Hey Padma,

ServiceNow provides many resources to help with the upgrade process. This Upgrades article provides links to all the relevant tools and content to assist in the upgrade process. There's also an explanation of our End of Life (EOL) Upgrade Program in this article that will help answer some of your timing related questions. Ultimately, since you will need to be on N-1 effective the Orlando release, if you're not sure you want to go to the current Orlando release in March, you can simply upgrade to New York instead and still be within the N-1 policy.

Keith,

For that example for companies on Madrid that need to be N-1 compatible, they were in compliance after the New York release, but when do they become out of compliance with Orlando?

As soon as it is released? Or, can they wait for Orlando Patch 1 for example and plan to test and upgrade to that Patch level when it is released?

If its the former, then you basically will be upgrading to a new release twice a year and staying 1 behind current release, if you do not want to migrate to new releases as soon as they are out.

Hey Mike - sorry for the delayed response, there's typically about a 60 day grace period after a release drops. What's most important is that if you're going to be out of your support entitlement term (e.g. N-1 or N-2) when Orlando drops, then you'll already be picked up by our End of Life program (EOL) and automatically be assigned a date post the Orlando release for the upgrade to occur. If you don't like the date we've picked, then you have to interact with the Change Request that's been automatically created in order to pick a date you want (within that 60ish day time frame), otherwise, the system will automatically do the upgrade on the date set by the system.

Thanks Keith, that is helpful. Yes, in December I think we got a notice for a Madrid to New York upgrade scheduled for mid April, so that seems in line with what you are stating here.  So, you technically can go past the new release that makes you N-2, but need to upgrade within 60 days.

Yes - and what's most important is that if you need to adjust the automatically assigned date, you can do so via HI - Manage Instance page or simply use the notes in the Change Request that came in the email and ask for the date to be changed to a date you specify. They are pretty flexible if you're engaged in the process, otherwise, they will simply upgrade the instance on the date the system selected if they've not had any input from you.