[ethanthekiwi]

I have a process that currently has 7 tasks. Because of some policy changes the process needs to be updated to have 2 extra tasks. This will mean several new variables, new fields on dynaforms and output documents, new routing rules, several new triggers, etc.

Before when I've made changes, I duplicated the virtual server, experimented with the changes till I had the right code. Then I would take the production server down for a half hour to make the changes manually then bring it back up.

This time there will be a boatload of changes, so a half hour probably won't cut it. Would it make more sense to export the process from the copied server and import it back in, then go through and add user assignment back in and make sure everything works? Will that create two separate processes in the areas where process supervisors can search through old cases even if I overwrite the old process? Or is there a better way to go about this whole update process?

ProcessMaker 2.8 Community Edition

[ethanpresberg]

If you export and import the process, it should overwrite the production process with the dev process.

Perhaps it would make more sense though, if your old strategy has been successful, to simply make the updates in increments? So, instead of taking it down for 2 hours in one shot, take it down several times for half an hour? Would that work?

Otherwise, I would take the virtual server from production, import the dev process, test that it all works and didn't break anything, and then just repeat that for the actual production environment after you tested doing that on a fake production server, so to speak.

[amartinez]

I recall when importing a process you have the option of overwriting or creating a new process. If i had a production and development process on the same instance of processmaker i would need to be careful, since i log field entries to another database, i would have to make sure that test data is not inserted into the production database.

You should really have a development instance of processmaker. The way i develop, i have the exact same instance of processmaker setup on a development server; after i'm satisfied and tested changes in the development environment, i export the updated process. I then import the process into the production environment, and choose to override the existing production process. This way development is done in a completely different environment, and applying changes to the production environment is fairly seamless to end users.