What are the details for a Test Site?

Environment:

Oracle B2C Service Test Sites, All versions

Resolution:

Configuration Assistant provides you the ability to create a copy of your Oracle B2C Service production site for testing changes prior to rolling out changes in the production environment. The Oracle B2C Service test site may also be used as a training site for new or existing staff members. Test sites should be regularly refreshed/re-created in order to capture the latest data and software version from the production site. It is not a valid test or training environment when your test site contains old data or is built using a version older than production. Oracle B2C Service Support will investigate issues on test sites only if the product version matches or is newer than the production site version. Please note the Oracle B2C Service Version Update Policy

Test sites are included with your license. How many test sites are allowed are determined by your license. You can see how many test sites you are allowed in the Configuration Assistant or you can ask your sales account manager. See the following answer for instructions on accessing the Configuration Assistant:

 Please see Answer ID 12490: Accessing My Services and Configuration Assistant after IDCS migration

Answer ID 7537: Oracle B2C Service Configuration Assistant on Oracle Cloud Portal

Element Manager makes moving customizations and configuration simple between test sites (TST) and production. Please see Element Manager current capabilities

Test Site naming:

Test sites use a standard naming convention of: (production site name)__tst(number of test site). For example:

productionsitename__tst1
productionsitename__tst2

Best practices recommends to use the standard naming convention and to not change the name of the test site to avoid unpredictable negative impact. If your business requirements need a different name for staff, an alternative option is to change the display name of the interface. For more details about changing the display name, please see Answer 1764: Changing the interface name displayed

Please note: This option will be lost on test site re-create/refresh and will need completed each time the site is re-created/refreshed. 

Test Sites do not include:

-Customization support will not provide technical or update services to support or maintain customer-specific customization(s) previously written by Oracle Consulting, or the customer. 

Customizations are not guaranteed to be copied from the production site to the test site regardless of clone type. 

New customizations will not be written by Oracle Consulting. Documented API frameworks will be supported to validate that they are working as expected, but customizations written using the API frameworks for a Test Site are not supported.

Please note that any customizations on the old test site will be destroyed and will not carry over when the new test site is created. Please see Answer ID 5129: Customizations on refreshed test sites and update sites

There is no automated option to move changes and configuration from the test site to the production site. You should manually keep track of your changes in order to manually implement them on the production site. 

-Outreach mailbox will not have the values in Envelope From/Bounce Address on the test site after refreshing. You will need to re-enter the value if necessary. 

Test site create/re-create/refresh; will not include the index for the incident thread search functionality. Should you need this functionality, kindly contact support to have the indexer run.

General steps that a test site re-create goes thru:

Test sites are refreshed/re-created in the Configuration Assistant self-service tool at your convenience. If you need access to the Configuration Assistant, please submit a service request to the Oracle B2C Service support team. 

The standard steps for a test site refresh/re-create completed in the Configuration Assistant are below.

1 - Delete the existing test site. During this time, you will not see a test site in the Configuration Assistant.
2 - Assigned to the cloning queue.
3 - Clone the existing production site to the new test site. As the site clones, it will appear in the Configuration Assistant. However, it will not be accessible until the clone is completed. 
4 - If the "re-create and upgrade" option was selected in the Configuration Assistant, then the new test site is upgraded/updated to the latest version of the product that is available for your site. 

For information on updating a test site, refer to Answer 10925: Updating Oracle B2C Service Test Site Version

* Once the new test site is completed, you will need to enable the utilities, mailboxes, reconnect to Intelligent Advisor, etc. in the Configuration Assistant. These items are not automatically enabled.  

The vhostname URLs are automatically populated during the test site refresh process.  We are unable to specify the vhostname URLs during this process.  Typically, they have extensions added due to a vhostname previously being used at some point   , however, there can be other factors involved.

The Enhanced Business Rules Runtime Logs and Audit Logs are also not enabled on test sites by default. Please see Answer ID 11973: Rule Runtime Log (Rule Log) for Enhanced Business Rules are empty on my test site

Scheduling a test site: 

Notes:

- The test site refresh/re-create task is not instantaneous. It can take several hours to several days to complete. We have no insight into the time it will take. 
- Test sites are not automatically refreshed/re-created when your production site is updated.
- Configuration, Customizations, and Implementation on test sites are not automatically transferred from the test site to the production site. You will need to manually make the changes on the production site. 
- You will lose any custom vhosts you have applied to test sites when they are refreshed. This is because the cloning process re-associates the interface by its original name in DNS, which is on our *.custhelp.com domain and certificate. If you attempt to access using the custom name after a refresh, you may see certificate or SSL errors. The solution at this time is to submit a service request to Technical Support and we can manually re-apply the custom name for you. Frequent refresh requests will be directed to Oracle Consulting. When submitting a ticket, it is helpful to provide the certificate and as much information as possible.
- If you are new to using Oracle B2C Service and have just created the production site, the initial configuration should be completed on the production site before creating the test site. This is only for brand new production sites. There is no benefit to creating the test site(s) at the same time the production site is created. Test sites cannot be converted into a production site. 
- The cloning process does not impact the production site. However, if you need to re-create/refresh or create two or more test sites, it is recommended to do one at a time. Having two or more clones running at the same time off the same production site can cause the cloning processes to slow down significantly. 
-  All Oracle Messaging configurations are lost when a test site is refreshed.  You will need to use the Oracle B2C Service Configuration Assistant

Clone types:

Full - Full clone of the production site. 
Sparse - Includes the last 1000 records of the Contacts and Incidents tables. 
Discreet or Sparser clone - Includes custom objects. Does not include the Contacts or Incidents table data.

- Standard functionality only can clone from production to test site. There are no options to clone from test site to test site or from test site to production site. 

- It is not possible to select individual tables and/or modules to be cloned or not cloned. The clone copies all tables/modules by default. For customizations, please see above.  

Test site refresh/re-create options:

Test site re-create: This option will follow the steps 1-3 above. As the new test site is created by cloning the production site, the new test site will be on the same product version as the production site. (Example: Production site on 22A - New Test site will be on 22A).

Test site re-create and update: This option will follow the steps 1-4 above. The new test site will be updated to the latest product version available for your site. Please note, there is no option to select a specific product version. (Example: Production site on 21D - New Test site will be on newest product version available).

Times when a Test Site cannot be created/re-created/refreshed:

There are times when test site cannot be created/re-created or refreshed due to changes being made to the database. When the production database is being modified, it is not possible to clone/copy the database while the modifications are being completed. A few examples are:

Custom Object deployment
Custom Field deployment/creation
Interface Create and/or Rename
Update/Upgrade (Note: post-update/upgrade processes continue to run after cutover)
Site migration to a new pod

Answer 8440: Unable to create/update a test site through configuration assistant

For more information on test sites, refer to the following:

Answer ID 5755: Popular Answers About Refreshing a Test SiteAnswer ID 5755: Popular Answers About Refreshing a Test Site.

Answer ID 6092: Test Site PerformanceAnswer ID 6092: Test Site Performance