acGarage makes upgrading and maintaining your activeCollab setup straight forward. You sign up for acGarage, and we will take care of keeping your activeCollab setup up to date, keep adding enhancements and perform routine cleanup tasks.
Here are some frequently asked questions about acGarage Pro.
General
- How does acGarage Pro work?
- What is kaizen?
- What products / modules / themes / versions are supported?
- I develop a module / theme for activeCollab. How do I get that added to acGarage?
- What happens to unsupported modules & themes? I don’t see a module that I have on my system in your list of supported products. What will happen to it?
- What activeCollab versions does it work with?
- How does acGarage compare to activeCollab’s own installation / upgrade service?
- What about my own customizations / hacks? Will they work?
- Do you keep a backup? What happens if things go wrong?
- Will this be secure?
- I want further customizations. Do you offer custom programming services?
Subscription & Pricing
- Why do you need my FTP information?
- I want only the hacks and/or housekeeping service. Is that available?
- How much does it cost?
- How do I signup?
- If I am not happy, will I get a refund?
Profile & Preferences
- I can’t seem to validate my FTP information. What’s wrong?
- What is my FTP directory?
- I purchased Planning / Reports module, but I can’t find my purchase email. What should I do?
- I would like you to upgrade my current setup to the latest version. How do I do that?
General
How does acGarage Pro work?
Once you signup, we take care of downloading, testing and setting up upgrades on your server. We also perform housekeeping tasks every month. Here’s how the process works.
As activeCollab versions are released, Apps Magnet experts test them on our servers. We integrate supported modules, themes and hacks and verify they work. We will even upgrade our own modules to work with latest aC versions. Once we are happy with the quality, we will push these upgrades onto your server. And you will receive a notification about the successful upgrade.
Technical Outline / Process Flow
- New version of activeCollab / module / hack / theme is released
- acGarage team downloads it and sets it up on their test servers
- We test to ensure the new version works. If we need to make changes to any hacks so that they work with new versions, we apply them.
- Once ready, we compile an acGarage package of new version and put it on our distribution server
- Distribution server goes through available updates everyday. It validates your license for activeCollab / paid modules and your preferences for which products should be upgraded.
- A special acGarage process then carries out following for each client.
- Find products to upgrade
- Make FTP connection to client’s server
- Validate the server contains an activeCollab installation
- Upload zipped packages of available upgrades to client’s server via FTP
- Also upload a set of special acGarage scripts to client’s server
- Call the acGarage upgrade script on client’s server
- The acGarage upgrade script on client’s server then:
- Unzip module package
- Upload package contents to server in a temporary folder
- Backup currently active files
- Rename temporary folder / files to make them live
- Perform upgrade / activation if necessary
- Delete unzipped files, clean up
- Control returns to acGarage distribution server. And it will:
- Send success notification
- Perform cleanup operations
- Move to the next client
What is kaizen?
The term kaizen (Japanese for “improvement”) is a Japanese word adopted into English referring to a philosophy or practices focusing on continuous improvement in manufacturing activities, business activities in general, and even life in general, depending on interpretation and usage.
What products / modules / themes / versions are supported?
We support all latest beta and stable releases of activeCollab. acGarage Pro can also upgrade all our products. acGarage Pro will also keep any other custom modules / themes intact. It will overwrite any non Apps Magnet hacks you may have though.
I develop a module / theme for activeCollab. How do I get that added to acGarage?
We would love to hear from you. Please contact us.
What happens to unsupported modules & themes? I don’t see a module that I have on my system in your list of supported products. What will happen to it?
Unsupported themes and modules will be preserved across upgrades. Unsupported hacks will be overwritten.
What activeCollab versions does acGarage work with?
Any Corporate version of activeCollab. acGarage can upgrade earlier activeCollab versions to the latest after you sign up. acGarage works, and upgrades to, the latest beta and stable releases of activeCollab.
How does acGarage Pro compare to activeCollab’s own installation / upgrade service?
