Is a test environment beneficial?

With new releases rolling out on schedule, new features being added, and technology changing constantly, you may find yourself blindly upgrading your system without knowing what effect these changes may have on it.

That’s why many organizations regularly utilize a “sandbox” environment— a risk-free place to first test new upgrades and features, and learn exactly what effect these changes may have on your system prior to implementing them into the production environment.

Is such a concept possible in your organization? The short answer is yes!

Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of operating a test environment alongside your existing production environment.

Pros:

• Test upgrades
  
  Whenever there is a new Cartegraph release, you can simply upgrade your test environment to see what changes will be added, what effect it may have on your current workflow, how it interacts with any other modifications or integrations, and get an idea of what the upgrade entails. Understanding what to expect will help you prepare the production environment for these changes.
   
• Training
  
  A test environment gives new and/or current employees the perfect opportunity to learn the functionality of new modules — such as modifying or creating new forms, and building reports — without having to worry about making mistakes that will affect the data.
   
• Add new fields
  
  Adding new structure to a test environment will give you an opportunity to see how changes will interact, how they will affect your work flow, and help you determine whether it is a change that is necessary.

Cons:

• Structure transfer
  
  You cannot easily transfer any special structure from the test environment to production. The structure will need to be re-created.
   
• Data
  
  Data will not be current or the same as in your production environment. It will contain data from your last backup of the production environment.
   
• Switching environment
  
  Users who are testing will need to understand how to switch between the test and production environments.

Given these facts, you can see that the pros outweigh the cons, and that implementing a test environment is definitely how beneficial to an organization. 

So what are the requirements of creating such an environment?  Just follow these simple steps:

• Create a duplicate copy  of your Cartegraph database on your database server called Cartegraph Test
   
• Create a copy of your Project Home to Project Home Test
   
• Create a new data link using Cartegraph and call it Cartegraph Test
   
• Redirect the Project Home path to the path of Project Home Test
   
• Provide each user that will “test” the new data link so they can switch between the two environments