Post-Clone Checklist, anyone?

[sbailey1]

We're getting ready to refresh all of our instances from PROD in preparation for go-live. When we clone, we run through a checklist (which we're still trying to develop out) to tweak those things we know need to be tweaked. Mailbox password, user account lockout, color scheme (for visual platform indication), etc. Does anyone else have a checklist for post-clone cleanup we can use to match up against ours to make sure we've caught everything? I'll be glad to post our version as well, if others would find that useful.

[shetzel]

Attached is what I use. It is a "living document" which I've changed periodically as we refine our process. This is used for our 'dev' and 'test' environments when we clone to them from our production environment.

[sbailey1]

Thanks so much! That was a great start.
In addition to what you had in your checklist, I've added:

4.1.2.Welcome Page
Update Welcome Page message to set appropriate one Active. Within each environment, welcome messages exist containing standard text for each instance to be displayed on the sign-in page. After creating a clone, the relevant section for the target instance should be set to ACTIVE = TRUE.

(This just puts notices on the login page to warn that the instance is non-production, training, etc.)

4.1.3.1.Mark Production Instance
System Definition / Properties / glide.installation.production = set true or false depending on the instance.

4.1.5.User Accounts
•Dev
oLock out all accounts except for System Administrators
•STAGE
oLock out all accounts except for System Administrators and user actively involved in UAT testing for releases
•TRAIN
oLock out users not participating in training

4.1.1.2.Set Banner Text (System Properties / System)
Under System Properties / System, set "Rightmost portion of the page header and browser title" to:
•DEV: IT Service Management - DEV
•STAGE: IT Service Management STAGE
•TRAIN: IT Service Management - TRAIN
•PROD: - IT Service Management

[kstainsby]

We were working on a document to describe the process to refresh non-production environments from the production environment. The two prior posts (many thanks to pokey and sbailey) were a perfect segue from that article so I've appended them into the attached edittable document. Apologies to anyone who is colour blind.

[sbailey1]

I really like your intro paragraph and explanation. I had just slapped a screenshot of the request page into my section on requesting the clone. You may want to highlight the 48 hours notice request also, though. (I'm guilty of violating that one, but vow to do better.)

It's interesting how everyone uses color schemes to differentiate the platforms. I didn't think that was common, although it's something I've always insisted on. My standard is RED = DEV. GREEN = STAGE/TEST. PURPLE = TRAIN.

On the glide.installation.production property setting, I'm not sure if that's where Service-now gets that designator for production or if it is exposed elsewhere on a property page, but figured it looked right. Just take that with a grain of salt. If you know where that's exposed, I'd like to hear. Also, I think there's some type of auto-upgrade flag somewhere. I'm looking for that again also.

I'll post my completed document also, once I change some of my formatting to match yours. I like the color coding and the table with property on left, value on the right.

Very nice job.
Stacey