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Release changes to users

As you develop your application in Grexx Studio, you compile and deploy your changes to your Development environment so that you can preview them and check everything works as expected. At some point you will want to share your progress with other users so that they can test the application and provide feedback on it.

We recommend using your Testing and/or Acceptance environments for this purpose. This means you can keep using your Development environment to preview changes as you work, while providing a stable environment for others to perform testing and validation.

When you are ready to make your application available to real users, you can deploy it to Production.

Deploy to Testing, Acceptance, or Production​

Before you can deploy your application to an environment other than Development, you need to create a release. This associates a version number with a particular point in the development of your application.

To create a release:

  1. Log in to MyGrexx and open the Releases page.
  2. Click the + icon. The Create Grexxboxx version dialog is displayed.
  3. The version number is incremented automatically. Select whether this is a major or minor update and enter a reference to help you identify the release. Use the release notes to record what this version contains.
  4. Click Create version. The new version is listed on the Releases page.

To deploy a release to one of your environments:

  1. Return to the MyGrexx settings page.
  2. Under Environment information, find the Release version row. The release version that is currently deployed to each environment is displayed.
  3. Click the edit icon for the relevant environment. The Update application version dialog is displayed.
  4. From the Version to push list, select the release version that you want to deploy.
  5. Click Submit. The selected release version is deployed to the environment.
Note:

Reverting to an earlier version of your application can have unintended consequences. We recommend consulting with your Grexx Coach before you attempt to deploy an earlier version to an environment that currently has a later version of your application.

Add users to an environment​

When you first deploy your application to a new environment, the application is created without any users (or any other cases). This is because each of your DTAP environments is independent of the others.

You can add yourself and other Studio developers as platform administrator users in each environment. This allows you to log in with the same user account that you use for the Studio and gives you access to Developer Tools.

To add yourself or other Studio developers to a DTAP environment:

  1. Log in to MyGrexx.
  2. From the Environments list select the relevant environment.
  3. From the environment page, expand the context menu in the bottom right-hand corner and select Invite platform administrator.
  4. Enter the same username and email address that you use to log in to your Studio and then click Invite.
  5. An email invitation is sent. Click the link in the email to accept the invitation.

Once you have logged in to an environment, you can invite other users using your application's user management functionality. This allows you to create "normal" users with specific roles. For more information, see Manage users and permissions.

Production release checklist​

Before you deploy a release version of your application to Production, we recommend that you ensure you have completed the following steps (as far as applicable to your use case):

  1. Apply custom URL paths to your application's pages and most used casetypes.
  2. Customize the appearance of your application by applying a theme or CSS.
  3. Test that activities do what you expect. You can use Developer Tools in your Development, Testing, or Acceptance environment to perform any activity regardless of permissions.
  4. Create user roles and grant them permissions to perform activities as appropriate.
  5. Test permissions thoroughly by adding test users with different user roles to your Testing or Acceptance environment and logging in as them (or use Developer Tools to impersonate them). Ensure users in a given role can only see the cases and perform the activities that they should have access to. For example, try accessing the view of a case that the user should not have permission to see.
  6. Change the base URL (domain) for your application by configuring a custom hostname.
  7. Configure emails to be sent from your own domain.
  8. Create one or more security profiles to restrict available login methods, set more stringent password requirements, and/or enable two-factor authentication.
  9. Invite users to log in to your Production environment or enable open registration.