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Duco provides staging copies and change control mechanisms to all our clients, for the purpose of testing different configurations of a process. However, some organisations, operating under stringent compliance landscapes, may require a higher degree of environment segregation. In such instances Duco offers Sandbox and Testing environments as an additional module. If you are interested in this module, please contact us at info@du.co

The following development environments are available:

You can promote configurations between these environments, with the promotion working seamlessly with our existing change control mechanisms.

Environment Characteristics 

Environments come with their own URL, separate user base, SFTP data submission mechanism and API endpoints.

Volume, process and user limits are equal to your production environment. Environments are legally restricted to use for development, training and production testing. 

Processes and their configuration are retained indefinitely, unless deleted by users. We retain Sandbox result data for 3 months.

Backups, failover and SLAs

Data is backed up to secure storage, in-line with our normal backup procedures. There is a redundant, secondary site for DR events.

The SLA is disapplied for these environments and no support credits are claimable.

• Logically segregated environment: We will provide an additional, logically segregated environments for governance and adoption purposes. Additional environments will come with their own URL which will be used to identify it.

• Shared hardware, segregated data: Hardware may be shared between environments, but the environments will be completely logically segregated. This includes process configuration, audit log etc.
  
  
• Separate SFTP data submission and API endpoints
  Data submission and API submission will be segregated for this environments, including separate SFTP data submission accounts.

Sandbox

The sandbox environment gives users a chance to experiment with new rules and data sets, and train new users, away from production change controls. This may be a requirement for some clients to align Duco with internal control processes and segregation of duty requirements.

Testing

The testing environment can be used for user acceptance testing of processes promoted from the Sandbox environment. Processes that fulfill requirements can then be promoted to Production, or if issues are discovered, reverted to Sandbox for further work.

Production

Environment for running live processes.

Roles

There are roles specifically associated with the use of Development environments.

• Process Configuration Exporter: Ability to promote the configuration of a process between the Development Environments (Only visible to clients using Development Environments).
• Process Configuration Importer: Can import the configuration of processes that have been promoted from a Development Environment (Only visible to clients using Development Environments). 

Exporting configuration between environments

To promote the configuration, go to General from the Settings menu for your process.

Select Raise export request.   

This will return a menu to select your target environment for the export.

Importing New Configurations

Exported Processes are immediately visible via the Administration Menu in the target environment.

 

Clicking on the checkbox next to the process will enable the Action drop-down, where you can choose whether to approve or reject the request.

Upon acceptance of the new configuration, a Staging Copy is created in the target environment. Users can select whether to create a new process or link the configuration to an existing process.

If you choose to create a new process, then a Process name and Short code must be entered.

To import the configuration to an existing process, simply choose the target process from the drop-down.

If you select to create a new process then you will find that process cannot initially be run and will marked as requiring configuration.

The settings menu will show that no configuration is in place.

To complete the export, go to the Staging menu where you will find a copy of your process complete with its full configuration from the source environment.

Select Raise change request to begin the four-eyes approval to promote the configuration (See Creating a staging copy).

 

The same steps should be followed when importing to an existing process. Go to the process, where a staging copy will have been created with the configuration from the source environment.

Automatically add process to reference data table authorised list during promotion

If the process to be imported uses Reference data tables, it may require additional steps to grant access of this process to the tables.  If you, the user approving the import request, are a Config Admin of those tables, Duco will automatically add the process to those tables.  Otherwise you will be prompted when choosing the mapping, and you will need to contact the Config Admin users of those tables to grant you access.

 

Promoting a recon process that uses a data prep input

To seamlessly migrate your data prep and corresponding reconciliation processes between environments, you can promote the recon process that uses a data prep input. When you approve the import request, simply pick the Data Prep process from the target environment in the mapping stage.

 

 

Promote reference data tables between environments

You can also promote reference tables between environments, sparing the need to manually reproduce them.  Similar to process configurations promotion, this has 4-eyes controls for proper control and audibility.

To export a reference table, go to the Settings menu for the specific table.

Select Export from the menu. And then press Raise export request.

You will then be invited to select the target environment and also a Reason for the export.

After the promotion request is approved, a new table will be created in the target environment.  You can then use it when you promote process configuration changes.

Groups

It may be the case that your process configuration in some way leverages a user Group. This can present issues when exporting a process, as Duco will not automatically associate a Group in the target environment with a Group used in an imported process, even if the name and membership are identical. So for example, if your process utilizes Workflow rules, say where some sort of auto-assignment rule is in place, you will find that you must create an equivalent Group in the target environment, and then manually recreate the Workflow rule in order for it to work.

This same premise is true if Exceptions workflow is enabled, as a prior Default Group will not be recognised in the target environment. Again, this configuration step will need to be repeated, using the Group from the target environment.

For this reason, it may make sense to make exceptions configuration in the final target environment. However, this of course depends on the governance restrictions imposed on your process creation flow.

 

Existing Process Amendment

Should a Production processes require amendment, this can be easily exported to the Testing environment, required changes made, re-tested and then re-loaded to Production, all via the same functionality described above and fully auditable. For Production processes deployed via the segregated environment infrastructure, the original Sandbox process can be amended, tested and re-loaded into Testing and from there into Production.