Upgrade considerations for Relativity

The new Relativity Document Conversion application and associated public RESTful API endpoints replaces the Cache Manager agent as the solution for clearing conversion cache files. Relativity Document Conversion will only support time-based cache deletion, and the clear cache button will no longer be available on the Cache Location Server page. Although the Cache Manager Agent will still appear on the Agents tab, it is not operational as long as the Relativity Document Conversion application is active. The Cache Manager Agent will be removed altogether in a future release.

There are three agents for the Relativity Document Conversion application:

• Conversion Cache Manager—generates jobs per active Cache Location Server during off hours, which kicks off the cleanup process.
• Conversion Cache Delete File Discovery—executes the first phase of the cleanup process, Discovery, identifies and batches up old/expired cache files for each workspace of Cache Location Server on a particular job.
• Conversion Cache Delete File Worker—executes the second phase where all cached files that were batched up in Discovery phase are deleted.

See the Relativity.Conversion.Cache filter group in the instance settings descriptions topic for information on the settings for these agents.

Server 2022 is the last Relativity version that supports Service Bus, as we will be deprecating Service Bus in Server 2023. We recommend that you begin converting from Service Bus to RabbitMQ beginning in Server 2022. You must use RabbitMQ version 3.11.x or 3.12.x and a compatible version of Erlang; however, you cannot currently run version 3.12.x with any supported version of Erlang above v25.x. Ensure that you're using the 64-bit version of Erlang, or else the system will be constrained to 2GB of memory. If you intend to use RabbitMQ 3.10.x-3.12.x, you must have Relativity Server 2022 Patch 2 for 12.1.537.3 (released on January 5, 2023) installed, and you must have valid Community credentials to access and download it.

Note: The RabbitMQ 3.10 series became unsupported by the vendor on 12/31/2023. We cannot guarantee compatibility of RabbitMQ 3.10.x with Server 2022 or Server 2023 after 12/31/2023 and recommend upgrading to a supported version of RabbitMQ. For details on RabbitMQ's version policies, see RabbitMQ versions. If you are upgrading to 3.12.x, review the RabbitMQ upgrade overview beforehand to avoid issues during the upgrade process.

You can now enable HTTPS on the dtSearch service, which is a self-hosted web service that runs on any agent server on which the dtSearch Search Manager agent is enabled. Like Service Host, this service is not TLS-encrypted out of the box, but you can now enable this service. For details see HTTPS setup for dtSearch service.

The following agents are new:

• Relativity Forms Metrics Collector—runs once a day during Off Hours and collects data about Object Types and their usage of Relativity Forms.

• Mass Operation Manager—works with Service Bus to complete mass operations within the environment.

The following instance settings are new:

• CustomPageDeletionDelay—the amount of time, in seconds, that the system will wait before removing previous versions of a deployed custom page.

• CustomPageDeploymentPath—the server path that custom pages will be deployed to. The Machine Name should be set for each web server. If not set, custom pages will be deployed relative to the Relativity Web installation path.

• CustomPageDeploymentManagerSleepTime—the number of seconds the Custom Page Deployment Manager agent will wait for a new version to become available.

• EnableCustomPageReadinessCheck—when true, the Custom Page Deployment Manager will attempt to invoke an application's custom page readiness endpoint before routing requests to its web pages. The optional readiness endpoint can be configured by application developers to provide a way of performing start up tasks.

• MassOperationManagerThreadCount—the maximum number of threads for each Mass Operation Manager. If 0 or less, defaults to Agent server processor count * 2.

• MigrationMaxParallelFileCopyThreads—the maximum number of parallel threads ARM for Processing will use during the file repository copy operation.

• ScriptRunManagerMaxConcurrentThreads—determines the max amount of concurrent script run threads each agent can use, defaults to 10.

