Admin users can specify staging servers to use as testing environments for deploying and testing guides before publishing them in a production environment. This helps avoid overloading users with guides or creating additional segments that target only internal users. It also means that analytics associated with a guide that you're testing don't appear in your production environment.
Setting your applications up for guide staging is a broadly two-step process:
- At the subscription level, add a staging server.
- At the application level, add the staging environment to your list of application websites.
Once this is set up, a guide that's set to Staged is only deployed in a staging environment. A guide that's set to Public is deployed in both the staging and production environments.
Add a staging server
Staging environments are added in Settings > Staging as server hosts or domains. A staging server is typically a QA or development domain (such as *.qa.example.com) that mirrors your production environment and is only accessible to your internal teams.
- As an admin user, navigate to Settings > Staging in the bottom-left of Adopt.
- Select + Add Staging Website.
- Select the server or servers that you would like to set as your staging servers or enter a domain.
- Select Add in the bottom-right when you're done. This adds the staging server to your list of environments.
Add a staging environment to an application
After creating a staging environment, you can add it to the relevant applications.
- Navigate to Settings > Applications.
- Select the application you want to add the staging environment to. This opens App Details.
- Select Edit from the Websites row under Basic Settings.
- Select + Add Another and enter the staging server.
- Select Save in the bottom-right corner.
Clear guide data
Clearing guide data is useful for testing guides in a staging environment.
To prevent visitors from seeing the same guide more than once, an automatic guide only displays when there's no "dismissal event" logged for that guide and the target visitor. A dismissal event typically occurs when the visitor selects the top-right "X" in any of the steps.
For testing purposes, you might want to see automatic guides multiple times. To do this, you must reset all of the collected guide data. Clear the guide data to reset and prompt the guide to display to visitors who've previously seen and dismissed it.
The Clear Guide Data option is only available when a guide is in the Staged status. Navigate to a staged guide's details page and select the ellipses (...) in the top-right of the page.
Warning: This action resets all of the collected guide data. You likely don't want to clear guide data if the guide has previously gone public to your visitors.