Cloud customer launch checklist

Context and goal

The following checklist of events, notes, and owning groups:

is meant to provide a general outline and checklist for initial Site Launches of Optimizely Commerce Cloud to Production
should be adequately vetted against the specific additional considerations and/or projects needs by the implementation Partner to account for any unique considerations due to a given Site Implementation
is meant to be universal but should be broadly applicable to any Cloud Site Launch
should continue to be updated and reviewed over the course of Platform updates.
is not a reflective list for a Site Upgrade

Pre-launch events

Event	Owning	Estimated Lead Time	Dependencies	Notes, Needs, Considerations
Request Production Site Setup	Partner	2 weeks		Go-Live with Configured Commerce Cloud This is done via a Zendesk ticket, minimum 2 weeks before launch date Request for Production Site Setup should include the following: Production URL Expected Date of Launch Key Points of Contact at Customer DNS and SSL certificate approval. Verify customer DNS TTLs are small.
Create Production Site	Optimizely Hosting	2 week	Partner request for production site Customer/Partner to provide SSL cert postal address	Add DNS records for Mail Gun, Support/Partner to communicate back to Customer Hosting to make sure that Customer's site domain is verified in Mailgun Purchase SSL Certificate for domain - We require the postal address that was registered with the SSL certificate in order to acquire it on behalf of the customer. S3 Bucket: Mirror Sandbox bucket to Production bucket Configure Whitelists - copy whitelist entries from Sandbox (note: any real time API calls need to be whitelisted) Provide /etc/hosts entries and IP addresses for customer testing Clear sandbox transactional and history data from production DB(This step is part of the process when copying over Sandbox to Production. Additional scripts can be created by the partner if testing was done on Production after the creation of the production site.) Code Deploy Sandbox version to Production
Approve SSL Certificate for Domain	Customer	1-2 days	Optimizely to provide DNS/TXT records from Cloudflare	Customer will insert DNS/TXT records provided by Optimizely team. Cloudflare can then automatically confirm the domain and generate the SSL certificates.
Add DNS Records for Mailgun	Customer	1-2 days	Optimizely to provide info for DNS record changes	Customer will need to add DNS records that Hosting provides to enable emails
Review TTL Setting Length	Customer	1 day		Customer should review the current configuration of their Time To Live settings and adjust it down for Launch so once they change their DNS records to point to production their site comes up in a reasonable amount of time. Recommended value is 300 secs.
Install/Configure WIS	Partner/Customer	1-5 days		Adjust connection for live ERP via Integration Endpoint Note WIS server name for "Computers Allowed for Integration" setting
Determine Launch Communication Strategy	Partner	1-2 weeks		We recommend this task to be started early in the implementation phase This may include scheduling launch planning meetings, setting up communication channels or dial in lines, obtaining additional whitelist URLs etc
Determine Range & Load Up Order/Invoice History	Partner/Customer	1-2 day		Need to determine with Customer how far back you want to pull order & invoice history records Adjust jobs to load history in batches
Configure and run Integrations	Partner	Estimate by partner		TSA/Developer to set up Integration jobs to run nightly or as appropriate for job type Make sure Rebuild Site Map and Delete Data Set Jobs are set up Determine if the integration server should be recycled at a static time so it doesn't interfere with integration jobs. By default the app pool is recycled every 29 hours. Submit a support ticket to request a preferred static time. We no longer recycle app pools in containerized environments. There is no need to request a specific time for the app pool recycle because it is no longer automated.
Production Settings Audit	Partner	1 week		Review of Sandbox/Production Site Settings and determine proper values during staging and at go-live Configure and set up Integrations Adjust email subject lines in Sandbox so they clearly state 'Sandbox' to avoid confusion on which environments emails are coming from Confirm and Make sure Order Submit Order Number Prefixes are different between Sandbox and Production to avoid confusion on where emails are coming from Emails for Site Account Activation and Console Account Activation should be updated to says the Customer's site name.com rather then Insite.com Production performance tuning described in this article - Monitor and Improving Website Performance
Clear Sandbox Transactional and History Data from Production DB	Partner	1 day		Partners can provide a script to Optimizely to clear out transactional data and history from any testing that was done on production.
Make sure Theme and latest .Extensions .DLL have been pushed to the site	Partner	1 day		Latest .Extenstions .DLL available and deployed should be sequenced during Site Creation Make sure all Theme updates have been made
Configure Robots.txt file	Partner	1 day		Robots.txt is created automatically on prod site creation but implementation team does need to determine if the site will be crawled or not and if any pages specifically should not be - These page should be added in to the file needed via CMS. If the site should be crawled you need to delete the / Using the CMS to Edit the Robots.txt File Improving Search with the Robots.txt and the Sitemap
Determine Google Analytics Needs	Partner/Customer	1 day		Review with Customer to see if there is an existing Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager account that needs to be linked Install Basic Google Analytics
Determine URL Redirect Strategy and Load in Desired Redirects	Customer	1-2 weeks		We recommend this task to be started early in the implementation phase Customer to load in any necessary URL redirects Overview of URL Redirects
Follow Articles	Partner/Customer	1 day		The appropriate personnel from the Partner team and, as applicable, the Customer should confirm that they are following the correct Cloud Support sections to ensure that they receive notifications. Click the Follow button on each section link below to start following for critical updates B2B Commerce Cloud /Work-in-Progress/insite-documentation/b2b-commerce-final/release-and-process-documentation/hosting-and-deployments/
Code Lock	Partner/Customer	2 weeks		This activity should take place two weeks before launch. Final testing should be done here
Performance Review	Optimizely Engineering	2 weeks	Partner/Customer must be in code lock	The Site Reliability team will run a performance review on sandbox. This is done during code lock. CMS changes can be made however we recommend limiting the size and amount of changes during this time as this may negatively impact the results. The CSD or Partner will initiate a ticket for this activity. See guidelines in the article below. Go-Live Performance Spot Check