• If you have Server 2021 PDF installed you need to upgrade to the Server 2022 PDF release.
• Legacy PDF functionality is removed, you need to install the new PDF RAP file.
  • To ensure your PDF Mass operation permissions are migrated, install the Server 2021 PDF app before upgrading to Relativity Server 2022.
  • If installing PDF for the first time in Server 2022 without migrating permissions, only System Admins will have PDF Mass Operation permission by default.

Limitations:

• PDFs created from the viewer are named with a unique ID instead of the document control number.
• The options defined on the PDF profile cannot be modified from the mass operation or from the Viewer.
• If you install this application, the Save as PDF mass operation is not available in the related items pane in the Review Interface.
• To uninstall the new PDF application on Sever 2022, you must contact Relativity Support.
• You cannot use mass operations on Data Grid-enabled fields.
• PDF does not integrate with the password bank. If you try to convert a native document that is password protected, an error occurs.

• Is an agent-based based application. This resolves many of the stability, performance, and scalability limitations of the Save as PDF functionality that comes out of the box in Relativity Sever 2021.
• By having its own agents, it has dedicated resources. The previous version shared resources with Imaging and Processing. This eliminates the problem of having PDF jobs queued behind a Processing or Imaging job.
• Maximum supported mass PDF jobs size is now 10,000 documents or 1,000,000 images.
• If a single document errors during a mass PDF jobs, the new application will skip that document and work on the next one. In the previous version, that job would had failed.
• It has new features such as a new PDF profile, a new progress and status bar, error reports, enhancement to production order, and new naming and content options.

Limitations:

• PDFs created from the viewer are named with a unique ID instead of the document control number.
• The options defined on the PDF profile cannot be modified from the mass operation or from the Viewer.
• If you install this application, the Save as PDF mass operation is not available in the related items pane in the Review Interface.
• To uninstall the new PDF application on Sever 2021, you must contact Relativity Support.
• You cannot use mass operations on Data Grid-enabled fields.
• PDF does not integrate with the Password bank. If you try to convert a native document that is password protected, an error occurs.

The following agents were added in Relativity Server 2021.

• Conversion Agent - Convert Ahead—works with the service bus to complete document conversion when the user is on the document viewer. Deploy each Conversion agent on its own server. Do not use the server for any other purpose but running this agent.
• Conversion Agent - Mass Convert—works with the service bus to complete document conversion when using the mass convert action. Deploy each Conversion agent on its own server. Do not use the server for any other purpose but running this agent.
• Conversion Agent - On the Fly—works with the service bus to complete document conversion for the current document opening. Deploy each Conversion agent – On the fly on its own server. Do not use the server for any other purpose but running this agent.

The following instance settings were added in Relativity Server 2021.

• UseAgentBasedConversion—change the value to true to use conversion agents on cloud instance.
• ConversionOnTheFlyThreadCounts—the maximum amount of threads that a Conversion Agent - On the Fly will use on its agent server.
• ConversionConvertAheadThreadCounts—the maximum amount of threads that a Conversion Agent - Convert Ahead will use on its agent server.
• ConversionMassConvertThreadCounts—the maximum amount of threads that a Conversion Agent - Mass Convert will use on its agent server.

Starting in Server 2021, Invariant requires worker server installation on each worker to function properly. This ensures workers have the appropriate Microsoft Visual C++ 2019 redistributables necessary.

When installing the RPC, the username must be EDDSDBO for Relativity Servercustomers.

Processing leverages OutsideIn as a new text extraction method for Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. OutsideIn does not utilize Microsoft Office APIs to extract text.

Entities with the same first and last name values are automatically merged instead of being created with a number suffix, for example Doe, John (1).

The following instance setting was added in Relativity 10.3.287.3:

• NativeImagingTimeout—the amount of time, in seconds, that the native imaging process waits for a single document to be imaged before killing the export process and moving to the next document.

The processing profile now includes a new text extraction fail-over method for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files. When you select the new Native, fail over to dtSearch, method, Relativity uses the native program to extract text from the file with dtSearch as a backup text extraction method if the native program fails.