To upgrade the FlexiCapture installation, it's needed to:

• Upgrade the Server components
• Upgrade the Station components and projects
• Perform some additional post-upgrade actions

Your account must have sufficient privileges to perform the upgrade. Local Admin Rights are required to run the Station and Server installers and to upgrade the database.

Upgrading Server components

Mount the ISO file and run the installer. Before updating the Server components, the installer will check if any newer software components are required (e.g. the most recent version of .NET runtime, etc.). It'll be required to wait until all the necessary updates are installed before the FlexiCapture Server itself can be updated. The installer will detect the installed components and then upgrade the required components. Components cannot be modified during the upgrade.

If the Processing Server and Processing Stations are being upgraded, the installer will preserve any existing service user accounts. When the upgrade completes, please check that the existing service user accounts have been preserved.

Next, make sure all the required components are upgraded:

• IIS / Application Server
• Processing Server
• License Server Note: Processing Stations are upgraded using the Station installer.

Tip: For information about installing FlexiCapture in silent mode, check this article.
Once the Server installation is complete, you will be redirected to the Administration and Monitoring Console. If this does not happen, try the following:

1. Manually open the Administration and Monitoring Console (on the Application Server, use this address http://FCServerHostname/FlexiCapture12/Monitoring/ ).
2. Close all Internet Explorer instances and launch Internet Explorer as administrator.

In the Administration and Monitoring Console, click the Upgrade database version button.
After the above steps are completed, open Windows Services and check that all FlexiCapture services are running and their startup type is set to automatic.

Finally, check and re-apply the custom settings that should have been saved as described in the Saving your custom configuration settings section in Preparations for a FlexiCapture 12 Distributed Upgrade.

Upgrading Station components

It's required to install the upgrade on the following computers:

• Processing Stations
• Scanning Stations,  Verification Stations, and any other FlexiCapture desktop stations
• Computers running the Project Setup Station and FlexiLayout Studio

Mount the ISO file and run the installer. The installer will detect the installed components and upgrade the required components. It's impossible to modify components during the upgrade.

Make sure that the correct License Server address is specified. If the wrong address is specified during the upgrade, it can be corrected later in the C:\Program Files\ABBYY FlexiCapture 12 Stations\LicensingSettings.xml file.

Once the Processing Stations have been upgraded, open Windows Services and check that all FlexiCapture-related services are running and their startup type is set to automatic.

On the Processing Server, check that the Processing Station has a working connection.

Upgrading projects

The project upgrade process applies the latest changes to the projects. This includes built-in neural networks, pre-defined rules, etc.

Project upgrades should only be carried out by staff familiar with the configuration of the projects affected (typically, this will be solution owners). Additionally, in-depth knowledge of the product is required, to prevent unwanted changes in project behavior.

Projects can be upgraded either using the GUI of the Project Setup Station or using FCAdminTools.

Open the project on the Project Setup Station. As the Project Setup Station version has been just upgraded, it will be prompted to upgrade the project. Old projects cannot be used unless you upgrade them:

Important! Upgraded projects cannot be rolled back and cannot be used with older versions of the program.

Larger projects will take longer to upgrade.

FCAdminTools offers a command for upgrading projects. Sample command:

C:\Program Files\ABBYY FlexiCapture 12 Stations\FCAdminTools.exe UpgradeProject /Server="https://FCSRV" /Project="Banking_eng" /U=user /P=password

All changes made by the upgrade will be displayed in the log dialog box (see the screenshots below).

Important! If something goes wrong during the upgrade, the only way to diagnose the problem is to refer to the logs displayed in the log dialog box. Be sure to save the contents of the log dialog box to a text file for future reference. Simply select all logs, copy them, and then paste them into a text file.

Any Document Definitions which become invalid as a result of the upgrade will be marked in red and will be disabled:

Open each invalid Document Definition and either click Check Document Definition or press F9. This will display the cause of the problem. You will need to fix the problem before you can save the Document Definition and continue with the upgrade.

Once finished, it's needed to publish the changed Document Definition manually. This can only be done by the user who launched the project upgrade, as the Document Definition will be checked out by that user.

Best-practice advice for complex projects: Create a local copy of the project and upgrade the project locally to spot any possible inconsistencies before the actual upgrade.

Post-Upgrade Tasks

Once the system has been upgraded, existing batches will contain outdated documents:

To update a document, right-click it and select Update to Latest Version.

Upgrading FlexiCapture for Invoices

The upgrade procedure will create a copy of each existing Document Definition, which will be named YourDocDefName_old. These will be copies of the original Document Definitions and will not contain any changes introduced by the upgrade.

Next, the upgrade procedure will add the new features, modify the standard scripts or rules, and add the new functionality to the Document Definitions.

It is best practice to keep track of the changes made to the default scripts or rules, as any changes made will be overwritten by the upgrade. It's also recommended to create backups of any standard scripts or rules that should be modified. For ease of reference, it's recommended to prefix all custom scripts or rules with Custom-. There are some default scripts and event handlers to which a prefix cannot be added and which can be overwritten during an upgrade. Specifically, it's needed to manually review and modify the following:

• Event Handler: After document rules are checked 
• Rule Global Script Module

Conflicts are typically caused by custom changes made to out-of-the-box fields or rules. If something does not work as expected in an upgraded Document Definition, you can always refer to its earlier version and manually adjust the settings (original versions of your Document Definitions are saved with the _old postfix added to their names). For typical situations and settings that can cause conflicts when upgrading FlexiCapture for Invoices, see Troubleshooting upgrade problems.

To check if the invoice Document Definition is up-to-date, open its properties and click the FlexiLayout tab. A successfully updated Document Definition should have its Main FlexiLayout version number incremented: