Dev/Prod variable management

Automise Discussion
1

Recently purchased Automise with addl ATCMD license and love the product.

I want to build projects locally, then place them on dedicated machine to be scheduled and executed under an Admin account using ATCMD. What is the best practice for setting up project vs user variables? Most of the variables hold UNC path and FTP locations that would be different during development of the project than when in production.

If I create the project using project variables, then I'll need to recreate and set my variables for each project. I could use a Load INI action at the beginning of each project. I would have development INI and a production INI that would have different values in them. To put this project into production I would repoint the Load INI action the the production INI. I could use an environment variable to point the INI file to use. Is that what is usually done?

Similar issue occurs if using User variables. I would develop this project under the developers account. When the project is put into production, we would need to make sure the Admin account had the necessary variables created. This could again be done using a Load INI action but it would also need to be the first step in every project. Is this what is typically done?

Is there a better solution? Any DO's and DON'Ts?

Thanks

 

 

2

Hi Joel

I would recommend using Project variables which you load from an INI file at the start of the project. I would use a single INI file to store the variables for both DEV and PROD in the same in file (within different sections).

Example:

[DEV]
Path1=\\DEVSERVER1\PATH\TO\SOMETHING
Path2=\\DEVSERVER2\PATH\TO\SOMETHING\ELSE
[PROD]
Path1=\\PRODSERVER1\PATH\TO\A\LOCATION
Path2=\\PRODSERVER2\PATH\TO\ANOTHER\LOCATION

You can then use a variable (which you pass via the command line) to specify which section of the INI file to load the values from. This way all your variables are managed in a single file which can be extended at anytime (if your list of environments grows).

This would also allow you to use the INI File Iterator action to run the project for each section (environment) defined in the INI file.

Please let me know if you would like more information around this.

Regards,
Steve