This article provides advice on how to test the engagement console using any connection.
Recommendation for initial testing to be conducted within a sandbox which is a testing environment so that does not use or affect the live data in your production environment. Lumary uses sandboxes to provide access to new features for testing prior to updating production environments. A sandbox may also be referred to as a user acceptance testing (UAT) or pre-production (pre-prod) environment or org.
When we deploy a release or update to your sandbox, we encourage you to test the new features and improvements against your usual business processes. New features and improvements may not appear to directly affect the parts of the system you use. However, it’s worth running through common scenarios to make sure that they still function as expected.
Failing to test a release update before it’s applied to your production environment may expose your live data to issues that impact on your business processes and/or claims.
How can I test a flow before activating it?
The easiest way to test a flow before sending it to real contacts within your data source is to firstly include criteria (such as mobile phone/email is equal to xyz) which ensures only your test record/s qualify for the flow.
Once you have successfully tested this, you can copy the flow and remove your test criteria before activating it.
Copying the flow before activating means your flow performance data won't contain any data related to your testing. See how to duplicate a flow for more information.
Noting this is not applicable to the console flow which can be tested directly. See sending console messages for more information
What this process looks like:
- Create a test contact record in Lumary with a valid mobile number and email address linked to receive the outbound messages.
- Ensure that the contact record also has a test record associated to the flow experience you are looking to test. Example: A Service Agreement associated to the contact record to receive updates on their funding.
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Duplicate the target flow and update criteria filter on the initial node action in the flow to link directly to your test contact record. Example: Field 'Client Name' is equal to 'Test Record'.
In your connections, you will have the option to toggle which environment it is linked to for testing if it has been connected. If this is the initial test, we recommend you connecting your sandbox environment prior to retrying with your production.
- Make sure to activate the duplicated flow for testing.
- Trigger the event based on the duplicated flow which activates the message send.
Example: If you duplicated the Appointment Update flow, this will require you to create a Session record with the Test client record and setting the Status as Rostered. - You should receive an SMS with the messaging set in the flow to validate the flow works as intended.
After testing completion, you may remove or keep dummy records as required by your business.
How do I make changes to a flow once it has been activated?
Once a flow has been activated, you can still make changes to it if required, including updating the SMS or email templates it is using. In order to edit an active flow, you'll firstly need to pause it.
See Managing existing flows for more information.