you request a new license from us. Furthermore if you choose to upgrade without heeding this warning, and do NOT want to pay for an equivalent license to what you’re using already, you may not be able to able operate the software like normal. The free 5.x license you’d be downgraded to restricts you to ONE seat (see next section).
The “new pricing” screenshot is from Aug 4, 2010 so price and conditions are subject to change.
New Seats format

Remember how 4.x restricted you to a maximum number of workers, no more. In 5.x you can have unlimited workers, but the catch is only a certain number can be logged in simultaneously (“seats”). So when you purchase the product this time around, you’re really buying the number of workers you envision using the system together.
For certain demographics of our customer base, there’s a good chance that number is less than the number of workers in their system. Imagine you have two shifts of employees, if there’s a daytime group consisting of 10 workers and a nighttime group of 5 workers, technically you only need to buy 10 seats not 15 seats (and not 15 workers like you would have in 4.x). That’s why I pointed out earlier that the upgrade discount is a little deceiving, cause your cost could be much less than the 50% per seat. You may not have to convert all your 4.x workers to seats in the 5.x system, and you’ll never have to buy more workers in the future. All you’ll have to worry about is if you need more seats/logins.
But if you upgrade and don’t get a new license as we discussed earlier, then you’ll be stuck with only ONE seat and thus one worker who can log in at a time. If I’m trying to log in and Scott is already logged in, then I have to wait for Scott to log out first. Not only that but I have to wait for his “session” to expire as well (see above screenshot).
Future paid updates
Seats was new policy A, new policy B is the “update window”. Starting with Cerb5, major point releases (5.1, 5.2, 5.x) are no longer guaranteed to be free. When you purchase the software going forward you have to decide if you’re happy with the version you have right now. Beyond the short warranty period where you’ll get all major updates on the house, going forward it will cost you.
There’s no penalty for not buying each version, when you see a feature you like or fix you needed you can opt in for more updates; simply purchase another window of updates and you get the current version and any future releases in that time frame. The system will prevent you out from upgrading a 5.x desk past your expiration date.
So what about minor point releases (5.0.1, 5.0.2, 5.0.x)? Remember those are now free for your version, and now more than ever a minor release is strictly a maintenance update; bug fixes or simple suggestions from the community only. If we find some glaring flaw in a future major release and can back port the fix into the earlier versions, we will do so.
More details on everything “license”:
- (short version) http://www.cerberusweb.com/buy
- (long version) http://wiki.cerb5.com/wiki/Licenses
The “update” screenshot is from Aug 4, 2010 so price and time window are subject to change.
Things you lose with an upgrade from 4.x
There’s probably a ton of things that have changed if you’re jumping from 2.x or 3.x, but unfortunately they’re versions of Cerb before my time with the company, so I’ll have to skip those. Let me just say if you’re migrating from that far back you’re in for a gigantic learning curve anyway!
For those upgrading from 4.3.1 to 5.0 not a whole lot is blatantly different. Sure some terminology and behavior has changed (we feel for the better), and there’s a couple of new features, but there’s only a handful of things that were outright deprecated. All of these were plugins and while a few things are gone, a few others were just made optional downloads.
Deprecated Plugins
All three of these are GONE, you cannot get them back.
Web-API — It’s now been retooled as the RESTful Web-API for 5.x. The RESTful Web-API is still named “Web-API” on it’s wiki page, so try and ignore the seemingly awkward contradiction in the name. It does not require the internal ‘helpdesk setup’ tab as it did in 4.x.

Fetch & Retrieve — Early versions of Cerb4 included this as part of “core”, but was phased out in favor of Google Search Engine. It was put back in as an optional plugin during the latter stages of 4.x’s lifespan (helpdesk setup, Features & Plugins).

Mobile phone interface — Chances are this is going to be replaced with something better shortly.

Optional Plugins
Both of these can be downloaded via SVN, moved to the cerb5/storage/plugins directory, and enabled via ‘helpdesk setup’, ‘Features & Plugins’ – http://svn.webgroupmedia.com/cerb5/trunk/plugins/official/
Forum Explorer (severely dated documentation)

Google Search Engine (fairly up to date documentation)

Summary of new features
This is not everything by far, as a lot of the changes are more subtle. I’ve chosen to spotlight a few that already have some comprehensive documentation available. For a full list of all the changes:
Drafts — Long requested feature to save worker replies still in progress. Includes an auto-save mechanism to protect you from delivery failures (SMTP issues).

Snippets — Revamped “E-mail Templates” for improved personalization, including an expanded set of tokens (latest sender’s assigned organization) and conditional logic (if sender is from Microsoft, add a support worker’s name and phone number to the message). Auto-responses and group signatures inherited these same benefits as well.

Broadcast — Bulk messaging or replying to multiple tickets at once. The message body supports the Snippets syntax so you can write a personalized message to each recipient in one go. (The documentation for this one is still a work in progress.)

Explore — Global navigation toolbar, useful for paging through any list in the Helpdesk. This replaces the Prev/Next shortcuts in ticket lists, but can also be put to good use for flipping through the address book, tasks, filtered searches, and workspaces.
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Out with the Old 4.x and in with the New 5.x
Starting from this point on, all blog write-ups will be 5.x focused. 4.3.1 will be the last version for the 4.x branch and all efforts in development and documentation will look to the future. (We still support Cerb4 so feel free to get a hold of us in Town Hall or via the e-mail contact form.)
Remember the new “update window” policy we talked about at the beginning? Well a side effect of that deal is not everyone will be on the latest version anymore; that was an issue back in 4.x too but a personal choice, now money ($$$) can be the deciding factor. Therefore some people will choose to stay with 5.0 and not pay for the newest release, and some people will stay on the cutting edge updating with each version. Naturally that leaves us at a disadvantage here when it comes to documentation, as each upcoming release will have brand new features and possibly re-tooled behavior for old features.
For example Links is a new 5.1+ feature and is not available to 5.0 users, which means that tutorial only applies to 5.1. The same can be said of how “Next Worker” changed. It’s not a new feature per se but the fundamental behavior has changed between point releases (5.0 -> 5.1), so we’ll need TWO separate docs explaining it for each version.
The moral of the story: I will try to make note of which 5.x version I’m writing for at the top of any corresponding blog or wiki posts. Hopefully it’s not too confusing.
See ya in Cerb5!
-joegeck@wgm





















