Testing add ons/plugins in Confluence for stability

[Adam]

Hello there,

So we have a test/developer environment set up for Confluence as a place to test various plugins/upgrades etc. rather than doing it directly in the live/production Confluence instance. Both environments are a mirror copy of each other.

This is to prevent the situation where a Confluence plugin might cause system instability that would impact existing users.

My question is, based on these practices what is the best way to go about adequately testing a plugin in the test environment/instance of Confluence? Just play with it and see if Confluence goes down?? 

Any tips/guidelines? Thanks in advance.

[Rilwan Ahmed · Accepted solution]

Hi @Adam ,

We do perform similar tasks like what you mentioned. Basically what all we do is

1. Use macro in a new page and add content to it and save. Click Edit page and refresh page.
   We see logs and browser console to see if there is any errors meantime. 
   We check if macro is working as expected. 
2. Add macro is different existing pages ,
   Add them inside other macro. Example: Add macro inside expand macro etc. 
3. Ask different team members to open same page and edit at same time and then check the logs for any errors 
4. Add same macro multiple times in single page (if possible) and see its behavior. 
5. Open the page with the macro and see its load time

[Adam]

Many thanks, appreciated!

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Hi @Adam ,

it is great that you're doing this at all! This is a great practice and highly recommended of course. Now as far as how to test the answer is hard to definitively state since there are so many variables here. What I would say is first and foremost verify that the application does what you wanted to do. After that the real testing comes - making sure of the application doesn't do something that it shouldn't. Here are some of my thoughts:

• have a test project where you can run through various transactions with the application being incorporated. This is everything from creating tasks running sprints, taking issues through their workflow etc.
• Check your reports and dashboards
• Request others to test that have different levels of permissions
• Run through the test for several days or weeks if possible
• Understand what the application does and what areas it touches and focus on those in your testing.
• Be sure to test out all other existing applications
• Test out uninstalling the app and assess if it is clean and what remnants might remain. This is critical to understand if something happens after you go to production. how clean will the uninstall go?

[Adam]

Thank you for friendly recommendations!