What is the Early Access Programme?

Snowflake Software operates the Scrum Agile software development process. This means that every two weeks we create a new build (development version) of the products we are currently working on. The Early Access programme lets you download these development versions of the software. This means that you can get early sight of new features and enhancements to the products.

You can watch a YouTube video explaining our Early Access FAQs here:

Product Range...

The Early Access programme offers development versions for

• GO Loader and
• GO Publisher 

Fancy joining in...for FREE?

All of our customers are encouraged to take part in the Early Access Programme at no additional cost; anyone with valid maintenance and support can use the Early Access versions of the products. If you require further information about your maintenance contract or you have questions about licencing, then contact Snowflake Support.

Early Access benefits...

The point of Early Access is to get hold of the latest features as soon as possible. Working with Early Access versions makes lots of sense if you are in the development stage of your projects since you can get used to working with the product as it will be in future, when your system goes live. Have your say by feeding back new ideas, improvements and bugs through the Customer Portal.

What can I use Early Access versions for?

Early Access versions are there for you to see what features are coming in future versions of the product. They are great for development environments where you want to try out new features and they can be really useful for prototyping or proof-of-concept projects where you want the most cutting edge tools available.

Are Early Access versions different to Commercial Product Releases?

The Early Access versions are "work in progress". The good thing about this is that they show you the latest features. The downside is that they have not completed the full test process that a production release goes through, so don't be surprised if there are a few bugs in the Early Access versions - but please do report them to us so we can fix them!

Downloading Early Access software...

Login to the Cutomer Portal to download the Early Access version for the software you require as well as accompanying documentation.

Release frequency ...

Generally a new release is created every two weeks at the end of each "sprint". Not every product gets worked on in every sprint so you won't always see a new version of the product you use. We edvevour to create a stable build at the end of every sprint though sometimes during development, big changes to the software are made. Therefore by the end of the sprint if the software needs further development work before it is usable, then that sprint release will be held back from the Early Access Programme. 

Keep Informed...

Keep an eye on the Technical Blog, where we'll announce the latest Early Access Downloads as soon as they become available. If you Tweet then be sure to bookmark the Hashtag #earlyaccess for @sflakesoftware.

Further Reading

Now you know all about Early Access you can read about how we develop our products or read more about Agile Software Development (Wikipedia). You can also take a look at the Early Access Product documentation to learn about installing, getting started with and customising GO Loader and GO Publisher.

GO Loader 1.8 Early Access Documentation

GO Publisher 3.0 Early Access Documentation