In addition to our production environment, we have a sandbox environment which we will use for targeted development and experimentation. The sandbox is a copy of our production environment, refreshed biannually (in Feb and Aug).
Logging In
- Regular staff login (CAS): https://princeton-psb.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/SAML
- For generic users (e.g. catbasic1): https://princeton-psb.alma.exlibrisgroup.com
Sandbox development workflow
Note: Sandbox permissions requests are not processed through SN@P, as production permissions requests are.
- Proposal: Create a ticket proposing a development need on the Set up a brief consultation (Zoom) with the Library Discovery and Integrated System Analyst/Coordinator to create an alma-config repo (requires a free GitHub account and inclusion into the PUL GitHub organization ticket (as needed)
Access: system admins the Alma Tech Team will assign additional permissions as needed
- Development: Experiment and test in the sandbox
- Review: After the proposed changes have been made in the sandbox, they are reviewed with the system admin groupAlma Tech Team
- Communication: Upcoming changes to production are communicated to affected stakeholders (e.g., during departmental check-ins and in issues on the alma-config repo)
- Implementation: System admins implement the approved changes in production
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Biannual Sandbox Refresh: System Administrator Tasks
Twice yearly (in Aug and Feb) the sandbox is refreshed, making it a copy of our production data and configuration settings. The following tasks need to be done by the system administrators:
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- Export lists of roles for users with roles differing from production
- Export allowed S/FTP connections
- Export allowed emails
- Verify that the 'Webhook Monitoring Staging' integration profile setting is identical to prod.
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- Change the sandbox color scheme to orange (prod is black)
- Recreate the informational banner
- Restore elevated permissions to select users
- Restore (via import) allowed emails
- Restore (via import) allowed S/FTP connections
- Ensure that 'New Princeton SFTP Staging' connection has been copied over from production
- Use 'New Princeton SFTP Staging' for all relevant publishing profiles ('Incremental Publishing', 'General Publishing', etc.)
- Copy the URL and secret key from 'Webhook Monitoring Staging' in prod and reactivate it
Detailed checklists are in alma-config issue templates