Upgrading Case Manager to the latest product level

Product Lifecycle Strategy

IBM Business Automation Workflow Software Support Lifecycle Policy contains the lifecycle strategy for Business Automation Workflow (BAW) and links to the upgrade pages for each version. When you upgrade IBM Case Manager (ICM), find the latest version of BAW and make that your upgrade target. The lifecycle page is regularly updated when new versions come out.

As stated on the Software Lifecycle page, Case Manager 5.3.3 reaches End of Support (EOS) on 2023-09-30.

Case Manager customers who do not have Business Automation Workflow can keep their Case Manager installation up to date by purchasing an extended support contract during the support extension period and upgrading to Case Manager 5.3.3. We release critical fixes on top of Case Manager 5.3.3 that address security and severe vulnerability issues in the BAW code base that are also relevant to Case Manager.

Product Upgrade Instructions

You must install Business Automation Workflow and create a deployment environment before you upgrade Case Manager to BAW.

• If you do not have an existing BAW or IBM Business Process Manager (BPM) environment, then install BAW first.
• If you have an IBM BPM environment you need to upgrade, then read the technote Upgrading Business Process Manager to the latest product level.

BAW integrates with external CPE (Content Platform Engine) and ICN (IBM Content Navigator) servers. Existing Case Manager environments can be upgraded to BAW by integrating the CPE and ICN servers of the Case Manager environment into BAW as external CPE and ICN servers. BAW also has embedded versions of the CPE and ICN products. When you upgrade Case Manager to BAW, the following guidelines apply:

• The CPE server used by Case Manager has to be integrated as an external CPE server in BAW.
• For the ICN  server used by Case Manager, our recommended and preferred configuration is to integrate that as an external ICN server in BAW.
• The ICN server embedded in BAW is not supported in production environments. 
• BAW and external ICN and CPE integration is tested with all components deployed in WebSphere Application Server (WAS) 8.5.5. You can configure BAW to work with an external CPE and external ICN that are running on WebSphere Application Server V9.x. However, the JDK versions of the application servers must match.

The Upgrading to IBM Business Automation Workflow documentation page has links to tech notes with more instruction for various upgrade scenarios.

Follow the BAW IBM Documentation link to upgrade Case Manager to BAW.

Licensing Concerns

Case Manager customers need to trade up to BAW licenses through the project office. You can contact your IBM account team for more details.

When BAW integrates with an external CPE or external ICN server, then those products and their licenses are maintained separately. 

Support Processes

• After you upgrade to BAW, you can open support cases against the Business Automation Workflow product.

• After you upgrade to BAW, you can find fixes by searching on the Business Automation Workflow product in Fix Central.

Business Automation Workflow Case functionality in Cloud Pak for Business Automation

Case features are available in Cloud Pak for Business Automation. You can migrate your Case Manager data from a Case Manager environment to a Cloud Pak for Business Automation cluster. Refer to the Migrating IBM Case Manager to IBM Business Automation Workflow on Cloud Pak for Business Automation 22.0.2 or 23.0.1 tech note for general guidance about the migration process.

Business Automation Workflow Case functionality in Hybrid and Cloud Environments

Case features are available in hybrid and cloud-based offerings, such as Digital Business Automation for Multicloud, Business Automation Workflow on Cloud. These offerings are currently intended for new case management projects. There are no upgrade or migration paths from Case Manager to any hybrid or cloud-based offerings.

Business Process Management Features

Once you upgraded to BAW, you have access to the business process management features. For more details, see the business process management overview and the business process management section of IBM Documentation.