LANtelligence recommends that if you are on ShoreTel we recommend that you stay N-1 current with your release with the current GA release of software. Therefore, since 14.2 is now the GA release, you should be on release 13.x.
There are a couple reasons for this. The first being that released N-1 are usually “fully cooked” with only monthly build updates to fix outstanding software issues. The second reason is to take advantage of ShoreTel Communicators N-1 compatibility. If you are upgrading to the next release (i.e. 13.x –> 14.x) this allows you the flexibility to roll out ShoreTel communicator at your own pace, since all existing 13.x clients are compatible running on release 14.x. This doesn’t hold true for the reverse. You can’t have release 14.x clients on a system running release 13.x, or at least it is an unsupported configuration and we will not get much help from ShoreTel if any of your clients have issues.
If you are on an older version of ShoreTel, you may be able to directly to the newest build from your current build. If your version is much older, you may have to upgrade via steps. LANtelligence has been in the situation where we have had to perform four upgrades or four steps to get the software current. Although this is possible, it is not recommended.
Currently if you have the following versions:
All builds of 12, 12.1, 12.2 and 12.3 can be upgraded in a single step.
All builds of 13, 13.1, 13.2 and 13.3 can be upgraded in a single step.
All builds of 14 and 14.1 can be upgraded in a single step.
Please keep in mind that just because you can upgrade in a single step, unless you are build 13.x or greater you will have to push out the newest versions of communicator after the upgrade.
What about if my software version is older than release 12.x?
Step 1.
If you are on ShoreTel version 7.x you will have to upgrade to version 8.0,8.1,9,9.1 or 9.2
Step 2.
Then you can upgrade from Step 1’s version to ShoreTel 10.x
Step 3.
You can upgrade from release 10.x to 11.x or 12.x
Step 4
You can now upgrade from 11.x or 12.x direct to release 14.x
