The challenge: As a software company we have an innate desire to constantly release features as soon as they’re ready. This matches the agile development method product and engineering teams are familiar with. But that philosophy clashes with a quality professional’s requirements to manage change control.

The solution: Launch Trains. Qualio now releases product updates on a fixed cadence to provide predictability for customers and continue to deliver key product innovations.

Qualio will batch net-new features and feature enhancements into a single Launch Train with a Production release date approximately once per quarter. Customer communication will begin the month prior to release and can include emails or in-app notifications to Quality Users or all users, the Qualio Customer Newsletter, product release webinars, etc.. Additionally, release notes will be posted to the Qualio Help Center in advance of the release.

The Launch Train accommodates the 30-day validation period required for impacted features. When applicable (if the feature will impact a customer’s process), new feature updates will be released to all customer sandboxes first to facilitate validation activities. Then, at the end of the 30-day validation period, the features will be released to all Production accounts.

When validation is necessary we support our customers with updated Val-Packs, Qualio policies, and other relevant validation items from Dropbox and our Help Center. When we update our features as part of a Launch Train we update the val-packs. But we also update our documentation from time to time for minor corrections causing the val-packs to be updated for “admin” issues.

The Qualio product team has identified the following dates for 2024 launch trains. Changes to these dates will be reflected in Release Notes. Should a discrepancy in dates arise, the latest Release Notes will supersede this article.

Product changes are meticulously logged and available to all users from the gear in the left navigation bar. A green dot appears next to "Product Changes" when an unseen update is available to that specific user.

Below is an example of a non-bug update which includes details of what is being updated, the environment (sandbox or production) and if validation is recommended. When applicable, we provide the link to available validation packs.

The Product Change Log is also where you can find the Qualio version number. The example above displays a version of 24.0813.13, which can be translated as follows:

If you have further questions about Qualio’s Launch Trains, reach out to your Customer Success Manager or our Support Team via the in-app chat.