The purpose of this article is to provide our clients with an overview of how to handle testing of new features and integrations deployed by the Vertilocity team. While the Vertilocity team performs testing on all features before and after they are deployed to client environments, it is important that testing is done by clients to ensure that members of the client team understand the features deployed, and to ensure that both Vertilocity and the client are on the same page when it comes to the expected behavior of the feature.
Preparing for Deployment
Before all deployments, the client will coordinate with Vertilocity to determine the date of the deployment and the time of the deployment (after hours vs. during the work day). Vertilocity will also provide release notes for all features, bug fixes, and updates included in the deployment as well as test cases related to the deployment. It is important that members of the client team review the release notes and ask any questions they have before the the release date.
Deployment Day Testing
On the day of the deployment, the Vertilocity team will deploy the updates to the target environment. Dev and UAT / QA environments will generally be done during normal work hours (8:30am - 5:30pm eastern). Production deployments may happen during working hours or after hours depending on whether or not the update will disrupt users. Regardless, the Vertilocity team will clearly communicate the timing of deployments to the production environment to ensure that there are no disruptions to users, or surprises to the client.
Upon a successful deployment to the target environment, a Vertilocity team technical resource will run all test cases related to the deployment. If any issues are found during our testing, we will make note of them and inform the client. Depending on the severity of the issue(s), the Vertilocity team may either plan a hot fix to resolve the issue at a later date, or reschedule the deployment once the issues have been resolved. Regardless of the decision made, the Vertilocity team will provide notes of all issues found as well as plans to resolve the issues found.
Once our team finishes testing, an email will be sent to the client, noting any issues and letting the client team know that they may begin testing. During client testing, it is important to note any issues found and to be as specific as possible.
For example, if our E-Automate solutions were deployed and you're running tests on our quote tool, it would be important to note the following:
- the quote the issue occurred on
- the action performed when the issue occurred
- any relevant screen shots
- any relevant items or configurations
- any error messages or logs
For more information on error reporting, view our article How To: Error Reporting with Examples.
Once all test cases related to the deployment are complete it is also important to run regression testing.
Regression Testing
Regression testing involves retesting previously implemented features to ensure that the newly deployed updates did not break any existing features. Vertilocity can provide test cases for regression testing as well. We also recommend you have users who frequently interact with the related features perform some of the daily tasks related to their job. This can be as short as 30 minutes.
If you have any questions on testing throughout the deployment process, email your point of contact on the Vertilocity team.