The superb team at activeCollab too offers an installation / upgrade service. They can install / upgrade your activeCollab setup to the latest version for a fee of $49. This is great service if you only want to upgrade activeCollab core system. The fees are also applicable for every upgrade.
acGarage Pro is a comprehensive service. We offer year round upgrades not only for activeCollab, but also for modules and themes. Everything is automatic. Once you signup, we will take care of your upgrades.
And upgrades is only one component of acGarage offering. We also develop useful hacks to activeCollab and they are given complimentary to all acGarage subscribers. We also perform housekeeping / cleanup operations every month.
So, if you are looking for one time setup or upgrade, activeCollab’s services are great. If you are looking for comprehensive service with value-adds, acGarage is the only, and best choice today.
What about my own customizations / hacks? Will they work?
If you have hacked activeCollab core files, they will be overwritten in acGarage upgrades. Hacks done to themes will be overwritten too. We encourage you to share interesting hacks with us so that we can include them in our upgrades and provide them to the entire acGarage community.
We will expand on supported hacks as time goes by, and we are confident our hacks will serve most users well.
Do you keep a backup? What happens if things go wrong?
acGarage keeps a backup of all files it upgrades. When we upgrade activeCollab version, a backup of your database and files is also created. If things go wrong, we can revert to the backup quickly. Our experts monitor upgrades, so if something is not right, we can jump to it and sort things out quickly.
Will this be secure?
For us to perform the updates to your server we do need the FTP credentials. Rest assured this information will never be shared / misused. You can create a special FTP / administrator account for us if you wish.
I want further customizations. Do you offer custom programming services?
Sorry. We do not offer custom programming services.
Subscription & Pricing
Why do you need my FTP information?
acGarage Pro uploads updates to your server automatically. To upload files to your server, we need FTP access to your server. We also need to store it at our end since we update your server as new versions are released. Rest assured this information will never be shared / misused. You can create a special FTP / administrator account for us if you wish.
I want only the hacks and/or housekeeping service. Is that available?
Yes, you can purchase Houseekping module or any other products individually as well.
How much does it cost?
acGarage Pro’s annual service plan is $199. We will upgrade your installation as many times as is required. Housekeeping tasks are carried out once a month. acGarage can save you more than 100 hours and $2000+ in a year!
How do I sign up?
Signing up for acGarage takes just 2 minutes. Click here to sign up for acGarage annual plan, make payment and complete the profile.
If I am not happy, will I get a refund?
You may cancel your acGarage subscription at any time. Refunds are available only in the first 60 days of your signing up. If you cancel within first 60 days of signing up, a 50% refund will be provided via our payment processor (Paypal).
Profile & Preferences
I can’t seem to validate my FTP information. What’s wrong?
Valid FTP information is critical for acGarage to function. We need your FTP server name, username and password to connect. We also need to know which folder contains the activeCollab setup after FTP login is successful.
If you are having problems in validating the FTP information, please double check that the server, username and password are spelled correctly. Most often, the problem is with the FTP directory. This should specify directory location of activeCollab setup, relative to the root directory for this FTP user.
If you can’t get this to work, submit your profile and let us know. We will try and fix the problem.
What is my FTP directory?
FTP directory is the folder containing your activeCollab setup, after successful FTP login. In most cases this will be like “public_html” or “htdocs” or something similar. If you setup your activeCollab as a subfolder within your domain, this may be like “public_html/ac” or “htdocs/ac”.
If you can’t get this to work, submit your profile and let us know. We will try and fix the problem.
I purchased Planning / Reports module, but I can’t find my purchase email. What should I do?
Try a couple of emails you can guess you purchased them with 😉 Click “Validate” to see if they work. If they don’t, save your profile, and give us any further information about your order that you recall. We will try and link things up for you.
I would like you to upgrade my current setup to the latest version. How do I do that?
When you signup for acGarage, you can let us know if you would like your version to be upgraded to the latest. There is a checkbox in the signup completion screen that you can tick. You can also add any special notes for us here.