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Portal Release Process

Owned by Ryan Luce (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Apr 20, 2023 by Jay Hodgson
2 min read

Background:

Currently, for each portal, there are two sites: Staging and Prod. Staging is where new data releases AND new functionality can be reviewed. Prod is the live site. 

Importantly, the Staging portal sites use data from the live, production version of Synapse. (This is also obviously true for the Prod portal sites.) 

In order to minimize errors on the live Portals, many of them currently look at a “snapshot” of data in a File View (they do not use the current version of the File View) to drive the list of files on their site.

 

Frequency:

It is recommended that portal stakeholders look to push from staging to prod at least once per month. By doing this, the number of new features, bug fixes, security issues, etc can be kept more manageable.

 

Testing Process

  1. (Optional) - The first step is optional and is only relevant if there are changes to the data that need to be reflected on the portal. Portal stakeholders create a new File View snapshot representing changes to data / files that they want propagated to the Portal Prod site.  If this has been done, Portal stakeholders make a request on Jira to update the Staging site to look at a newer version of the File View (a snapshot) that drives the portal site.  Either a Web Engineer or Portal stakeholder creates the Pull Request to bump the version in the appropriate portal configuration.

  2. Portal stakeholders look to understand what code changes and functionality changes have been made on Staging. A query is performed, looking for new functionality since the last time Prod was updated.  If there have been unvalidated changes, each of these changes is tested and validated by the Portal stakeholders on Staging. Most importantly, validation and testing should be focused on changes that have either not been validated or are particularly relevant to that portal.

  3. Portal stakeholders go through a set of standard tests (likely unconnected to new functionality) to confirm that Staging is working properly.  Eventually, validation via this testing could be captured in Zephyr (an application available in Jira).  Initial set of tests are here:  

Scenarios to Test on Staging Prior to Pushing Portals to Production

Scenarios to Test on Staging Prior to Pushing Portals to Production

Visit pages:

  1. Home Page

  2. Explore Page

  3. Detail Page (if applicable)

  4. All top level pages

Verify table functionality on Explore page:

  1. Verify facet navigation

  2. Sort on Table

  3. Facet Filter on Table

  4. Add to Download List

  5. Advanced Table Options

Test links out to Synapse:

  1. Bumper bar

  2. Downloading files

Sign In:

  1. Sign in with Google

  2. Sign in with Synapse Account

Access Restrictions

  1. Verify a file with restricted access reports accurate access infor the current user

 

Final Steps

  1. Portal stakeholders make a request on Jira to update the Prod site.

  2. Web Engineering push the Staging site to Prod.