Beta Testing Volunteers

Many thanks to those of you who expressed an interest in ‘beta testing’ Enterprise 6 following our last bulletin. Below is a little more information on the subject.

The idea behind beta testing is to take a release that is well advanced in terms of the development cycle and to put it through its paces. This testing forms a crucial part of any quality assurance programme.

Beta testing of Daybook Enterprise normally begins in ‘single-user mode’ using test data, checking out the main business processes and user operations. Later on, the product is run up on a server for multi-user testing, again not using a test data file.

At each stage, any bugs found are reported and feedback is given on your reaction to the product in general. Daybook then acts on your feedback, releasing further pre-release versions for you to test and giving you regular news about what is happening in terms of fixes and features.

Live testing

Finally, if and when you are satisfied that the version is robust enough to use in a ‘live’ environment, then you can do so. This is an important part of the process, since there are many things that only become apparent when software is being used in the real world.

There is an important caveat here, however: once you have made the move to ‘go live’, there is no going back, so it is vital to ensure that all business processes have been thoroughly tested before this is attempted.

So, what’s in it for the ‘beta tester’? Well, quite simply it gives customers a great opportunity to influence the development of our software (in this case Enterprise 6), to ensure that it works well for them and that they like the look, feel and whole experience of using it.

On a final note, it is worth mentioning that Enterprise 6 runs on 4D 2003. We are unable to give customers test copies of this, so you would have to invest in it, if you have not already done so.

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