Posted: 01/08/2020 7:39PM
Updated: Monday, 22 March 2021 at 10:17AM
The following are a set of testing best practices and recommendations that will help you throughout your pre-go-live testing process, in no particular order:
To ensure a smooth go-live and that nothing is missed during the final data copy after testing is complete, please refrain from making any changes to your on-premise Vista installation, save for those data entry items needed for normal operations. This includes, but is not limited to:
Custom SSRS reports
Custom Crystal Reports
Create and Send Templates
IM Import Templates
Custom Stored Procedures, Triggers, and Views
UD Fields and Tables
Pick a timeframe prior to the Initial Data Upload to serve as the testing timeframe for reports and data entry. For example, if your Initial Data Upload happens on November 1st, and your company uses calendar quarters for accounting purposes, we recommend you choose quarter 3 (July through September) of that year to serve as your "testbed data". All report runs, data entry, etc. should be confined to within those timeframes to ensure consistency of data shown.
Check all Critical Custom and Built-in Reports to Ensure they Open and Load Data: Oftentimes custom reports will be written with the older, unsupported ADO (OLEDB) connection method, which is not supported in our new cloud, powered by VRL. Please ensure you have tested all critical reports, both built-in and custom. These reports need to load, with no errors.
Check Account Security and Permissions: Please ensure that all users who need to have access to SSRS reports have access to load those reports in our cloud, and that those reports are not blank.
Viewpoint's Crystal and SSRS reports are nothing more than queries against the SQL database used by Vista. Custom reports are the same. As such, the key item to validate with reports in our cloud is to check that reports open and show data. Line by Line comparisons of totals and calculations vs. on-premise Vista are wasteful and unnecessary. Remember, look at reports, do they work at all? That's the key question to answer.
Any workstation that needs to access Vista data directly for operations such as Insight's Spreadsheet Server, require connectivity through the configured IPSEC VPN tunnel to the Vista database. Please test to ensure that all client workstations and servers that need to talk to Vista's database can do so. This will likely include all of your remote, "SSL" client VPN users. Please provide Viewpoint with the subnets for all of these remote workstations as well.
To ensure a trouble-free go-live, please make sure you have tested not only the processes that you use every day with Vista, but have walked through your critical weekly, monthly, and quarterly processes as well. Since you have already designated a Test Data Timeframe (see above), this should be straightforward to do.