The Faculty Success Beta environment allows your campus and developers to test upcoming features and integrations before they launch in the Production environment. This article explains why the Beta environment exists and what to expect from its behavior, including its data refresh schedule, email handling, and Work Request processing. This article is intended for Administrators and developers who plan to use or test in the Beta environment.
Why Does the Beta Environment Exist?
The Beta environment gives your institution a safe space to explore Faculty Success changes before they reach Production. It supports a few distinct purposes:
- Your campus can test new features that Faculty Success is preparing to release to the Production environment.
- Your developers can test integrations between your systems and Faculty Success, such as course loads or data extracts for web profiles.
- The services team can test advanced configuration changes that you initiate through a Work Request.
To learn how to access the Beta environment, visit Accessing the Faculty Success Beta Environment.
What to Know Before Using the Beta Environment
Because the Beta environment is designed for testing, it behaves differently from Production in a few important ways. Review the following before you begin testing.
Data Refresh Schedule
The Beta environment's activity, user, and report data is refreshed from the Production environment every weekend. When this refresh occurs, any changes made in the Beta environment during that week are overwritten with current Production data.
- Data for the weekly refresh is captured on Friday after 7:00 PM (US/Central).
- The refreshed data is applied to the Beta environment on Saturday at 5:00 AM (US/Central).
Important: Do not rely on the Beta environment to store data long term. Any configuration or records you create will be replaced during the next weekly refresh.
Email Behavior
The Beta environment does not send most system emails. The one exception is password reset emails, which are sent for users configured with Local Authentication.
Work Requests
Work Requests submitted from the Beta environment are not monitored. If you need a configuration change reviewed or actioned, submit the request from your Production environment instead.
Once you are ready to begin testing, visit Accessing the Faculty Success Beta Environment to learn how to log in and get started.