What QCST Preserves During Updates, Downgrades, and Intentional Uninstall

This article explains preservation-first data/settings behavior, plan-lock preservation, the uninstall lifecycle guard, and what an intentional removal should not unexpectedly re-provision.

Where this fits in QC Support Ticket

QCST is distributed as a Joomla package so the component and its packaged integration/task plugins advance together. The Status tab reports the installed version, available version, update-site state, last update check, and the Joomla upgrade action when an update is available and the current administrator has installer permission.

Current protected updates use the QuantaCade update service with Authorized-Domain entitlement rather than asking the site administrator to paste a license key into QCST.

Primary location: QC Support Ticket → Status and Joomla Administrator → System → Update / Install Extensions.

Before you begin

  • Take a current backup and use a test or low-risk record first when the action can change or remove routing, relationships, or installed files.

Preservation-first lifecycle

  • Ordinary upgrades install over the current package and preserve support data/configuration.
  • A plan downgrade should preserve higher-tier settings/data even when current use/edit/create actions become plan-locked.
  • The installer lifecycle guard prevents install/update repair/provisioning routines from running during an intentional uninstall after files are being removed.
  • An intentional uninstall should not unexpectedly recreate task rows or run schema provisioning as if it were an install.

Important behavior and limits

  • QCST 1.0.42 has five current Scheduled Tasks. Older SLA Automation and Webhook Delivery task types are retired.
  • Lazy Scheduler depends on site traffic. Server CRON is preferable when inbound mail or other time-sensitive work must run predictably.

Current-version note

This documentation is based on QC Support Ticket 1.0.42, the package currently deployed on the QuantaCade production site. The behavior described for What QCST Preserves During Updates, Downgrades, and Intentional Uninstall should be checked against the current screen labels before applying instructions to an older QCST release.

Verify the result

  • The expected QCST routine exists once, is Published at the intended cadence, and completes without a repeated error state.

If it does not work as expected

  • If a due task does not run on a quiet site, verify server CRON rather than repeatedly changing the QCST interval.
  • For entitlement warnings, separate structural task health (missing/disabled/duplicate/slow) from temporary network/validation results.

Community Discussion

For practical QC Support Ticket workflows and discussion with other Joomla site owners, visit the QC Support Ticket Community. For private support, bug reports, account-specific issues, or feature requests, use the QuantaCade support system.