Premium Sandbox

Owned by Peter Green
Last updated: Jun 17, 2024
2 min read

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

Sandbox development workflow

Note: Sandbox permissions requests are not processed through SN@P, as production permissions requests are.

  1. Proposal: Set up a brief consultation (Zoom) with the Library Discovery and Integrated System Analyst/Coordinator to create an alma-config ticket (as needed)

  2. Access: the Alma Tech Team will assign additional permissions as needed

  3. Development: Experiment and test in the sandbox
  4. Review: After the proposed changes have been made in the sandbox, they are reviewed with the Alma Tech Team
  5. Communication: Upcoming changes to production are communicated to affected stakeholders (departmental check-ins and in issues on the alma-config repo)
  6. Implementation: System admins implement the approved changes in production

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:

Before refresh

  • 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.

After refresh 

  • 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