Test Site Creation

It is desirable in most server environments to experiment with new software well before it is deployed in Production. This allows your IT team to determine whether the environment meets the application's System Requirements, find and take note of unexpected behavior, build and stage its configuration, and generally become familiarized with its operation.

Similarly, in an environment already running Issuetrak, it is usually undesirable to make sudden and / or radical changes to the configuration of the Production Issuetrak site without testing these changes in another site. Untested configuration changes could disrupt the workflow of end-users, prevent the creation of new issues, remove certain users / groups' ability to see certain existing issues and create frustration in your organization.

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Automated Test Site Creation

The IDM automates the test site creation process. You don't need to have knowledge of our JSON or IDU verbs, as the IDM will handle these for you! Here's how you can do deploy a test site:

Deployment Pre-Flight

Get in touch with Issuetrak Support to obtain your testing Site ID.

This scenario has a test site being deployed on the production web server and can either be based on a copy of a production database OR a clean new database. The deployment tools will prevent services and scheduled tasks from being deployed by default.

If you intend to use a copy of a production Issuetrak site's database, then you'll need to create a backup of the Production site's database and then restore it to the database server that you will use to host the Test database. Make sure you label the database with something descriptive that clearly marks it as a Test database.

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Deploying the Test Site

1. Open the IDM on the web server that will be hosting the test site.
2. You must agree to the Issuetrak Terms of Service.
3. Choose Install a New Test Issuetrak Site.
4. Enter your test site ID, then click Verify License Details.
   1. Don't know your site ID? Contact Issuetrak Support!
   2. Is the error "There was a problem verifying license details" displayed? Either the Site ID entered is incorrect, or your server's having trouble reaching out to the license validation service. If you are still having trouble after verifying the entered Site ID is correct, then please begin the manual license request process and then contact Issuetrak Support for assistance with manual license validation.
5. Select whether you'll be deploying your test site using a Database Backup or with a New Fresh Database.
6. Click Next.
7. Enter the required information:

• Choose whether to select or create a new IIS website. If you select "Create a new IIS Website..." then you'll need to enter the name of the website that you want to appear in IIS. Note that whatever name you enter here will have Test appended to the end of it.
  • If you selected a website to deploy the test site under, then enter the relative IIS Application path that will be used to get to your site.

• Choose a location to store the web files for this site. The word "Test" will be appended at the end of the path you choose, and the specified folder will be created if it doesn't already exist.

8. Click Next.
9. Fill out the binding information that will be used to access your site. If you choose HTTPS or Both, you will need to already have a certificate installed in IIS to proceed. Change any information on this screen to suit your needs. Click Next.
10. Setting initial information:
    1. Enter the Application URL that will be used to navigate to this site. It will have "Test" appended to the end.
    2. Enter the name of the initial organization that should be present in this site.
    3. Set the password for the "admin" user (twice).
    4. Click Next.
11. Choose whether to install the API or API v2 .
    1. If you‘re installing the API, you'll need to enter each IP address that you’ll be accessing the Swagger interface from on this screen.
    2. Additionally, you‘ll need to take note of the API key that’s been auto-generated on this screen. You (and your colleagues) will need it if you intend to access the API.
    3. Click Next.
12. Enter the required information:
    1. Database server, in the form of hostname or IP address (with named instance, if applicable)
    2. Give the site's database a name. It will have "Test" appended to the end.
    3. If you specified earlier that you would be selecting a database backup as the basis for your test site: Enter the name of the database backup file (including file extension) to restore and use as a basis for this site. No verification is done on the specified backup file on this step, so be sure that the file exists in the SQL server's default backup location.
       If you specified earlier that you will be deploying Issuetrak with a fresh database, select whether to install the Clean or Standard configuration.
    4. Click Next.
13. Select whether to use Integrated Security or SQL users to run the site.  If you choose "Integrated Security" then you must enter:
    1. The user ID of the domain-authenticated service account you want the site to run under the authority of, in "Domain\UserID" format.
    2. The password for the Integrated Security user you entered above.
14. Choose what form of SQL administrative authentication (Windows or SQL Server) will be used for the SQL server for this deployment. Note that this is just used for the deployment, and isn‘t saved after Issuetrak is installed. If you select "SQL Server" you'll need to enter SQL credentials. Click Next.
15. You'll be asked if you would like to deploy the site. Verify that the displayed values are correct, then click Deploy Now when ready.
16. Monitor the progress of the deployment. If the deployment fails, check the Logs folder in the Issuetrak distribution you're installing from.

If the IDM indicates that deployment ended successfully, then congratulations! You can go into your test site, make desired configuration changes, and begin testing the site.

If you ran into trouble with deploying your site, or you're unsure how to proceed, then please reach out to Issuetrak Support for assistance!

Below is a helpful presentation to show you step-by-step how to deploy a test site with the Issuetrak Deployment Manager: