Test Profiles

Rachel Katsuda

Aloha,

Since there isn't a “test” environment, does your school create Test Profiles to test various scenarios? If so do you have any suggestions or best practices in how to manage these Test Profiles?

We created Test Students, Parents and Teachers to see how schedules, grades, login, etc. from both their prospective. Also, to test various scenarios without affecting live students or classes.

Looking forward to any responses or suggestions.

Mahalo - Rachel Katsuda

Brian LeBlanc

@Rachel Katsuda Yes, we do. My test student has been enrolled and withdrawn so many times it's probably drawn the attention of CPS. I typically keep our test student inactive unless there's a reason I need to make it active. The test student is linked to a test parent account that has my email address (but no BBID), to allow for things like testing notifications and official notes.

When we were testing BBID implementation I also had a couple of additional test parents, but once we went live with BBID I deleted those entirely from the database. If testing BBIDs, it's best to test them in a different browser (and preferably in incognito mode) to make sure you are able to replicate a clean login without any cookies getting in the way. Unfortunately you'll probably need to use a personal email address to test, although throwaway mailinator addresses work great for testing purposes.

Brian Gray

@Rachel Katsuda - I have an entire family of test accounts - The Example family. The fake students are linked to fake parents. I added a custom Admin viewable field “Student Enrollment Status” with the value “Fake Student” - which allows me to exclude them from Advanced Lists.

So far, I have been creating a new member of the family when another “graduates” - but I may start re-grading them instead of creating new ones.

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg

@Rachel Katsuda Our names are HSLunch Student, LSlunch Student, HSTest TestStudent, etc. When testing contracts, forms, etc. I add myself and my colleagues as their parent so we can conduct QA.

@Brian Gray Great nomenclature!

Nancy Kierstead

@Rachel Katsuda

We have 2 Test parents and 3 test students (LS, MS, and US). I make sure our Admissions/Enrollment department knows they exist and their current grade when I have them active in the system. I also remove them from the directory. We also have a Test Teacher and a Test candidate with test parent of candidate in our system.

The Test students are crucial for our orientations, for my help screencasts and screenshots, when testing out issues and bugs in the system, when testing out School Forms, when our schedulers are showing students how to use Course Requests, and when testing out new features. Teachers occasionally ask for them to be placed in their classes when they want to make instructional screencasts. I also have a test course in each division that allows me to be a teacher with the test students enrolled so I can test out/play around with everything and help resolve issues as they arise. I remove Gender from these 3 fake students so I can filter them out in our dashboards and lists if needed.

Rachel Katsuda

@Nancy Kierstead Thanks for the identifier option for Fake Student. Will do this in combination with Brian's suggestion.

Rachel Katsuda

@Brian LeBlanc Hopefully CPS won't come knocking ?. I probably will have to disable the Test profiles when not in use. Thanks!

Brian Gray

@Nancy Kierstead - I have a fake class (LMS Lab) in which a couple of my fake students are enrolled. I invite our real teachers to use that class a a place to experiment with features.

One of my fake students has a BB-ID that is not associated with a school email account, so it asks for a password. The password appears on the Bulletin board of the fake class, so real teachers can sign in as the fake student to see what students see.

Once the teachers get the content to be the way they want it, they can import it from the fake class to their real classes.

Ben Taylor

@Rachel Katsuda Everyone here is on the money! Especially in making sure different offices know what grade the test student is in, and that an annoying part is having to reenroll them when they "graduate." I also had my tech department make me a fake student gmail account that is linked in so I can test features that integrate between google and blackbaud. I also made one of my personal gmail accounts the email address of one of the test parents so I could see all sides of communications etc. It's actually remarkable how it helps me keep tabs on what is coming out of admissions/communications, etc. It's also WONDERFUL for testing school forms before they go out!

As a google school, however, even if BB had a full test environment I would still need a fake kid to check how student accounts (which are age banded) interact with various connected tools.

Cheers!

Ben

Daniel Wallach

@Rachel Katsuda Great ideas here, just one thing to add that we do. We have a grade level called “Demo” for testing purposes, in a catch-all school level not used for anything else. And we try to keep naming conventions for these profiles consistent (ex. “Test” as the last name, etc.)

Basically, whatever we can to to segregate test profiles from everything else (including reporting!), while still allowing them to function for the test scenarios we need.

Petra Hall

Hello @Rachel Katsuda,

The easiest-to-exclude-from-real-data method seems to be to pick a name like “Sample”, “Test”, or “Example” and make it either the last (or first) name for all of your test people.

That way you can filter exports and advanced lists relatively easily, and they really stand out.

Here's hoping Blackbaud figures out how to set up sandboxes. Until then, please vote: I want a sandbox with MY data.

Cheers,

-Petra.