Technical Research - Lower Environment Access for Call Center

[MarciMcGuire]

• Discovery on how the call center users access lower environments currently
• How does MHV work in lower environments?
• How might we connect between VA.gov and MHV classic lower environments?
• Can we create test users that work across those environments?
• Quality/quantity of sample data

Acceptance Criteria

• Report explaining findings

[LynneJohnson224]

Need to set up/reach out to sys owners on how they currently access the lower environment(s) -

[LynneJohnson224]

@dcloud @carlosfelix2 @ericvoshall Per Chante Lantos-Sweet, the short answer is HRC folks don't have access to the lower environments/. They've discussed it in the past but there hasn't been a solution on how to do it for 100s to 1000s of people. I've asked a follow up on how the HRC folks access new functionality for training before it's rolled out to Prod...answer pending.

[dcloud]

So I think:

1. Anyone can load https://staging.va.gov in a browser and see the unauthenticated experience
2. To log in to staging at all, they'd need a login. I think anyone can create a login viahttps://idp.int.identitysandbox.gov
3. To see a page like a "real" user, they'd need to log in as a user with data in many lower environment locations
   • Product teams on va.gov have access to the Test User Dashboard via SOCKS. That URL won't resolve for most people
   • Test users are used by lots of teams, so aren't guaranteed to always be in a predictable state (if you're looking for a user that fits certain criteria)
   • Test users rely on data in VA.gov systems and downstream (lower) environments in order to appear like realistic users
4. Access to MHV Classic lower environments is an unknown. Folks on VA VPN can see, folks on SOCKS proxy cannot.

[MarciMcGuire]

Given the short turnaround time and the fact that this request was not part of the original scope, I still think a prototype may be a great option for this type of training. We could prototype the "happy path" experiences, and then supply a list of known error conditions and how to handle them in our product guide.

I am having trouble imagining a support person needing to see how to actually invoke errors in order to be sufficiently trained. Anything beyond basic L1 support would probably come back to the product team anyway. I will find out who actually requested this environment and set up time to run this option by them.

[dcloud]

Per the epic ticket:

We were asked if a lower/test environment for the landing page could be made available for MHV help desk / coordinators / support staff / contact centers / etc… so they can train on the products.

The way I understand it, there may be a difference between what was asked for (a lower environment), and what the call center needs. Per the quote from the epic ticket, we were asked to provide an technical-environment-based solution to the need to "train on the products". At this time, the product is the landing page, a page of links (behind auth, feature flags, and user criteria filtering).

That solution, "a lower/test environment for the landing page" could be interpreted narrowly as a need to see/experience just that page. That could be handled with a prototype if they just want to look at things. Maybe a couple of prototypes if they want to experience the variations (mainly ssoe-enabled links to MHV or non).

A more broad interpretation would be something along the lines of "we want to see all variations of the landing page and click various links on that page and see the pages linked to". That gets into the more complicated questions that most of the bullet points on the ticket indicate. If we are talking about giving about giving 100s of users access to technical environments, that would have to be an effort coordinated with Platform teams and teams responsible for infrastructure and security of MHV lower environments.

[MarciMcGuire]

@dcloud I think you're right - what was requested is not necessarily what is needed.

Re: the interpretation -- there was some additional discussion in another meeting after this ticket was entered, and based on that convo, this request is not limited to the landing page.

I think the ask of this team is to determine what options are feasible given the time and technical constraints, and make recommendations for something that could be used for other MHV on VA.gov apps as they are being rolled out.

[LynneJohnson224]

Marci to find out which stakeholder(s) made the request/will find out if a prototype will meet their needs for the short term given the Platform team is working on a solution a preview environment.. may need to schedule a follow up discussion for this ticket with OCTO to iron out what needs to be provided to the call center.

@ericvoshall - I'm going to move this ticket to blocked until we get more information on what we need to provide. Will add this ticket back in to a future sprint once it's unblocked.

[MarciMcGuire]

Putting this on the back burner for now. It's uncertain exactly who requested this, and Lauren advised we can table it until someone asks about it again.

[LynneJohnson224]

@ericvoshall removing this ticket from the sprint, placing back in the backlog.