Introduction
New feature requests and bug fixes come up after a project goes live. These changes should be first implemented and tested in a development environment (DEV) before being promoted to a production environment (PROD). This article explains our best practices for promoting changes from DEV to PROD.
Process
For all our implementations, we suggest tracking every change made to DEV and later apply the thoroughly tested ones to the PROD.
You can leverage a few tools in Kepion when promoting changes to production, such as the export/import (forms, rules, dashboard) functionality. Most changes on the SQL Server Management Studio side can be done by creating or altering views and/or stored procedures.
For step-by-step details, follow the flow chart below:
Development Environment
- Restore the latest database from PROD to DEV.
- Make modifications.
- Conduct UAT (user acceptance testing) on modifications.
Production Environment
Note: You should move modifications to your production environment only after they have passed UAT.
- Schedule app offline time.
- Apply modifications.
- Back up production app database.
- Create/update dimensions and hierarchies.
- Export dimension/hierarchy members from DEV and import them to PROD.
- Create/update models
- Export forms from DEV and import them to PROD.
- Export rules from DEV and import them to PROD.
- Apply security changes.
- Apply workflow changes.
- Apply plan changes.
- Perform production.
- Turn the app online.