Early Access Programs

Gain insight into the benefits of joining a private early access program, and what to expect when participating.

Written By Ascend knowledge base (Administrator)

Updated at May 7th, 2024

Our project roadmap is strategically planned for the greatest opportunities to increase profit for your business and address common pain points you and your employees experience. We're passionate about retail and we want to learn from you.

The Ascend Early Access Program give retail experts the chance to try out exciting new software updates and retail services before they're officially released. We live and breathe retail, but you're the pros and we want to learn how to help you sell more and save time.

Overview

As an Ascend Early Access program participant, you'll try out new features and updated tools in pre-release software to let us know what you think. It's the ultimate playground for retail pros.

We want to know about what works for you and what doesn't, but we need detail that only you and your team can provide. How did you feel? What made you smile? What was confusing? What did you love? What did you hate? Did you find any bugs? 

Here, you get to be the first to try out the newest software updates and retail services before they hit the market. Our developers are constantly working to optimize the Ascend suite of applications and add exciting features that make your life easier. Help us help you sell more and save time!

Sign up

You can request to join the Ascend Early Access program on our website. We don't always have active programs and might not invite all participants to each of them, so don't worry if you don't hear from us right away. 

Participation

We can't get better without hearing from you. Early Access participants will be required to submit their thoughts and insights every 6 weeks using a brief survey delivered straight to your inbox. Your participation won't take up much time, but it's crucial to share your insights early and often to make the most out of your access.

Here's everything else you need to get started once you've been invited to join:

  • Get up to date: confirm your workstations and server PCs at all participating locations are on the most current production version of Ascend.
  • Stay up to date: set your automatic update settings to allow for early downloads by navigating to Tools > Update Ascend > Update Settings and setting Day(s) to 0.
  • Use the system and resources: you are not only testing the Ascend apps, but also reviewing associated release notes and support documents. Did they make sense? Were they helpful? Did you find any mistakes? Let us know!
  • Submit your feedback: sharing early and often is key to getting the most out of your access and making the program work for everyone. But life happens! If we don't hear from you, we’ll assume you no longer want to participate and will remove you from the early access group.
  • Reach our team: As an Early Access retailer, you get priority support access. Just use our dedicated EA inbox to reach our team: earlyaccessuscan@ascendrms.com

Click here to view the current release schedule. Please note that participating US and CA DOTS locations should expect updates 1 week after the scheduled Early Access release.

Leaving the Early Access program

Need to jump ship? We'll be bummed to see you go, but we get it. And we've made it easy to leave the program at any time.

Please note that depending on the pre-release version of Ascend that your store was testing, we might need to schedule a time for our team to update your system to a production version of Ascend.

When you're ready, simply click here to send us an email. We'll get back to you as soon as possible.

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