After you've run your service or website as a private Beta, it's time proceed with public Beta testing. You will work with the eServices team and your project team to accomplish the following.
Complete the pre-launch checklist
Your eServices delivery manager will work with the project team to complete the pre-launch checklist. This is the final check to confirm your service or website meets all of the government's digital service standards before it goes live. This must be completed before your service can go live.
Get management approvals
Every department has different requirements for getting management approvals. Discuss these with your eServices delivery manager and make sure your management team has approved the service or website before it goes live. Your eServices delivery manager will invite you to give a demo for their team and director before the the service goes live.
Execute the communications plan
Work with your department’s communications unit to execute the communications plan to announce your service or website.
Start the user journey on Yukon.ca
Contact your department communications unit to coordinate publishing the related page on Yukon.ca. Do not add a button to link to your service until after it's live.
Execute the plan to introduce the new service or phase out the old service
If your service is replacing an existing service you must follow the government's guidance for archiving a project.
If there is a period of overlap where the new (Beta) and existing services will be online at the same time, add an alert banner to let users know which service they are interacting with.
Finalize online payment if applicable
If your service has online payment, email [email protected] the production merchant ID and hash key value. They'll set everything up and make sure it's working.
Execute code and content freeze
Once your service or website is ready to launch and you've confirmed everything is working, you can execute your plan for code and content freeze. The reason we freeze code and content is because making last-minute changes to your service is very risky and can affect its stability and performance. You must wait until after launch to make adjustments, starting on the test server.
There can be no new code or infrastructure once the code freeze is in place. It is in place from the date you set it to start until your service launches.
Content freeze is usually 2 weeks before your launch date and code freeze is 1 week before your launch date. So if you want to launch your service on October 1 you must have your content entry completed by September 17 and your code freeze by September 24.
Find out more about our code change management process. This is how we manage merge requests, code review and deploys. Your developer will work with an eServices web architect to accomplish these.
Launch your service or website
eServices launches services from Monday to Wednesday. You will work with your eServices delivery manager to coordinate removing the network change or username and password that restricted access during private Beta testing.
Once this is done, go to a public location outside of government and check if it’s working. Test by opening a web browser tab in private or incognito mode. Test from different networks. For example, from home or using a mobile network. You should be able to freely access and use the service.
Execute the performance reporting plan for your service
Once the public Beta is launched, you'll execute your performance reporting plan. This is how the government measures the success of a service or website.
Monitor user feedback and make critical improvements
As you receive user feedback, add it to the product backlog and label it as a bug, improvement, or new feature. You can work with your eServices delivery manager to prioritize items by their value and complexity. The eServices user experience manager can also make recommendations to address user feedback.
Continue to make critical improvements to your service.
If user feedback shows that you should make larger changes or improvements, you may need to plan for an additional phase of development work.
Live
Your service or website is in the Live phase when the ownership has transitioned back to the lead department and you are fully supporting it. Live is about supporting your service or website while continuing to iterate and make improvements.
Go back to: Private Beta testing
Next step: Sustainment