Settings to review in production site after it is created

Field Name	Value	Notes
Computers Allowed for Integration	See Notes	Determined when the Production WIS is installed
Computers Allowed for Integration	paws-prm2-int1	Replaces aws-stg-int1
Website Domain Names	localhost and prod domains	The localhost value is needed for Identity Server. Any production domains will need to be included as well.
Test Email	See Notes	Once the site is officially launched (ie: fully live and prod testing is finished) this should be blank The Implementation team and Customer need to coordinate on when the appropriate time for this setting to change is so emails don't inadvertently go out to Live Customer's during Production testing
Automatically Apply Theme	No	This value needs to be changed to No from Yes for Production Sites

Launch team events and hand-off sequence

Event	Owning Group	Timing	Notes, Needs, Considerations
Configure Production Specific Site Settings	Partner	Once Code is deployed	Adjust any settings that may need to be different from Production to Sandbox
Request Default Domain Deployment	Partner	Before DNS cutover	Sometime before the DNS Cutover, make a request with Optimizely support to change the default domain on the production environment to the preferred production domain.
Change DNS Entries to Production Site	Customer	Upon Testing Completion	Once site has been tested and confirmed Customer is free to change their DNS Records for Production; Remove /etc/hosts entries; DNS info will be provided in the Project Initiation ticket.
Naked Domain SSL Preparation	Partner/Customer	After DNS Records Created	If you are specifically using our redirect server for the naked domain, SSL certificates are not created ahead of time. Please submit a support ticket to have the job run manually, or the job runs every night at midnight CT automatically. This step is not necessary if you are not using the naked domain.
Run Sitemap Integration Job	Partner/Customer	After launch	Run this job and verify the robots.txt file is correct in order for crawlers to reach the sitemap.
Production Health Check	Partner	After launch	Partners should submit a support ticket to notify Optimizely once the DNS has been switched over in order to add the site to be monitored by Optimizely.