Please refer to the recently updated version of this post available here,
Don 't Wait Until the WD30 Goes Live to Test
With the pressures of day-to-day operations and competition for resources to contend with, you might be tempted to put off testing. This is especially true if you 've just completed your implementation and your test coordinators and departmental subject matter experts are feeling fatigued. Don 't.
Rally the Troops
The testing required throughout the 5-week preview window is typically a multi-departmental effort, so it 's essential to make sure everyone involved knows exactly:
- why this testing is so important for safeguarding your Workday configuration;
- what their role and responsibilities in the process are;
- what the process is and key deadlines they must meet; and
- what the lines of communication are.
Test Your Sandbox & Sandbox Preview Tenants Simultaneously
Our clients have experienced the greatest success and least amount of friction when they thoroughly test both their sandbox (WD29) and sandbox preview (WD30) tenants simultaneously throughout the 5-week period. This gives you a simple A/B comparison that allows you to clearly spot which processes have been impacted by the Workday update and need attention.
Request Refreshes of Your Preview Tenant
Workday pushes its changes to your sandbox preview on February 3rd and will continue to release changes throughout the 5-week preview period.
So make sure to request a refresh of your production data/configuration to both your sandbox tenant and your sandbox preview tenant at the end of each week, so that come Sunday night or Monday morning (whenever you start that week 's testing) your view of WD29 is up-to-date on your sandbox, and your data and configuration of WD30 is as up to date and relevant as possible on your sandbox preview tenant.
Week 1: Start with Security, Reporting & Integrations
Always start with security, reporting and integration testing. Given that these functionalities are business critical, you want to make sure that your reporting is successful and your integrations up and down stream are working as expected. We suggest you start these tests each Monday morning to ensure that no data has been compromised as a result of staff making configuration changes in the week prior.
For integration testing, the most important factor is to run your integrations on both your WD29 sandbox and WD30 sandbox preview tenants before any other changes have been made to the tenants. This will allow you to do an exact comparison of your integrations from WD29 to WD30 and immediately pinpoint any discrepancies. If you have a significant number of integrations, then we recommend using automation.
Weeks 2 5: BP testing & Regression testing for Security, Reports & Integrations
We find that Workday are still delivering BP functionality through the first week, so it 's best to conserve your efforts and hold off on BP testing until Week 2 of the window.
Remember, though, to continue running your security, reporting and integration tests alongside your BPs throughout the 5-week window as each weekly release from Workday will include new functionality.
Hopefully this has been helpful. You might also like
this post by Magellan Health, where they explain how changing the way they test Workday updates reduced their testing effort.
