Making changes to your JD Edwards EnterpriseOne environment can seem like a scary task. Many find themselves second-guessing or questioning a million things before applying the change to their Production environment. Whether you’re applying the latest Tools release, upgrading to 9.2, or applying a new ESU, there is a way to make your testing more efficient and ultimately ease your mind when making changes in your JD Edwards system.
Linda Sloan-Compton, the ERP Analyst from Pinal County, gave a presentation about how they leveraged a tool to gain testing efficiency and documentation with consistent processes within their modules.
About Pinal County
Pinal County is a public sector entity and county government in Arizona near Phoenix and Tucson. It covers roughly 5,376 square miles and consists of approximately 1,900 employees within the county government.
Pinal County migrated from JD Edwards World A7.3 to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.1 in July of 2013. After the transition, Pinal County began utilizing General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Procurement, Fixed Assets, Job Cost, HR, Payroll and Benefits.
The time of the move from World to EnterpriseOne was filled with a lot of projects with very few resources. During the migration, there was a small IT team, the management team was undergoing a transition, and there were only a handful of JDE EnterpriseOne super users. These factors resulted in problems with the testing process at Pinal County.
Problems with Testing
Due to the size of its IT department and the team’s experience with JDE E1, Pinal County ran into many issues with testing. They relied heavily on others for testing scripts because all of their employees were new to EnterpriseOne. Testing was done based on the memory of processes rather than on scripts, and the documentation of the testing results was very poor because people were unfamiliar with testing and the expected results.
Issues with testing led Pinal County to a decision to develop a process of documentation and checklists. The testing improvement process consisted of creating checklists, organizing and structuring documentation and lists, and standardizing processes. Pinal County standardized how they planned and prepared the testing for each project, and they began documenting their testing and recorded their test results.
The ultimate goal was to improve the rigor and consistency of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne testing while reducing the time and resources allocated to testing. To reach this goal, Pinal County developed a solution to define a consistent, structured, repeatable and documented approach to JDE E1 testing.
Partnership with DWS
Pinal County decided to partner with DWS, a development and technical services company that has worked in the EnterpriseOne space for 20 years. Over the years, DWS has developed a range of products and services to support companies during JD Edwards EnterpriseOne implementations. The DevTech Services that DWS offers help companies implement, maintain, and upgrade EnterpriseOne. Through their partnership with DWS, Pinal County was able to automate their testing using a tool called Dimension SwifTest.
SwifTest is Cloud-based but can be accessed on the users PC. Since SwifTest is Cloud-based, a portion requires an internet connection and browser usage. The portion that uses the Cloud is the DWS Dimension Hub. Dimension Hub houses the Dashboard, Action Center and project tabs. The Dashboard is where you can view monthly summaries and all of the collected reports. Any information regarding actions taken for testing is stored within the Action Center. Trials, fails and successful tests are also stored in the Action Center. Within the project tabs, users can find data about the projects, scenarios and test structures within SwifTest. The test structures exist within scenarios, which exist within projects.
SwifTest has proven to be an extremely beneficial tool for Pinal County when it comes to the testing process. It allows Pinal County to better utilize time and resources and is user-friendly. For more information, check out the full presentation from Pinal County attached below.