Premium Sandbox

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: Set up a brief consultation (Zoom) with the Library Discovery and Integrated System Analyst/Coordinator to create an alma-config ticket (as needed)
Access: 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 Alma Tech Team
Communication: Upcoming changes to production are communicated to affected stakeholders (departmental check-ins and in issues on the alma-config repo)
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
Export staff login report
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