[WooCommerce] Upgrading from WC Autoship to Autoship Cloud

Upgrade Guide

Please follow these steps carefully to manage the upgrade process easily and responsibly.

Before Upgrading on a Live Production Site

Though similar, Autoship Cloud is a fundamentally different solution than WC Autoship. 

If you are planning to upgrade from WC Autoship to Autoship Cloud, you should first test the integration with Autoship Cloud on a staging or test site.  

This will be like installing it for the first time so you will be deactivating and deleting WC Autoship and all related WC Autoship plugins before installing and activating the Autoship Cloud

1. Create a Staging Site to Test Autoship Cloud

1. Create a staging site that is a duplicate (or a very close copy) of your live production store
   1. For more help on staging sites, please see this article from WPBeginner: How to Create a Staging Environment
2. Deactivate WC Autoship and ALL Autoship related plugins (Product Page Options, upsell, payment gateways, etc)

Important: deactivating the WC Autoship plugin will help to ensure that no automated processing of Autoship Schedules occurs on your staging site.

2. De-activate WC Autoship plugins

Navigate to the Plugins page in the Wordpress Admin section of your site. De-activate WC Autoship and all plugins related to WC Autoship (for example, WC Autoship Authorize.net Payments). Note: You should only de-activate, not delete.

3. Install WooCommerce payment plugins

Autoship Cloud requires the following official WooCommerce extensions to accept payments. 

This will replace any WC Autoship payment plugins on the site.  The payment plugins for WC Autoship will not work with Autoship Cloud. The most popular payment plugins used in migrations are listed below. Contact us if you do not see your payment gateway listed or see the full list of supported payment gateway integrations here.

• WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway
• Authorize.net
• PayPal Checkout
• Braintree
• Square

4. Install and Setup Autoship Cloud

You are now ready to continue to  Step 2: Installing Autoship Cloud On A Test or Staging Site

Testing the Upgrade on a Staging Site

Once you've determined that you are ready to upgrade from WC Autoship to Autoship Cloud, we strongly suggest trying the upgrade process on your staging site.

Before testing the upgrade, it's a good idea to confirm the following from the previous steps:

1. WC Autoship and all related WC Autoship plugins are deactivated
2. WooCommerce payment plugins are installed and WooCommerce checkout is tested and working
3. You've successfully setup & tested Autoship Cloud on the staging site

You're now ready to test the upgrade by migrating WC Autoship data to Autoship

1. Place your site into maintenance mode to avoid receiving new orders and data while upgrading Autoship

This is especially important for live production websites. 
Placing your site into maintenance mode is an easy way to avoid issues while upgrading Autoship on your site.  

We've found that using the plugin WP Maintenance Mode is a simple way to perform this on Wordpress sites and have a simple guide for using this plugin properly during an upgrade.

This helps to ensure that:

• No changes or orders can be made during the upgrade
• If there's an issue or problem with your upgrade, you can simply restore your backed up site 
  (note: it's best to troubleshoot any issues with an upgrade on a staging site before retrying the upgrade on your live production site)

2. Create a backup that can be restored

Upgrading Wordpress software & plugins can be unpredictable. Plugin and theme conflicts are known to occur in Wordpress environments. It is important to create a restore point so that the site and database can be reverted in the case of an error with the upgrade.

More information: Wordpress Backups

3. Migrate WC Autoship Data to Autoship Cloud

Important: Before importing Autoship Schedules into an active QPilot Site, you should 'Pause Processing' for your connected QPilot Site to avoid automatically processing any Scheduled Orders that are past due.

1. Navigate to WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Settings > Migrations (tab) in the Wordpress Admin section of your site.
2. Select the button to "Export Scheduled Orders". This action will export the Autoship Schedules (from the WC Autoship plugin's Autoship Schedules) and create a CSV file that we can be reviewed and then imported to your connected QPilot Site as Scheduled Orders.
   1. IMPORTANT: Do not navigate away from the page while the export is running.  This will disrupt the export from running.
3. Download the exported CSV File
4. Review the data in your exported CSV File
   1. Does the information look accurate? 
   2. Are there any exported Autoship Schedules that should not be imported?
5. When ready, send the exported CSV File as an attachment to our support team (please use our contact form or email customers@QPilot.cloud directly with a subject line "Exported WC Autoship Schedules to Import") and we'll follow up to process your request! 

4. Verify the data has migrated successfully

Once Scheduled Orders have been imported into your connected QPilot Site, you'll want to review and compare them with the CSV Export to ensure everything was imported successfully and as you expected.

Navigate to WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Scheduled Orders. This list will show the Scheduled Orders which have been migrated from WC Autoship. Confirm that the WC Autoship Schedules from your site have been migrated successfully. You should see your migrated WC Autoship Schedules populate in WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Scheduled Orders.

5. Delete WC Autoship plugins

Navigate to the Plugins page in the Wordpress Admin section of your site. Delete WC Autoship and  all plugins related to WC Autoship (for example, WC Autoship Authorize.net Payments). These plugins are no longer needed.

6. Configure and test the Autoship Cloud plugin

Congratulations, you have upgraded to Autoship Cloud!
Complete the list below to ensure that you are satisfied with the new features:

1. Edit a WooCommerce Product enabled for Autoship. 
   1. For example, you can now edit Autoship Checkout Price, Autoship Recurring Price and set unique Frequency Options per product and per variation.
2. Complete a Checkout with at least 1 product scheduled for Autoship as a new customer.
   1. After Checkout, you should be able to a) view your Scheduled Order as a Customer in My Account and b) view & edit the Scheduled Order as an Administrator within WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Scheduled Orders

7. Disable/Remove Maintenance Mode

Once you are satisfied with the migration, you can disable or remove maintenance mode from your site so that it is accessible to visitors and customers again.

If you're not satisfied with the migration, you should restore your backup before disabling or removing maintenance mode so that your site is reverted back to a working state.

Please get in touch with us about any issues or concerns that occurred during the upgrade process! 

8. Upgrade your production site

Once you are satisfied with the results on your staging site, repeat all of the steps above on your production site.