Webex Control Hub for separate test environment - same org

[adriano.pub91]

Hello,

we currently are under a process of migration from Meetings Administration to Control Hub. All the users in all the sites are already visible in the Control Hub.

The SSO is enabled on all the sites managed via Meeting Administration. Is not enabled at the Control Hub level. 

So for all the new Meeting sites,  we would need to enable the SSO at the Control Hub level...

Now, beyond managing the process fo adding  new meeting sites under the same organization,  we would like to start testing Webex Teams (not yet implemented in production). However we would need a separate Organization for that (and also for WebexMeetings) since the customer asked that any configuration change /test should not have impact on any sites/users on the production environment.

My question would be : which would be the best approach for a permanent test environment for Webex ,   in case of enterprise customers that need a test /staging environment, completely separate for the production one ? 

I have not found any other solution than creating a new organization , with different control hub, to use only for test/staging. We tried to evaluate an approach with a different site/domain (on the same organization) only for testing, but are features like SSO, implemented at the global level in Control Hub. So any change to that configurations could potentially impact on any configured site/users. 

I hope somebody have some suggestions on this matter or are already faced with this problem.

Thanks

[Edwin Vos]

We would like to see a separate hub URL for that as well, next to that we also asked for:

- agent accounts for testing from support side, without these being charged

- options of setting breaks in scripting to see which nodes are hit

- any support URL's to see what is going on on the system other than the general BroadSoft RSS feed

- Support options to use ThousandEyes/IR Prognosis/RTMT/SNMP etc. None are available at the moment

Normal troubleshooting options like available in CCX and CCE woud be very welcome, although it is very clear that we do not own or support the hardware.

All in all it seems that the product is there but not well thought out on support side. This will be causing P1 issues in the future no doubt.

[adriano.pub91]

Yes Edwin, indeed, our concern is related to the support side. And the fact that traditionally , in enterprise comp, there were always been a completely separate testing environment where you can do (almost) whatever you 'like before passing features /changes in production). But maybe is not necessary to see things in that way , for that reason i need the opinions of  people with same concern about this argument. 

[sean.carnahan]

We asked someone on our account team about a test environment so we could get on the early release channel for Meetings. It was a fairly simple process. Your reseller should be able to create a test site with the features you need. I believe that had to migrate a few of the licenses over from our main site, but everything is managed from the same control hub and uses the same SSO settings for the ORG.

I would recommend you reach out to whomever you purchased Webex from. 

Also, It seems to me that you could enable Teams for a select few users for testing purposes on your existing organization/site without impacting any of your users. All of our users are licensed for both Meetings and Teams and some only use Meetings. As of right now, they are two distinct products that have very little overlap. 

[adriano.pub91]

Hi Sean, actually is that what we would like to avoid, having settings , like SSO which have impact at the organization level (and not only at the site level, which would be much better).

Let's say that we think about this step with a long-therm mindset and for that reason we consider having a completely separate control hub...