Overview
When a lender's Loanapp is released to production, the change management flow becomes more procedural. The lender plays an active role in verifying changes and providing approval to promote to production.
When a change is requested by the lender (see Using the Customer Portal) and Simpology requests the lender to verify the change, the lender verifies in the DEV guidebook version. A fully verified DEV guidebook configuration supersedes and replaces the PROD (production) guidebook.
Table of Contents:
1 - Lender requests change via support portal
A lender initiates a request for a change by the lodging a change request through the Support portal (see for more details Using the Customer Portal). In this request, the lender should specify their requested functionality or changes needed, as well as specify what outcome is expected to be seen as a result of the change.
If applicable, the lender should specify if there are any special requirements such as a proposed release date/time.
2 - Simpology reviews the request, clarifies requirements with lender as needed
Upon receipt of the request, the Simpology team will analyse the details provided in the request. Simpology may need to clarify certain requirements to ensure that any changes enacted reflect the lenders requested outcome.
3 - Simpology schedules and deploys the change for verification
When the Simpology are satisfied that the requirements and expected outcomes are well understood, the team will schedule the technical implementation of the change for verification. The time required to implement a change can differ depending on existing scheduling, complexity of change and urgency of change.
The DEV guidebook
When a change is deployed for verification, it is deployed to the DEV guidebook. The DEV guidebook the same as your Production guidebook, except it will contain any changes to the guidebook that are ready for your verification.
The DEV guidebook is accessed using your usual URL and credentials, but is only visible or accessible by internal lender staff. Associated applications can be found in My Apps, Team Apps and Received Apps - just like the other Product Groups.
A DEV application can be easily identified with the following markers
a prefix of an </> icon, and
a suffix of the word DEV
4 - Simpology advises lender that change is ready for verification
When the change has been deployed to DEV guidebook, the Simpology team will send a notification to the requestor (and any other request participants) via the support portal.
The Support Portal update will advise that the change is now ready for verification in the DEV guidebook. The update may also contain data outputs or other information that will assist the lender with performing verification, such as an spreadsheet output of the guidebook's products.
5 - Lender reviews and simulates loan scenario to verify the change
The change can be verified by simulating a Loanapp application in the DEV guidebook which would trigger the expected outputs of the change.
This simulated application could be created directly from the My Apps tab, or launched from a testing environment from an aggregator's CRM. See Using Loanapp from Start to Finish if you need assistance with creating applications and navigating Loanapp.
The methodology applied to verify the change will differ case-by-case, as the lender will have expected inputs and outputs for each change.
Tip/Recommendation -
The lender can speed up this verification process by pre-entering a set of 'test-case' scenarios within your DEV guidebook. Whenever your DEV guidebook is updated, these existing test-cases will have the new rules (and changes) applied to their data contents. You can clone these scenarios for each change being verified.
6 - Lender advises whether the change needs additional refinement or has passed
The lender then responds in the support portal to advise the outcome of the verification test. If the outcome of the test is not as expected, the lender must supply the details including;
AppID used for verification
Actions taken to simulate the scenario
Expected outcome
Actual outcome
Simpology will re-clarify requirements if needed, and promote an adjusted change to DEV, to be verified once more.
If the test is successful, the change is considered verified and ready for release to PROD.
7 - Simpology promotes the fully verified DEV guidebook to supersede PROD
The promotion of a DEV guidebook to PROD requires the entire DEV version of the guidebook to be verified, not just individual components of multiple requests.
As a result, Simpology requires all changes in the DEV guidebook be fully verified before a PROD release can be planned.
This ensures that unverified changes are not introduced to the PROD guidebook, which could potentially cause your service to behave unexpectedly.
Simpology will endeavor to perform a confirmed PROD release at earliest opportunity. Any proposed/preferred release dates should be provided to Simpology at earliest opportunity so Simpology can advise scheduling of resources.
Congratulations - your change request is now live!
The change request is now considered released to production, and the support portal request will be closed.
If there are further changes required after the release, we ask that a new request is raised while referencing the previous request.