AlayaCare Cloud: Web Release Process and Environment Definitions

This article provides an overview of the release cycle for major releases to the AlayaCare Cloud web application as well as the definitions of the various web environments that are available to customers. 

Web release cycle

AlayaCare's web development team schedules major releases approximately once every month. These releases contain a variety of new features, improvements, and fixes to the web application as well as the Family Portal. 

The content of a major release is finalized for testing and validation approximately 13 business days before it is released to customer production environments. To allow clients to review upcoming changes and test their workflows, the release is deployed to the customer's preview and UAT environments one week (five business days) before the release to production. The release notes are published on the same day.

Please note that if available, external API release notes are now part of the regular monthly release notes.

Occasionally, scheduled downtime may be required to allow for migrations related to a major release. If this is the case, your organization will receive a notice about the planned maintenance via status.io. The timing and duration of the downtime will also be communicated in the release notes.

Major releases with no scheduled downtime should be released at the following times:

• AUS/INT: 11:00 AM EST (time in AEST will vary based on daylight saving time)
• CAN/USA: 7:00 PM EST

Major releases with scheduled downtime should be released at the following times:

• AUS/INT: 11:00 AM EST (time in AEST will vary based on daylight saving time)
• CAN/USA: 2:30 AM EST the day after the production release to AUS/INT

Web environments

Customers using the AlayaCare web application have access to several different environments. While an organization's live data is found in a production environment, the other environments can be used for scenarios such as testing, downtime backup, and user training. These environments are updated with the code for the latest major release at different stages in the release cycle.

Environment Type	Site Address	Definition
Production	customername.alayacare.ca/com	A production environment contains an organization's live data and is used in everyday operations and processes. Releases to production occur after they have been tested on internal environments and then deployed to a customer's preview and UAT environments five business days before the scheduled production release.
Preview	customername.preview.alayacare.ca/com	The preview environment is the last step before new code is pushed to production. Deployments to this environment are accompanied by release notes and enable customers to safely preview an upcoming feature release 5 business days before the release is in production. The data in this environment is copied approximately twice a month: once during the release process, before deployment of a monthly release to preview, and then once after the monthly release is deployed on production.  At this point preview reverts to the previous release for testing purposes.
UAT	customername.uat.alayacare.ca/com	UAT (user acceptance testing) environments are used to test and preview features that are soon to be released or are in the final stages of testing. Upcoming feature releases are deployed to customer UAT environments at the same time that they are deployed to preview environments, five business days before a new release is deployed to production environments. Data from production is not automatically copied to UAT environments, but you can request to have a copy of your production data copied to UAT environments for testing purposes.
Staging	customername.staging.alayacare.ca/com	A customer's staging environment is a close replication of the production environment. Staging contains real client data that represents the production environment’s data from the previous day. Staging environments are used in the following situations: During implementation and phased rollouts for data migration. As the organization's downtime backup. By the support team to replicate issues.  Changes made in staging environments will be overwritten every night in order for the data to reflect the previous day's data. Staging environments receive production release code the morning after a monthly release.
Training	customername.training.alayacare.ca/com	Training contains data and configuration that can be used when training new users.  It shares the code currently in production. Training data is often a copy of real customer data at a point in time during implementation. You can request to have a copy of your production data copied to training environments to help facilitate trainings. Training environments receive production release code the morning after a monthly release.