Working in the test environment

These are recommended practices when working on applications in the test environment:
  • Creating an application from the designer dashboard.

    You can only create an application from the designer dashboard. When creating a new application, the status of an application is automatically set to Draft. As a user with the M3UI-designer role, you can work on the application until it is ready for testing. When the application is ready for test, change the status of the application to Ready for approval.

  • Testing a draft application.

    When an application is in Ready for approval status, the user with the M3UI-approver role tests the application to ensure that all the functionality and data are correct.

  • Completing functionality testing.

    When the functionality testing is complete, the user with the M3UI-approver role changes the status of the application to Approved. If issues occur, the approver changes the status back to Draft.

  • Further testing of approved applications.

    An application displays in the Administration dashboard when it passed the functionality testing and is approved from the Designer dashboard. When an application is approved, you can connect it to the M3 menu through 'Function. Open' (MNS110) to ensure that the application works correctly with other M3 functions before publishing it.

    For example, test the application with these scenarios:
    • The users can open the application from the M3 menu.
    • The users can open the application from a homepage or workspace.
    For this testing, you must have the M3UI-approver role. To avoid conflicting applications when testing, only one version of an application in Approved status is allowed in both dashboards at a time.
  • Accessing the two versions of an application from the M3 menu.
    If there are two versions of an application in different statuses, for example one in Approved status and the other one in Published status, and the application is added to the M3 menu, then:
    • The users without the approver role can only open the published version from the menu.
    • The users with the approver role can only open the approved version from the menu.

      For the user with approver role to compare the approved version to the published version, they must open the published version from the Administration dashboard. To compare the two application versions by opening the published version from the M3 menu, the approver must log in to M3 as another user and not with the M3UI-approver role in an incognito web browser window.

  • Setting the status of the application to Ready for publish after the testing is complete.

    When the testing is finished, the user with the approver role changes status of the application to Ready for publish. If issues are found, the approver changes the status to Deactivated. To correct the issues found in the application, the developer must create a new version in the Designer dashboard.
    An application in Ready for publish status indicates the application passed all the testing and is ready to be exported by a user with the M3UI-administrator role from the test environment to the production environment. The production environment is where the application is published.

    To avoid accidental export of an application that is not yet for export to the production environment, you can still change the application's status back to Approved from Ready for publish. If necessary, you can change an application in Approved status to Deactivated status and then delete the application afterwards.

  • Publishing an application.

    When the application is exported to the production environment, the user with the M3UI-administrator role changes the application status to Published in the test environment to keep track of which applications are exported to the production environment.

  • Creating a new version of an application.

    To modify an application that is already in Approved status, create a new version of the application. A new version is created in the designer dashboard by the user with the M3UI-designer role. When it is ready for testing, the user with the approver role performs the testing and approve the application.

    Note: You can no longer modify an application in Approved status.