Gridsz offers a Test Address Management tool on the Gridsz Acceptance Portal to facilitate testing for network owners, contractors, and integrating parties. It allows the user to select addresses, prepare them for a specific use case, and create a task with the chosen variables – without external help. It is an additional tool: the normal day-to-day functionality (checking for addresses, managing and creating tasks) remains unchanged.
The tool is targeted at the following parties:
- Network owners and Active Operators (AOs) preparing test addresses for integration tests
- Contractors and other integrating systems creating tasks for themselves without having to ask for parties to assign them to them
- Testers who want to run specific use cases quickly
Prerequisite
Before use, the Site Admin needs to assign a Test Address Management role to the user. When setting up these roles, a Super Admin (Gridsz Support) will need to configure the access rules for all testing parties as requested by the Network Owner. Such an access rule could be ‘all addresses assigned to a Contractor’ or a specific combination of AC fields to limit the addresses to be used and thereby avoiding conflicting test scenarios. A Test AO party is recommended to allow contractors to perform steps which are actioned by the Active Operator during normal operation.
Overview of steps involved
The process is broken down in three steps:
- Find: Search and filter available AC connections based on your access, network owner, and use case
- Prepare: Select a use case and let Gridsz configure the connection in AC automatically
- Create: Create a test task directly on the prepared connection, from the same screen
1. Find a connection
Gridsz automatically filters the list to show only connections you’re allowed to view based on your role and party, connections belonging to the selected network owner (cluster), and connections without an active or open task – connections with a Planned order type are still shown, since this can indicate corrupted data that needs repair.
No results? Check that the network owner has configured the Access Rules correctly. Only connections listed there as test addresses appear in this screen.
2. Prepare the connection
Select the use case for the selected connection(s), which determines which AC fields will be edited by Gridsz in the background.
Available use cases (configurable per network owner):
- Install:
PATCH_INSTALL, +FTU_CONSTRUCT, +FTU_RECONSTRUCT, +ONT_INSTALL, +FTU_CONSTRUCT & ONT_INSTALL, +FTU_RECONSTRUCT & ONT_INSTALL - Terminate:
PATCH_REMOVE - Migrate:
PATCH_MIGRATE,PATCH_REMOVE & PATCH_INSTALL, +FTU_RECONSTRUCT, +ONT_INSTALL, +FTU_RECONSTRUCT & ONT_INSTALL - Port migrate:
PORT_MIGRATE - FTU change: Construct, Replace, Move, Remove
- Other:
CONNECTION_INCIDENT,PRE_ORDER, Incident – POP, Incident – Network, Damage Report, Planned Work, Quote, Network Inconsistencies
What Gridsz does when the Prepare Connections button is selected:
- Determines the correct values via a configuration table per use case and per network owner.
- Fills or clears the relevant fields based on the chosen use case using the bulk edit feature of AC
- Shows a results overview: which connections were prepared successfully, and which weren’t (with the reason).
If preparation fails: Gridsz shows the reason per connection (for example, a field couldn’t be cleared, or an unexpected value was found). You can retry or choose a different connection.
3. Create the test task
Once the connection is prepared, create the task directly from the same screen. The user is able to select a wish date and specify for example a POP value (by default a random value is entered).
When Create task is selected, the task will be created and the user can jump to the task or continue to create more test cases.
Test tasks created through this flow are marked in the activity log as ‘Created by test address function’ to have an audit trail and distinguish these tasks from other testing flows.