End of Service Announcement: Service Portal

[Gerry]

As we have previously communicated pre-pandemic, the the Service Portal (service.hornbill.com) has been replaced with the more functional and flexible Employee Portal.  We ere on track before the pandemic hit to EoL this portal, but because of the disruption placed on everyone by the lockdowns, we made a call to leave the portal in place so as not to load our customers with addtional work.  However, the time has now come to serve notice that we will be taking this portal out of action, at the latest, by the end of this year. 

Most Hornbill customers have already transitioned away from the Service portal, but there are just a small handful of customers still using the portal today.  For those remaining customers using the service portal, our customer success team will make contact and provide you with assistance to help you make the transition to the Employee Portal. 

There are improvements and enhancements we would very much like to make to the Employee Portal, but because both the Employee and Service Portals share substantially the same customisation data, and because the service portal browser compatibility issues, we are currently limited to maintaining the lowest common denominator.  Once the service portal is taken out of service we are able to make more progressive changes. 

[Cecilia Blumenstock]

Hi @Gerry. Do you have any update regarding this topic? The date is approaching and we are no way to prepared to do this change. End of year is a terrible timing, with end of fiscal year and many people on holidays.

Can we see this been postponed for a later date next year?

Thank you,

Cecilia Blumenstock

[Gareth Watkins]

In relation to this topic can I ask: -

If we follow the switch over guidance, will basic users be redirected to our new employee portal home page by using the existing URL for the current portal?(i.e. do we need to reprogram icons for all users where we provide business wide shortcuts.

Secondly, if users do get redirected, is there a timeframe where this redirect will be deactivated and we need to provide a new URL to our basic users to access the new employee portal?

Thirdly, will the old portal definitely be switched off on a specific date before the year end or will there be a stay of execution into January in case we can’t get the new employee portal configured in time?

Many thanks

[Gerry]

@Cecilia Blumenstock @Gareth Watkins

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The date is approaching and we are no way to prepared to do this change. End of year is a terrible timing, with end of fiscal year and many people on holidays.

Its a little disingenuous to suggest this is a last minute thing which is how one might read your comment - we first announced the decommissioning of this *before* the pandemic, so over 3 years ago  ,we have been reminding and delaying every since, this is not a new thing, we put it on hold when COVID hit and have since waited another year or so, I am reluctant to continue to drag this on ad infinitum, so the plan is to shut this now, unmaintained and technically not really supported portal down at the end of the year, part of our "quiet time" clean-up. 

There is an option for a re-direct, how long we can keep that active I am not sure to be honest, I expect we possibly cannot, as that redirect is a function of the portal its self.  I think three years ago our thinking was, customers would migrate and we would provide a re-direct for simplicity. 
 

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Can we see this been postponed for a later date next year?

We do not want to disrupt our customers, or your customers, but we have had this on the cards for a number of years now, and the fact that we are having to maintain this service as operational is actually blocking future developments, so it really needs to come to an end.  If you both can give me a date in January where you are happy now to agree to service discontinuation, I will see what I can do internally to delay this,  but if you are asking for more than a week or two into January then I am reluctant to. 

Gerry

[Cecilia Blumenstock]

Hi @Gerry, thanks for your answer and sorry if it sounded that is coming last minute from your side. I know it is not and also understand there needs to be a end to it.

If we would postpone this to Feb 28, 2023 it would be perfect. We can do prepare the Employee portal in January and February we would use to change documentation, communicate with customers and finally roll out. 

End of January 2023 is tight but certainly a lot better than end of this year.

Best Regards,

Cecilia

[Gerry]

@Cecilia Blumenstock

I said, one or two weeks, you said one or two months  I will meet you in the middle here,  you have been a long standing customer.  I will extend the service portal until the end of January, so 31st will be the last day, that it though... no more, 3 years and one month is a lot of "extension"...

Gerry

[Gareth Watkins]

@Gerry

Is this extended deadline provided to all old portal users? 

It would be beneficial to have the time to roll the employee portal out in early January, given colleagues leaves schedules over the next 2 weeks.

 

Regards

Gareth

[Gerry]

On 12/19/2022 at 9:22 AM, Gareth Watkins said:

@Gerry

Is this extended deadline provided to all old portal users? 

It would be beneficial to have the time to roll the employee portal out in early January, given colleagues leaves schedules over the next 2 weeks.

 

Regards

Gareth

Yes, until the end of January 2023

Gerry

[Keith Stevenson]

All,
Following the above end of Service Portal in January the Service URL redirect has been removed.  All email tempaltes should be updated to use live.hornbill.com and all customers informed that they should use live.hornbill.com. 

Kind Regards

Hornbill Cloud Team

[Keith Stevenson]

All,

Due to a number of customers still expecting the URL redirect, this has been re-enabled.  This will now be disabled on May 2nd at 0900. 

Kind Regards

Hornbill Cloud Team