Environment management

An environment is a workspace that you create and use for testing or production purposes. Environments support dedicated and separate deployment setups for different phases of the development life cycle. You can build integrations that are tested and promoted between environments with a full audit trail of what was deployed and by whom. Environments help to ease the management of larger implementation projects that require multiple application setups, on-premise resources, and a distributed architecture.

Accounts are equipped with either Basic or Unlimited environments based on licensing.

Basic environment accounts have many of the same capabilities as Unlimited, with the exception that Basic cannot create test environments and can have only one runtime attached to each environment.
Unlimited environment accounts can have a separate test environment, which allows you to deploy specific processes for testing scheduled executions, larger document batches, and real-time integration scenarios. In addition, multiple basic runtimes can be attached to an environment, while multiple packaged components can be deployed to multiple environments.

You can fully test deployed processes from end-to-end, avoiding Test mode restrictions, without affecting processes currently running in production.

Important

Deploying connections across different basic runtimes and environments will affect your license count. Connections are deployed at the runtime level. If you use extensions, you can reuse the same connection components and supply different configuration information at deployment time.

Environments use cases

Distinguish Between Test and Production

Many applications offer the ability for users to manage production and sandbox accounts. Processes that need to be thoroughly tested may require the storage of alternate configuration information when compared to a production setup.

Classify On-Premise Resources

Database setups or network directories may require unique connection information. Managing these resources in different environments helps to ensure data integrity and prevents documents from reaching the wrong destination.

Manage Client-specific Projects

A full implementation for a specific client may require a series of processes. Distributing the process workload across different runtime environments for each client can help you to more easily deploy process updates.

Production and test environments

If your account has Unlimited environment support and test connections are enabled, when you add an environment you must select a classification: Production or Test. The classification determines two things:

Whether a production or test runtime cloud can be attached to the environment. Production environments can have only production runtime clouds attached to them. Test environments can have only test runtime clouds attached to them. This ensures that production and test runtime clouds run in separate physical environments.
The type of license is used when a process is deployed to the environment. Production environments are associated with production connection licenses and test environments are associated with test connection licenses. This ensures that you are charged properly for production and test connections.

caution

The classification can be set only when you add an environment. You cannot change it later.

Contact your representative if you are interested in obtaining test connections. Refer to Test connection licensing to learn how to use test environments with these licenses.

Integrations can be “extended” at the process level to override default connector information, scheduling and process properties. These configurations are applied at deployment time versus at build time and prevent you from having to define this dynamic information at either the individual process or runtime level.

In order to implement environment-level extensions you must:

Define process extensions
Set environment-level extension values

Environments with integration packs

You can attach an environment to integration packs. Where extensions are defined for an integration pack’s assigned processes and components, you can set the extension values at the environment level, just as you can for deployed standard processes. However, you cannot apply pending updates for an integration pack unless the environment has an attached runtime.

Process deployment

The Runtime Management page is where you create and manage environments. The Deployments page (Deploy > Deployments) is where you deploy processes and components to environments. When environments are enabled in a account, it is important to understand the differences in deploying processes.

Standard Account — Deploy processes to one or more basic runtimes.
Environment-enabled Account — Attach basic runtimes to an environment and then deploy processes and components to one or more of these environments. A typical scenario is to have separate test and production environments.

Environments page

Each environment displays a card on the page that provides an overview, including information about the number of basic runtimes, whether the environment is restricted to specific roles, and any issues.

Environment Properties panel

note

You must have the Runtime Management and Environment Management privileges to perform actions on the Environment Properties panel. If you have the Runtime Management Read Access privilege, you can view existing properties, but you cannot change them.

When you select an environment on the Runtime Management page, you can view the following information:

Name - User-definted name for the environment. There is an 80 character limit, but no restrictions on the types of characters allowed.
Environment ID - System-generated ID number for the environment.
Classification - (Unlimited environment accounts) Type of environment: Production or Test.

note
For Basic environment accounts, all environments are classified as production accounts.
Roles with Access - Specifies the roles that have access to this environment.
Attachments - Any basic runtimes attached to this environment.
Environment Extensions - Opens the Extensions dialog, where you can set Environment-level extension values.
View Integration Packs - Opens the Integration Packs dialog, which is used to monitor the release status of attached integration packs and apply pending updates. Visible if there are integration packs attached and available in the environment.
Runtimes & Connectors - Visible if there are updates available for the runtimes and connectors. Click Apply Pending Updates to updates your runtimes and connectors.
Delete Environment - Initiates a request to delete the environment. In the confirmation dialog, clicking OK executes the request and clicking Cancel cancels the request.

caution
You cannot delete an environment that has attached basic runtimes or integration packs. The check for attached basic runtimes occurs first--the confirmation dialog appears only if there are no attached basic runtimes. The check for attached integration packs occurs after you click OK in the confirmation dialog.