Before Deploying

We strongly encourage the Site Administrator to thoroughly test all the created applications, emails and other features before making them available to your user community.

This testing should be conducted from the perspective of each of the user types that will be accessing the system. The easiest way to accomplish this is by creating test user accounts for each of the user types and moving an application through all of the stages of your process. You may find it useful to create a checklist of test items that you perform before opening up your site to the "real" users each cycle. Testing needs will vary from site to site but some general guidelines are listed below.

You can only be logged in under one user account. Make sure that you log out of your administrator account before you attempt to login using one of your test accounts.

First, you'll want to test the creation of an applicant account as a new applicant would do, by following the registration process.

After you have established an applicant account, use that account to complete an application (create and complete each type of application if you'll be offering more than one).

Confirm that you can only see the sections of an application that an applicant should see and that you cannot see any information in those sections that is restricted to reviewers or staff.

If the application includes a contributor, enter your own name and email address so that you will receive the contributor email and will be able to test that aspect of the application.

Ensure that the proper notification emails have been received once the application has been submitted.

You will need to create several applicants and applications to properly test your review process.

If you followed the advice provided above and entered your own name and email address when you tested as an applicant, you should have received a notification email.

Open the email message that you received and click on the link to access the contributor's approval form. Ensure that the text on the email message is correct and that you can successfully access and complete the approval form.

Verify that the reviewer can access the correct documents, that the proper information is displayed, and that the reviewer is able to complete their assigned form.

If you conduct a blind review process, confirm that identifying information is hidden.

Validate any calculations that are performed by filters - scores that are automatically calculated, total and average calculations of scores entered by reviewers, etc - by manually calculating the expected filter output. Here again, you will need to create multiple test accounts so that you can generate enough data to validate the calculations.

Once a Staff test account has been created, you can log in using the created user name and password and verify that the Staff member has access to only the functionality required to perform their function.