“Fundamentally you can’t do your own QA. it’s a question of seeing you own blind spots.”
— Ron Avitzur
Last time, we wrapped up all of the coding for the process that will keep all of the Client instances in sync with the Host instance. I have been dragging this process out a little bit in the hopes of coming across a much better approach to the application installation process, as I am not all that happy with the solutions that have come to mind so far. But we have finally come to the end of the instance sync build, so it’s time to release another Update Set and do a little testing. After that, I’m going to have to plow ahead on the application installation process whether a new and better idea has revealed itself or not (so far, not!). And as long as we are going to be doing a little testing, we might as well do a little regression testing as well on the initial set-up process and the application publication process, just to make sure that we haven’t mangled something up with all of this additional code. It would be nice to know that everything still works.
As with our other recent releases, you will need three items, installed in the following order, to be able to give this all a spin:
- If you have not done so already, you will need to install the most recent version of SNH Form Fields, which you can find here.
- Once you have SNH Form Fields installed, you can install the new Scoped Application Update Set.
- And then once the application has been installed, you can install the Update Set for the additional global components that could not be included in the Scoped Application.
If this is a new installation, then you can test out the initial set-up process when you set up your instance. You can find information on testing the set-up process here.
If this is a new installation, or if you have not yet published any applications, you will want to go through the process of publishing a few applications from as many of your instances as possible to fully test out the instance sync process. You can test the set-up process with a single Host instance, but to fully test the application publishing process or the instance sync process, you will need a few Client instances in your community as well. You can find information on testing the application publishing process here.
Assuming that you have successfully installed all of the parts, have successfully gone through the initial set-up process for your Host and Client instances, and have published a few apps from multiple sources, you are now ready to test the instance sync process. But how would we do that, you ask. Well, there are a number of things that can be done, starting with just making sure that the process runs on the Host instance on schedule and doesn’t do anything at all on any of the Client instances. The best way to verify that is to install the latest version everywhere and then go into the Flow Designer after 24 hours and pull up the flow and check out the execution history. If everything is working as it should, the process should run every day, and on the Host instance, there should be as many iterations of the loop as there are active Client instances in the community.
You don’t necessarily have to wait for the process to run on schedule, though, if you want to some more in-depth testing. You can use the Test button on the flow to run the process as many times as you would like to test out various scenarios. Here are just a a few of the things that you can try, just to see how things work out.
- Delete one of the Client instance records on one of the Clients and then run the sync process to see if the Client and all of its applications have been restored on that instance.
- Delete one of the application records on one of the Clients and then run the sync process to see if the application and all of its versions have been restored on that instance.
- Delete one of the version records on one of the Clients and then run the sync process to see if the version and its attached Update Set XML file have been restored on that instance.
- Delete an attached Update Set XML file on one of version records on one of the Clients and then run the sync process to see if the attachment has been restored on that instance.
You can also take a look at the System Logs to see the breadcrumbs left behind by the process to see if they are all accurate and meaningful. Any suggestions or helpful hints in this area would also be quite helpful. Basically, you just want to create a situation where one or more Client instances is out of sync with the Host, and then either let the process run as scheduled or manually kick start it in the Flow Designer, and then check to make sure that everything is back in sync again.
Once again, I would like to express my appreciation to all of those who have assisted with the testing in the past, and to anyone who has not participated in the past, but would like to join in, welcome to the party! You all have my sincere gratitude for your efforts, and as always, any and all comments are welcome and appreciated. If you tried everything out and were not able to uncover any of the bugs that are surely buried in there somewhere, let me know that as well. It is always welcome news to find out that things are working as they should! Thanks to all of you for your help.
Next time, if there are no test results to review, we will finally get into the application installation process.
