What do you verify after applying a CPS on Windchill+? (Looking for real-world UAT examples)
Hi all,
We are running Windchill+ (SaaS) and have a CPS scheduled shortly. This will be one of our first updates, and we are trying to define a reasonable verification scope on our side.
We asked PTC about this. The guidance we received was essentially:
- There is no standard published checklist, and no customer examples were available to share.
- For Windchill+, system-level validation is performed by PTC; verification of customer-specific business processes is the customer's responsibility.
- A full UAT is not expected. The recommendation is a smoke test of representative day-to-day operations, for example: login, search, access to existing documents, document create/update/check-in, visualization (CAD viewables), file download, BOM/product structure navigation, and workflow approvals where used.
That makes sense as a principle, but we would like to hear how this plays out in practice. Specifically:
1. How deeply do you check each item?
Taking the list above as the baseline, how granular is your actual testing? For example, do you simply walk through one typical design workflow end to end (create a document, check it in, view it, download it, route it for approval) and call it done? Or do you cover each function in more detail - multiple object types, several document/part templates, different lifecycle states, different user roles and permissions, both Windchill UI and Creo/CAD client, and so on?
I would really appreciate a concrete picture of what "representative day-to-day operations" means in your environment. Have you also added items that are not on PTC's list based on past experience (e.g., customizations, ESI/ERP integration, CAD Worker, REST/OData consumers, single sign-on, email notifications, scheduled jobs, reports)?
2. Effort and timing
How long does it take, how many people are involved, and do you run the check in a pre-production/sandbox environment first, or only in production after the update?
3. What actually broke
This is the most useful part for us: have you hit regressions after a CPS, and if so, in which areas? Knowing where problems tend to appear would help us weight our checks rather than testing everything evenly.
Any checklist you are willing to share (even a sanitized one), or simply a description of your approach, would be very helpful.
Thanks in advance.