SmartUpgrade feature is a very powerful thing, it allows you to upgrade Lotus Notes clients remotely, just deploy SmartUpgrade kits, setup Desktop settings and Organizational Policy, and clients will start to upgrade. Forget about visiting every desktop.
With the help of RunAs utility, you can even upgrade people who has USER access right on their workstation.
Here is a Technote from IBM which will help many people to fix SmartUpgrade if it fails to do the Work.
Tips and tricks for troubleshooting Smart Upgrade issues
Technote (troubleshooting)
Problem
This document contains tips and tricks for troubleshooting Lotus Notes® Smart Upgrade (SU) issues including errors or unexpected behavior.
Symptom
Some of the symptoms of problems include:
-- No prompts for users -- Files missing -- No kit found and other errors -- Upgrade incomplete
Resolving the problem
Checking on the server side: * If you are using separate Configuration documents for every server, the Smart Upgrade Kit database must be on every home mail server, and every server must have a correct link in the appropriate Configuration Document.
* The link to the SU database in the server's Configuration Document should be taken from the server. You can check the Link hint to make sure it's the correct one
* The SU cache is updated hourly but you can do a "sucahe refresh" on the server console if you suspect that it hasn't been updated (due to server load) or if you just want to refresh it. You can run "repl SUServername " to force the mail server to connect to SU server
* When using policies to push SU, make sure that the Desktop Settings Document has the "Deploy version" option set to "Release x.x.x" (without quotes), for example, "Release 7.0.3". Other settings do not usually create a problem. This also has to match the "Target version" field in the Smart Upgrade Kit Document. Policies are not a mandatory part of SU since it will prompt users to upgrade if a matching kit document is found on the server (provided Dynamic Client Configuration [DCC] works) and it will find SU entries in the notes.ini file.
* All users to be upgraded must have appropriate rights to the server on which the kit is located.
* SU tracking reports are a good feature to have. For more information on configuration and troubleshooting using these reports, refer to the following IBM® Redbooks® publication, "Understanding Lotus Notes Smart Upgrade".
Checking the Smart Upgrade database:
* The SU database Kit Document must contain the same "Target version" as the "Deploy version" in the Desktop Settings Document.
* If you enter anything in the SU Kit Document --> Advanced --> "Allowed Users & Servers" field, you must also add LocalDomainServers to it since it is a Readers field. If this field is blank, it applies to all.
* The "Optional arguments" field is only visible in the Kits view of the SU database if the Location field contains "On a Shared network drive" or "Shared network drive & attached kit".
* When using the "qb" or "qn" switches for optional arguments, you can use "gb+! " to hide the Cancel button, such as in -s -a /s /v"TRANSFORMS=\\server\notes\upgrade.mst" /qb+"
* If you have SU tracking enabled in Notes 6.5.3, the Lotus\Notes\data\IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT\SmartUpgrade directory contains a new log for every SU attempt. These are attached to reports for administrators to view. For information on how to read these logs, refer to the Redbooks publication, "Understanding Lotus Notes Smart Upgrade", page 47.
* Starting with Notes 6.5.5, SU has the ability to determine the type of client installed (single or all). The SU process can only upgrade to and from the same installation type. If you want to change the installation type, you must manually upgrade to the desired installation type.
* If you want to use the "On a shared network drive" location in the Kit Document, the client package must be unpacked on the network location to be used. Remember that you can only use a UNC path in the Kit Document, such as \\networkfileservername\shareddirectoryname\setup.exe.
* Staring with Notes 7.0, the SU Kit Document contains a Localization field which must correspond to the installed client (on user machines). Make sure this matches the language version of the kit because it is only compared with the language of the installed client.
Checking on the client side:
* All users must have sufficient rights and privileges on the operating system (as an administrator). If that is not the case, you can use the SURunAs facility to upgrade the clients. Refer to Document #1247849, "Using the 'Smart Upgrade Run As' feature to upgrade Notes clients".
* All users must be able to connect to the server and open the database. Accurate server information must be present in the user Location documents with the server name in hierarchical format.
* To check if DCC is enabled in the notes.ini file, the following parameters should be included: DisableDynConfigClient=0 and Document AcceptUpdates=1 (in the Location Document).
* Starting with Notes 6.5.3, after the kit is downloaded, the client will automatically shut down without a notification. In 7.0 releases, users are prompted whether to start the process or not. If they don't start it, they can resume by going to the File menu --> Tools --> Notes Smart Upgrade, or it will start again after the interval set in the notes.ini file parameters, SU_NEXT_UPDATE and SUT_NEXT_UPDATE. These settings in the notes.ini file can be removed for troubleshooting.
* For the Notes client only, check the install client type in the notes.ini file (InstallType=2 [All clients], InstallType=6). If these are not correct in Notes or if they were modified, they must be corrected for the SU to occur.
* The Smartupgrade*.log is found in the Lotus\Notes\data\IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT\SmartUpgrade directory. A new log is created for each SU attempt (the naming convention is SmartUpgrade__@
