The Evergreen community at large have agreed upon an upgrade cycle that produces new major releases twice a year, in Spring and Fall. Major releases can contain new features. The community supports each major release with 12 subsequent monthly minor releases that contain only bug fixes, and continues to provide security fixes if necessary for an additional three months after the end of the regular minor bug fix support, for a total of 15 months of support for each major release.

As a general rule, as the Evergreen community releases each new version of the Evergreen software, they also provide a guideline on how to upgrade from the previous release as part of the official Evergreen documentation at http://docs.evergreen-ils.org. Follow the instructions exactly and in the order that they are given—and if you run into a problem, report it to the community with as much detail about the error message or symptoms of the problem as you can.

Keep the Evergreen release schedule in mind when planning your own testing and upgrade schedules. If you participate in testing new Evergreen releases during the release candidate stages, you will prepare your own library for the upgrade process and help flush out any remaining bugs before the major release of the software. This also gives you time to prepare the members of your library for the upcoming changes by giving them the chance, when possible, to familiarize themselves with new features on your test system. You also have the chance to prepare supporting materials, like handouts and other kinds of documentation, to help your users before, during and after each upgrade cycle.