Did you hear the fantastic news?  Three of Bamboo's biggest products just launched with new major releases!  NOTE: These initial releases are SharePoint 2007 only, with corresponding SharePoint 2010 releases planned for October.

Alert Plus, Release 3.0

Calendar Plus Web Part, Release 4.0, and,

List Rollup Web Part, Release 5.0

In this post, I will discuss how to successfully upgrade from previous versions of Alert Plus.  You can also find all the information you could possibly need to know about Alert Plus through the official Online Documentation.

Here are a few things to take note of:

• These major releases are currently supported on SharePoint 2007 only; we will be launching corresponding releases for SharePoint 2010 in the October time frame.
• Bamboo Solutions can only guarantee a successful, worry-free migration from Alert Plus v2.8.  If you are running an older version of Alert Plus Web Part, or are unsure which version you're running, we suggest that after upgrading, go to the Alert Plus Web Part and open each individual Alert Jobs and save each Alert Job.
• At this time, Alert Plus Release 3.0 is not supported in SharePoint Project Management Central v1.8. Support for the latest version will be added in Release 2.0 of SharePoint Project Management Central in the October time frame.
• Once you have installed Alert Plus Release 3.0 over an existing version, you cannot easily roll back without deleting existing calendars.  We suggest trying Alert Plus Release 3.0 on a test server if you would like to evaluate the product free for 30 days prior to paying the upgrade fee.

The very first thing we need to do is retrieve a new Installation Package of the new Alert Plus.  The easiest way to retrieve the installation package is to go to the  Alert Plus product page and select  , found in the Alert Plus banner.  This will add the Trial Download of Alert Plus to your shopping cart.  Upon checkout, you will receive a link to download the installation package.

As mentioned in the Product Release Announcement, the engine of Alert Plus has changed.  As a result, we want to completely remove the back-end Alert Plus Services.  The location of the Alert Plus Services will depend on the person who installed them.  If you're not sure, to locate the Services, open the Web Part tool pane for Bamboo Alert Plus Web Part and locate the setting URL location of Alert+ Subscriber Web Service as shown below:

This will tell you which IIS server is running the Alert Plus Services.  Go to that server and follow these steps:

1. Go to Services and stop the NT services Bamboo.AlertPlusService and Bamboo.SchedulerService
2. Go To Add/Remove Programs (or Programs and Features if running Windows 2008), and remove the two entries Bamboo Alert+ Subscriber Web Service and Bamboo.Alert+ Services
3. Open IIS, go to the Web Application where the Alert Plus Web Service was installed, and delete the 'Bamboo.AlertPlusSubscriber' virtual directory (the virtual directory is orphaned at this time).
4. Go to Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks and delete all tasks that start with "Bamboo.AlertPlus".

You have now successfully removed the back-end Alert Plus Services.

Now logon to a server in the SharePoint farm that is running the Windows SharePoint Services Web Application service, commonly known as the Web Front End Server, as a user who has the following rights:

• Member of the local server Administrators group
• Member of the SharePoint Farm Administrators group
• Identified as site collection administrator for each site collection where the Bamboo product will be available. This is required to automatically activate the site collection feature.

Run the self extracting .EXE provided by the installation package.  The setup window will open automatically

Select the Alert Plus Web Part (SharePoint 2007) component, and click Install.

Walk through each step of the installation.  On the step Repair, Remove or Install, select the option Upgrade/Repair Existing and Install New and continue through the steps of the installation wizard.

Upon successful installation of the new version of Alert Plus Web Part, go to the page(s) where Alert Plus Web Part resides.  When the page loads, the Alert Plus Web Part automatically registers with the new custom SharePoint Timer Jobs.  Make sure you load every page where Alert Plus Web Part resides.

Congratulations, you have successfully upgraded Alert Plus!

For additional information, including configuration and usability of Alert Plus, view the Online Documenation.