There are several ways to test your Guides depending on the functionality you are testing and where you are in the rollout stage.
1. Preview a single Guide
With the Preview mode, you can test the functionality of a specific Guide and preview changes before saving them. Only people with access to the Userlane Editor can start the preview.
To preview a single Guide:
Open the Guide in the Editor and click on the preview button on the left side of the black editor bar.
2. Send out the Guides via link
Users can also test Guides via a link. This only works if the Userlane snippet is implemented and the Guide is set to public. It won’t be visible to your end-users because you can put it in a private Chapter. You can send the link to any user. Testers don't need to have access to the Userlane Portal.
To test Guides via a link:
Ensure that the Guide is set to public and the chapter is private. The Guide won't appear in the Userlane Assistant but can still be sent via link.
If you are based in Europe and already have a Userlane account ⇨ Start this Guide to see how to locate a Guide ID. If you are based in the US ⇨ Start this Guide.
3. Partially implement Userlane
Some of your users can test the whole look and feel of the Userlane training. This method works for employee training on third-party applications. You can test the whole Userlane Assistant with a little group of your users that don't need to have any access to the Userlane Portal.
To partially implement Userlane:
Make sure that all the Guides and chapters you want to test are set to public in the Userlane Portal. Roll out the Browser Extension only to your little group of test users by sending them the link to register and download their Userlane Browser extension: family.userlane.com/mll.
After signing up and downloading the Browser Extension, your testers will see the Userlane Assistant as soon as they enter the respective third-party applications.
4. Test your Assistant in a staging environment
Test the whole Userlane Assistant in your staging environment before you implement Userlane into your production environment. The Userlane snippet has to be implemented only into your staging environment.
To test in a staging environment:
Set at least one Chapter and one Guide to public in your Userlane Portal. Since Userlane will only appear when the snippet is implemented, the Userlane Assistant will only appear in staging, not in production.
5. Test only some Guides and functionalities in a staging environment
The Userlane snippet must be implemented into your staging environment. It can also be implemented into your production.
To test new Guides in a staging environment:
If you already have the snippet implemented in staging as well as production, do the following:
When implementing your snippet into the staging environment, add the following code line (with your respective user_ID) just before the init command into the Userlane snippet:
Userlane('identify','user_ID',{staging:true});After doing this, create an Attribute in the Userlane Portal with the attribute name 'staging' and the data type 'boolean'.
Filter your user list based on this attribute with 'staging' 'equals' 'true' and save it as a segment that you e.g. name 'only for staging'.
Apply this segment to all the chapters and Guides that should only appear on your staging for now.
After applying the described segmentation, set all the chapters you want to test to “public” so they appear on your staging page.
6. Testing user and attribute segmentation
After applying a user segment based on user ID or on specific Attributes, you might want to check, if the segmentation works as intended. You can easily do that in your browser's console if you have a snippet implementation.
- Open the browser's console by clicking the right mouse button on the page and selecting the option "inspect" from the menu that appears and then selecting "console" in the new section that opened.
In the console, you can enter commands that will allow you to change some Userlane settings which is helpful for testing.
- In order to test the behavior of Userlane with a specific user ID, you can enter the following command into the console and press ENTER. The green part needs to be replaced with your own value:
Userlane('identify', 'yourTestUserID');
Now, you will see the Chapter, Guides, and Announcements that this particular User would see. Keep in mind that some push notifications would only show once for a user. After page reloads, the User will get reset back to the original one. - You can use the console to emulate not only a user but also some attributes. To do that, please add the following line in the console and press ENTER:
Userlane('identify', 'anyTestUserID', { attribute_key: 'example_value' });
This will show you the Chapters, Guides, and Announcements visible for Users with a given Attribute. - Also for checking languages, you can utilize the console. To test Userlane for a specific language setting, you can enter the following line to the console (we used English in the example: EN):
Userlane('lang', 'EN');
This will change the language of your Userlane so you can test if all texts are in place and translated.
