🔄 Release cycle

Our release cycle consists of three stages carried out over a eight week period. This includes testing on our development environment, releasing a preview on our stage environment and finally, releasing on our production environment. The releases contain new features, beta features, improvements and bug fixes which you will find in the latest release article.
 

We also deploy weekly patch releases, which reduces the waiting time for issues to be fixed. A release mail for the patch releases is not sent, however we publish a weekly patch release article here. 

Release cycle

1. Development environment 

• Our development team use this environment to test new features and to test if reported issues have been fixed.
• Updated several times a day when new developments are added.

2. Stage environment 

• To prepare our users as to what they can expect from the new release, we aim to first deploy the release on our stage environment (stage.ans.app), two weeks in advance. This will give our users the chance to preview the new release.
• For institutions within the Netherlands, the easiest way to gain access to the stage environment is to connect your institution with SURFconext. The application manager of SURFconext within your institution can help you to set this up.
• If your institution is outside of the Netherlands, please contact our support team. We can then create an account for you on the stage environment.

3. Production environment

• This is our final release phase. All updates and fixes will be reflected for everyone on ans.app 
• For minimal impact, we always release on the production environment on weekends.
• Ans also has an educational environment, which is used for training. This environment is also included in our final release phase.

Some important things to note

• All documentation on support.ans.app will reflect the production environment and not the stage environment.
• Any issues between or after a release can be reported to our support team.