Ability to Setup Sky API to Mirror Image of your Production Environment

Lindsey Bryant

Good morning,

We recently found out that everyone has a mirror image of their production environment that is refreshed each night. Even though this is a great resource, we can't access it through the Sky API. I submitted an idea for this to be considered and I wanted to share with the community in case anyone wanted to upvote this idea, share this with their end user in case they need to do same day testing, or wanted to reach out to their account representatives to request that this become a higher priority for a future roadmap feature. The idea also includes details on how to access the mirror image in case others want to try.

Please take a moment to upvote it and share it with others to do the same.

Erik Leaver

@Lindsey Bryant Is there a reason why testing in the Sky Developer Cohort sandbox doesn't meet your requirements?

Lindsey Bryant

@Erik Leaver
I haven't tried it to be honest, but in the same breath, it's not our data. Our school took an approach of allowing each department to pick their own SaaS solution based off their needs. So our integrations are extremely complex. Because not all of our data can be sources from APIs or even advance list, we have to layer in PowerAutomate jobs to pull SKY lists down and then bring this data into our data warehouse. The data warehouse is the only place we can execute and manipulate data before sending it out to other systems. I can't imagine the Sandbox would be a good fit for us as we're not only tackling current year requirements, but several year reporting needs.

Erik Leaver

@Lindsey Bryant The Cohort would allow for testing and contains sample data so might be somthing you'd like to try. We don't have any plans for adding API access to the Live Mirror site. This site is not intended for customer use. If you have need for a more robust testing environment than what you can achieve via the cohort, you have the option of purchasing a dev environment. Your CSM or AE can assist.

Lindsey Bryant

@Erik Leaver we have purchased a test environment but it's unrealistic to keep it up to date with our Production environment. We've tried to put test records in Production, but that's also caused challenges on having to remind multiple users how to filter them out. If there was a consistent and efficient way to keep two instances in sync, we would love to take on that responsibility, but it's not feasible.

As someone who works with multiple SaaS systems that offer a test environment (for free), this seems like such a missed selling opportunity and a way to ensure families have a better experience by allowing admins to test configurations.

If the mirror site isn't intended for customer use, can I ask what is the purpose of having it?

Stephen Boyle

@Lindsey Bryant
The mirror is for testing support updates, datafixes and other enhancements in ‘live’ data before moving updates to Production environments, especially those specific to a client environment.

Alex Wong

@Lindsey Bryant
I don't know what your intention is to have a “mirror site” that always is a “copy” of your production envirionment. Can you specify?

We have a produciton environment and a test environment (they are 2 different envid). They do not “mirror” each other, and while I can request to have the test environment to be “loaded” with the production environment backup, it is not automatic.

However, I am able to issue SKY API against the test environment just like I do to the production environment. I do not have a business need that require my test envrionment to be the exact same as my production environment on a daily basis. As long as my data structure and configuration remains the same, even if the data is outdated (doesn't have the latest gift record, constituent record, etc). I have no problem making customization on the test environment's outdated data, and then when I like what I have build, then change it to deploy to production envrionment.

Lindsey Bryant

@Alex Wong, can you clarify what you mean by request to have the test environment be loaded from production? It this a service that you have to pay for?

Some of it comes down to timing of our project and when we decide to buy a test environment. We are in our first year of implementation and therefore lots of things are changing. We had someone at BB do the initial load about three months into going live and it took them months to get most of it done. Now the issue is the lack of resources on how to quickly get data into BBEM. A good portion of it requires file imports that require multiple keys to match. I can't simply take a file from production and load it into test because the IDs don't match. I could use the host_id but names change, and then the file fails.

In general practice, we always want to test in a controlled-test environment where families are not impacted. Because we have so many systems, it's important that we can do this with all of our systems and do this from a clone of our production system. As I mentioned in one of my responses, we took a best in bread approach where each department got to select their own SaaS system and I'm part of a team who gets to piece it all together. For us, we have multiple systems that push and pull data out of BBEM, to support the student process, and all of them except BBEM has the ability to create a test instance or is cloned periodically.

If we could leverage the mirror instance (and realistically pause it from being wiped out each day), this would allow us to focus on our job of completing integrations verse staging data. This is how several of BBEM competitors do this, which is why I'm surprised this isn't something on the roadmap.

For example, we are currently testing moving data from our admissions system into our BBEM test instance. I was able to go into our admissions system, initiate a test instance and it was available in three hours or less. It's a mirror image of production at that point in time. It will stay active as long as log into it at least once every thirty days. I can request a new one and wipe out my previous test instance f I find I need to for some reasons. I am able to leverage all of my APIs and integration testing with this admissions test instance and I have records that are real use cases that I can verify my coding works without an impact families or wasting time to keep a separate BBEM instance up to date.

Ultimately, I want this same functionality I have in our admissions system in BBEM where I can initiate a backup, it stays active as long as I'm using it, and then is deleted after 30 days if I haven't accessed it. However, I would settle for a 24 hour mirror with API access, and then dedicate a day to testing and pushing data constantly to try and do speed testing as it's better than trying to keep a separate instance up to date.

Alex Wong

@Lindsey Bryant
My apology, I missed the part that this is in the Education Management forum. My previous replies is relates to RE NXT, you can disregard.

Lindsey Bryant

@Alex Wong thanks for clarifying. It does make me wonder though why does the Education Module not have this option similar to RENXT. I hope that it can start to gain traction as this is pivotal.

Lindsey Bryant

Linked to idea: API-I-552. Please go upvote this idea to help us as developers be able to do more thorough testing in a controlled environment.