CCBU has recently updated the software maintenance strategy for our enterprise products. You can find the document at this URL:
https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/customer-collaboration/unified-intelligent-contact-management-ente…
There are two key items contained within the document. The first is concerning the frequency of Maintenance Releases (MR). We provide MRs as a fully regression tested roll-up of defect fixes for each active release train. We will now be releasing MRs twice per year, and when a new MR for a release train is available, the previous MR reaches EoSM. The maintenance strategy document contains a link to a forward looking MR calendar.
The second is the details of the Engineering Special (ES) strategy. ESs are created an exception basis to address specific high impact, low product risk customer issues on the latest MR on a given major/minor release train. If a customer hits a defect and CCBU agrees to build an ES for the defect, then that ES will be built only on the currently supported MR. If a customer is on an earlier MR, the customer will be required to apply the latest MR before applying the ES. The document also contains a link to a document that contains a list of available ESs and links to those ESs and the release notes for those ESs. With this information partners no longer need to open a TAC case to access an ES, they can open the document and click a link to get the desired ES.
I encourage everyone to read the Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Software Maintenance Strategy and bookmark the very useful links within the document.
