Thursday, January 3, 2013

Need to test Traveler for Android but don't have one?

Seems like there is a flood of some good Traveler knowledge being shared by Andy, so I wanted to throw something in that I use as well.  (Us Andy's have to stick together after all, right!?)
When I was asked to put in Traveler, that wasn't too big of a deal.  
Install Domino.
Install Traveler.
Open firewalls and other things.
Enjoy.
But then that opened up another can of worms for me.  Now that we had Traveler and we can support iOS and Android devices, I also had to test the upgrade process on those devices in my lab environment before I roll them out to live production.  I needed a way to test not only the server upgrades, but the user experience as well.  Luckily, I have my iPhone and iPad set to my test environment so if I break it, no big deal.  But when it comes to Android, that's where the "fun" is.  You see, when upgrading the Traveler server from one version to the next, iOS users don't really notice anything outside of the downtime the server takes for the upgrade to run.  But Android users have to go through an upgrade process on their devices every time a server upgrade is performed.  Mind you, it has gotten MUCH less painful then it was in days past.  So any time I plan an upgrade, I also have to produce user documentation.....with screenshots.  As we know, iOS screenshots are easy to do.  Android doesn't have native screenshot ability.  That's where the Android SDK comes in handy.  (Barb asked about this last night in her blog and it reminded me of it. I use it all the time!)
Using the takes a little getting used to at first, but once you have the hang of it, it is your upgrade plannings best friend. 
What the Android SDK gives you is a base Android device virtually on your PC.  And when I say base, I mean, bare-bones.  No Google Play market.  No Angry Birds.  Just a straight Android OS in a virtual setting that can connect to your network via your PC's connection.  The emulator will allow you to setup a device in your test environment before you begin your server upgrade and will behave almost exactly like a users device should when the server returns to service post upgrade. 
So if you haven't taken a look at it yet, go for it! 

3 comments:

Ray Bilyk said...

Thanks Hoss! Another great Traveler tip... You Andy's DO stick together!!!

Anonymous said...

And not just for Traveler, if you are a developer doing mobile XPages, it is a great help too!

Andreas P. said...

You could also give http://bluestacks.com a try.
It's a native Android runtime environment for Windows I have been using for a few months.
It gives you a "full" Android environment and is much lighter then the SDK. Even if it is in beta I rarely had problems with it and they also have a version for Mac now but I haven't tried it yet.