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      Learnsoft Staging Migration FAQ

      Answers to some of the Questions you may have about this transition.

       Load Balancer changes

      Friday, February 23 at 5pm EST (NO ACTION REQUIRED BY CLIENT):

      • Q: What differences should I see in functionality when I hit staging from when I normally hit staging (just after the load balancer change)?  

        • A: None. Our team will make the change and also test functionality of log in for clients. If you see any changes, you should immediately notify support@learnsoft.com. 

      • Q: Can I use my existing URLs?  

        • A: Yes, existing URLs will still be valid.

      • Q: Can I use the new URLs and what happens if I use the new URLs?

        • A: Yes, the new URLS will be live and active.

        • You will automatically get directed to the colocation.

        • URLs in the browser will change automatically if you use the new URL prior to migrating.

      • Q: Does this affect performance?  

        • A: This should have no impact on performance.

      Staging site migration

      Post-Cloud Migration (Staging), Monday, February 26 (ACTION REQUIRED BY CLIENT):

      • Q: What training content is in staging?  

        • A: We are copying content currently in Colocation Production to the Cloud Staging environment. If additional data is required in the colocation staging environment, we can copy that over.

      • Q: What data is in staging?  

        • A: As part of this project, we plan to refresh your sandbox/staging site with a copy of your current production data. This will copy over any scenarios or content you may have set up in staging previously. If you do not want a refresh of your site, please let us know so we exclude your site and leave your existing staging data as is.

      • Q: Will services be running in the cloud staging environment?  

        • A: Most services are not currently run in staging environments. However, if you already have services running in your Sandbox, they will continue to run and work in Staging.

      • Q: Will notifications go out to users?  

        • A: No, your users should not receive notification. Learnsoft will run email services on the staging site; however, all email addresses are changed so these notifications will be directed internal to Learnsoft for validation.

      • Q: What if I find an issue?  

        • A: Please message support@learnsoft.com immediately to report it.  If the issue is an existing problem or can be replicated in the colocation facility, it will be identified as an issue not related to the move.  If it is related to the move, we will address it and resume testing.

      • Q: Can we elect to go back to the Colocation Facility?  

        • A: No. However, the colocation facility will stay operational for some time. If we were to see issues in staging on a large scale basis, we will engage our rollback plan.

      • Q: May I opt out of a staging move?

        • A: No.  It is important we test all customer functionality in the cloud to provide better service in the future.

      • Q: Does my organization have to move to the cloud?  

        • A: Yes.  We will work with you to test staging and plan the production move carefully to ensure you and your users have a positive experience.

      • Q: Do I need to move to new URLs to go live in staging or prod cloud?  

        • A: No, we will handle that routing for you, but we highly encourage you to begin using the new url after your migration.  The URLs that begin with https://app.staging.learnsoft.com will route traffic more directly. 

      • Q: Will my advertised URLs still work?  

        • A: Yes, we have tested and anticipate those will continue to work.

      • Q: What will my staging outage be?  

        • A: We expect to be able to cut over the staging environment in less than two hours for any single customer. This transition can occur during the workday or non-business hours for the move and testing.

      • Q: What about SSO?  

        • A: We will need you to help connect us with your IT / security teams to set this up.  Optimally we would like to work with you to configure SSO in both staging and production. It would be helpful if Learnsoft could obtain an active account to sign in through your organization’s SSO for your environment to help us troubleshoot, although we are aware this may not be allowed due to security policies.

       

      Definitions for this effort:

      Staging - what you might have previously referred to as your ‘500 site' or sandbox. A staging environment (stage) is a nearly exact replica of a production environment for software testing. Staging environments are made to test codes, builds, and updates to ensure quality under a production-like environment before application deployment.

      Staging is considered to be a Learnsoft Platform stable, pre-production environment utilized for Learnsoft and customers to test new functionality, bug fixes and enhancements, as well as customer processes and new integrations.

      The cadence of updates to this environment is completely up to Learnsoft. While this is a stable environment, Learnsoft provides no uptime guarantees for the staging environment. Staging is a not intended for long term customer tests that would impact our ability to release new features and test new scenarios across customers. In the future, customers requiring long term testing with now new platform changes will be required to have a separate environment.

       

      Services - automated processes that run nightly or based on events in the platform such as assignment scheduler, notifications, scheduled reports.

       

      Colo or Colocation facility - rented location where physical servers are operated to host sites.

       

      Load balancer - a specialized device that sits between you and the web server group to act as an invisible facilitator, ensuring that all resource servers are used equally. Currently when you go to your URL at lsglm700 you are sent to one of several servers and your url changes based on where you are directed. Our new architecture also uses a load balancer, but it will be more transparent, and your URL will remain consistent. This will allow us to increase resources more effectively as traffic and demand increase on your site.