Considerations and steps for making global business-logic changes after trading partners are in Production status.
Considering Changes to Business Logic
During the implementation process, global business logic is determined and applied while trading partners are tested in order to validate and approve the logic before processing any Production data. Once trading partners are in Production status, these global rules impact live documents so changes must be made with careful consideration.
The first and most important step when considering a change to global business logic is to discuss it with your Conexiom Project Representative. Following this discussion and once changes are applied, the next key step is to test them in a way that allows you to confirm that the changes align with your expectations without a risk to live data. Because business logic has a broad impact, testing plays a significant role in:
- Preventing data corruption and maintaining data integrity
- Testing the system's configuration
- Validating functionality of impacted processes and results
Using a Sandbox Trading Partner
Reviewing and validating global changes can be facilitated through what is known as a "sandbox trading partner." This is a no-charge trading partner created by Conexiom that is made available when post-Production testing is required. It mimics the live environment with an isolated change, allowing for safe testing before that change is applied to all other trading partners. It is typically named to include the words “Sandbox” or “Test.”
Note: The sandbox is used exclusively for testing and is never moved to Production status.
Making Changes to Business Logic
If any trading partners are in Production status, follow these steps to make changes to global business logic.
- Work with your Conexiom Project Representative to submit the global change request:
- The request must not be submitted against the Sandbox trading partner.
- The request must specify which trading partner to copy for testing.
- Take at least five documents from the copied trading partner and upload them to the sandbox trading partner at the time of the request or immediately following it.
Note: These documents are required in order to apply the associated mapping. They may initially fail, but will not require any action at that time.
Your Conexiom Project Representative will notify you when the change is available for testing in your sandbox trading partner.
Testing Changes to Global Logic
When changes have been applied to the sandbox trading partner, the next step is to upload additional documents that would demonstrate the modified logic. If these types of documents have already been included, they do not need to be added again. At that point, the process is similar to that of testing a trading partner during implementation. See Verifying Test Documents for instructions on how to process test documents and review the test results in your ERP test environment.
If you require any corrections or modifications, consult with your Conexiom Project Representative on the next steps. If you have confirmed that the change is working as expected and is accepted by your team, work with your Conexiom Project Representative to have the change applied globally.