A Royal F Up - Sage Evolution Date Bug 2022-02-22

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InTheCube

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So I woke up this morning to a bunch of customers unable to open up their Sage Evolution applications. None of their workstations or even the server could launch the app.

Gave a call to our 3rd party service provider that manages Sage Evolution installations for 100s of enterprises, to ask them what's happening, and apparently there is a date/time bug within Evolution that is affecting ALL versions of Sage Evolution for ALL customers globally.

Apparently it has something to do with adding a 7 day warning for an SSL/security cert that is about to expire. But adding 7 days to 2022-02-23 gives you an invalid date and so the app crashes silently. If you change the system date back by a day, or change to a timezone still sitting on 2022-02-22, you are able to open the app, but it still warns you that there is a problem with the date/time. You then change the date back to normal/reality and you can use Evolution until you close it. The next time you open it, you have to do the same thing.

This bug has nothing to do with the server, network, database or anything else. Just the internal coding of the application itself has a bug.

It's a complete royal fsck up. And nothing can be found online about this problem. Nothing on Sage's website, not even a Tweet or Facebook post. Google search turns up nothing.

Anyway, apparently Sage is aware of the issue.

Edit: Adding 7 days to 2022-02-22 still takes you to the 29th which is still an invalid date for this year (we're not in a leap year). So looks like a double F up on the coding side.
 
I haven't informed users about this temporary "solution" as it has wider implications on so many different aspects of Windows and other services, both on the local network and cloud based. Even a temporary change to your date/time/timezone can become disastrous.

So now I'm just sitting waiting, twiddling my thumbs, while Sage gets its **** together to bring us an actual solution.
 
Saajid said:
Edit: Adding 7 days to 2022-02-22 still takes you to the 29th which is still an invalid date for this year (we're not in a leap year). So looks like a double F up on the coding side.
Click to expand...
How to tell the computers that 29 Feb is equivalent to 1 March this year - that is the question. /s
 
Saajid said:
So I woke up this morning to a bunch of customers unable to open up their Sage Evolution applications. None of their workstations or even the server could launch the app.

Gave a call to our 3rd party service provider that manages Sage Evolution installations for 100s of enterprises, to ask them what's happening, and apparently there is a date/time bug within Evolution that is affecting ALL versions of Sage Evolution for ALL customers globally.

Apparently it has something to do with adding a 7 day warning for an SSL/security cert that is about to expire. But adding 7 days to 2022-02-23 gives you an invalid date and so the app crashes silently. If you change the system date back by a day, or change to a timezone still sitting on 2022-02-22, you are able to open the app, but it still warns you that there is a problem with the date/time. You then change the date back to normal/reality and you can use Evolution until you close it. The next time you open it, you have to do the same thing.

This bug has nothing to do with the server, network, database or anything else. Just the internal coding of the application itself has a bug.

It's a complete royal fsck up. And nothing can be found online about this problem. Nothing on Sage's website, not even a Tweet or Facebook post. Google search turns up nothing.

Anyway, apparently Sage is aware of the issue.

Edit: Adding 7 days to 2022-02-22 still takes you to the 29th which is still an invalid date for this year (we're not in a leap year). So looks like a double F up on the coding side.
Click to expand...
An accounting/payroll system that does date calculations by just adding numbers to the day field?! Wow.
 
Sinbad said:
An accounting/payroll system that does date calculations by just adding numbers to the day field?! Wow.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my thoughts exactly...

What kind of fscking half arsed coder does Sage employ, and simple code reviews clearly are magic to them.
 
Solution 1 - Low Impact: Date workaround
Steps to follow

Change the system date to be the 22nd of February 2022, select apply and leave this window open.
Navigate to your Sage Evolution shortcut and double click the shortcut to open, and Sage Evolution will now open. (PLEASE DO NOT LOGIN TO ANY DATABASES)
Navigate to the Change the system date window once more, and change the system date to be the 23rd of February, then select apply and then OK.
Select the database that you would like to access and open
Repeat steps 1 to 3 on all workstations and if you’re on a terminal server environments please contact your IT Administrator for further assistance.
Please note that steps 1 to 3 will need to be repeated if the Sage Evolution Application is closed
 
Sinbad said:
An accounting/payroll system that does date calculations by just adding numbers to the day field?! Wow.
Click to expand...

Is that seriously what someone did, adding a straight integer? Doesn't sound right though, you could easily get 26+7 for any month and still get an invalid date error.
 
Mystic Twilight said:
Is that seriously what someone did, adding a straight integer? Doesn't sound right though, you could easily get 26+7 for any month and still get an invalid date error.
Click to expand...
It really sounds that way - how else do you get a date of 29/30 February?
 
Mystic Twilight said:
Is that seriously what someone did, adding a straight integer? Doesn't sound right though, you could easily get 26+7 for any month and still get an invalid date error.
Click to expand...
At my company all dates are treated as string. Amazing what can be achieved when people are told to "make it work" :X3:
 
Mystic Twilight said:
Well must have been a very long lucky streak to avoid getting something like 32+ of January-December.
Click to expand...

You probably find they did the most basic/stupid of sanity checks going "If its 30/31 then check against the month"... and just forgot that February is different.
 
moms said:
Solution 1 - Low Impact: Date workaround
Steps to follow

Change the system date to be the 22nd of February 2022, select apply and leave this window open.
Navigate to your Sage Evolution shortcut and double click the shortcut to open, and Sage Evolution will now open. (PLEASE DO NOT LOGIN TO ANY DATABASES)
Navigate to the Change the system date window once more, and change the system date to be the 23rd of February, then select apply and then OK.
Select the database that you would like to access and open
Repeat steps 1 to 3 on all workstations and if you’re on a terminal server environments please contact your IT Administrator for further assistance.
Please note that steps 1 to 3 will need to be repeated if the Sage Evolution Application is closed
Click to expand...
Changing date/time/timezone requires Administrator rights in my environment, which 95% of users don't have. So not a viable option.
 
Saajid said:
I haven't informed users about this temporary "solution" as it has wider implications on so many different aspects of Windows and other services, both on the local network and cloud based. Even a temporary change to your date/time/timezone can become disastrous.

So now I'm just sitting waiting, twiddling my thumbs, while Sage gets its **** together to bring us an actual solution.
Click to expand...

just change the date back to yesterday , then open pastel , then before you log into the pastel company , change the date back today.Tell the user to stay in evolution untill tomorrow and dont log off.

At first i wasnt too keen on changing the time as certain services require the correct synchronized clocks but so far everything working fine.
 
Received an email from Sage a few minutes ago. Looks like we just need to wait till mid-night for the clock to tick over, and then the problem is gone.

​

Date Issue​

23 February 2022



​

Sage 200 Evolution​

Dear Sage 200 Evolution Customers

Following routine overnight monitoring of our Sage 200 Evolution product, we have become aware of a date issue in the software. Our investigation shows that the error is limited to the 23 February 2022 date only (23/02/2022), however, the result is that the Sage Evolution application will not execute on this specific date.

We are aware of the inconvenience this may be causing you and your organisation and ask that you contact your business partner at your earliest convenience. They will provide you with one of three solutions listed below and will provide the steps required to implement.

Please note that we are also posting all applicable updates and solutions on Sage City, please engage with your IT administrators for further guidance.

Please be advised that you will not be able to login to Sage 200 Evolution on 23/02/2022 without implementing one of these three solutions:
  1. Upgrade to one of the latest major versions and apply the latest Evolution.exe fix to this version
  2. Apply the latest Evolution.exe fix to your current major version
  3. Apply a temporary date change (refer to the Sage City article for more information)
 
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