In the current environment, where every single company is under threat of harmware, darnware, malware, spyware, crytoware, et cetera, Sage devs should device a way to install and maintain Sage updates without requiring users to have admin rights. This weakens the cybersecurity position of many of your customers. One wrong click and there goes the network.
I can understand the installation, maybe, but why not retool the install/update process similar to how browsers do it.
The biggest problem is for those who need to install these updates on dozens of machines.
Do devs / testers realize that Sage has a dumb program (sagemgr.exe) that has to "record" something after so many days / sessions on each machine, and this requires admin rights?
Do devs / testers know/realize that a tax table update just drops a couple of tiny files on each machine, but this needs admin rights?
Do devs / testers know it takes 14-18 clicks to install this tax table update per machine?
Do devs / testers know this update not only requires admin rights, but also requires to temporarily set the UNC data path in the admin context, and sometimes that does not even work?
Do devs / testers know, this update should be done on the server only and propagated to the users machines without having to install it on each machine individually?
Ideas:
Make app / tax table update installer fully scriptable, so we admins can install these tiny updates with group policies on logon (under user context, which means, after you don't require admin rights).
Better yet, the initial server setup also installs a self-update service, when an update is dropped, the service updates the server on preset after hours window (1 - 2 am). Once the server is updated, when an user workstation starts Sage, it checks if the update is locally installed, if not, it notifies the user and performs a self-update: close > copy update from server to local c:\sage path > update > reopen >log in screen.
Migrate that dumb sagemgr call from "on sage quit" to a scheduled task created on installation. Count seats or whatever you do on logon or from 8-9pm every monday or something.
This maybe this is overkill for single or less than 5 user installations, but for quantum installs, it should be the default.
Can't make all this happen at once?
How about starting with the basic task of removing the need for admin rights to install and maintain the application?
Thanks
Oscar Diaz
