Embotics® recommends maintaining a staging environment so you can perform a test run on upgrades or evaluate workflows and policies before making changes to production. Your vCommander® license does permit the upkeep of a staging environment, but you should let your customer advocate and/or the support team know that you have one running. 


A staging environment is also useful for becoming familiar with new vCommander features before implementing them as solutions in your production environment. However, doing so can present a problem for users who access both systems using the same credentials, and may mistakenly take actions in one system meant for another.


Currently, you can fully brand the Service Portal following our vCommander Service Portal Branding Guide but this does not extend to vCommander itself. Instead, you can implement some of the suggestions below to help your users distinguish between staging and production vCommanders.


Alternative Logins

Even with the requirement that both staging and production systems be integrated with the same directory service, you may be able to use unique logins for each if the directory is configured for users to have multiple UPNs (e.g.nbolas@embotics.com and nbolas@vcommander.com). To do so, refer to the knowledgebase article below:


While the focus of the article is on increasing performance for directory service logins, the steps to restrict access to specified domains will also fulfill the need here. With this in place, users will be able to login with only one unique domain per vCommander installation.


Default Domain Field

Another way to provide a visual cue easy for users to pick up on is to display the Default Domain Field to one vCommander and leave it hidden or disabled for the other. Follow the procedure below to find the settings:

  1. Under the Configuration menu, choose System Configuration.
  2. Switch to the Authentication tab.
  3. Click Edit under Login Preferences.

  4. Check Display the domain field and enter the appropriate domain for user accounts needing access.
 

Service Catalog

You can also use the naming, categorization and iconography of the entries in your Service Catalog to distinguish between staging and production systems. Compare the request dialogs below.

Staging

Production