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Cloud customer launch checklist

4 min

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 Configured Commerce 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

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Pre-launch events

Event	Owning	Estimated Lead Time	Dependencies	Notes, Needs, Considerations
Request Production Site Setup	Partner	2 weeks		[Go-Live with Configured Commerce](https://docs.developers.optimizely.com/configured-commerce/docs/go-live-with-b2b-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 SSL certificates are generated from Cloudflare based on DNS records provided at the time of provisioning. 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 creating 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 provides info for DNS record changes.	Customer must add DNS records that Hosting provides to enable emails.
Review TTL Setting Length	Customer	1 day		The customer should review the current configuration of their Time To Live settings and adjust it for launch to let the DNS records point to production in a reasonable amount of time. The recommended value is 300 secs.
Install/Configure WIS	Partner/Customer	1-5 days		Adjust connection for live ERP through Integration Endpoint. Note WIS server name for the Computers Allowed for Integration setting.
Determine Launch Communication Strategy	Partner	1-2 weeks		Start this task early in the implementation phase. This may include scheduling launch planning meetings, setting up communication channels or dial-in lines, obtaining additional whitelist URLs, and so on.
Determine Range & Load Up Order/Invoice History	Partner/Customer	1-2 day		Determine with customer how far back you want to pull order and 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 Sandbox/Production Site Settings and determine proper values during staging and go-live. Configure and set up integrations. Adjust email subject lines in Sandbox so they clearly state Sandbox to avoid confusion about which environment emails are coming from. Confirm and ensure Order Submit Order Number Prefixes differ between Sandbox and Production to avoid confusion about the source of emails. Update emails for Site Account Activation and Console Account Activation so they display the customer’s site-name.com instead of Insite.com. Production performance tuning described in{" "} Monitor and improve 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 the implementation team must determine if the site will be crawled or not and if any specific pages should not be. Add these pages to the file needed via CMS. If the site should be crawled, delete the /. See [Edit the Robots.txt File](https://support.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/articles/4413191642637-Edit-the-Robots-txt-file) and [Improve search with the Robots.txt and the sitemap](https://support.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/articles/4413191641357-Improve-search-with-Robots-txt-and-the-sitemap) for more information.
Determine Google Analytics Needs	Partner/Customer	1 day		See if there is an existing [Google Analytics](https://support.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/articles/13018061919117-Install-Google-Analytics-4) or [Google Tag Manager](https://support.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/articles/4413205456141-Install-Google-Tag-Manager) account that should be linked.
Determine URL Redirect Strategy and Load in Desired Redirects	Customer	1-2 weeks		Optimizely recommends that you start this task early in the implementation phase. Load in any necessary [URL redirects](https://support.optimizely.com/hc/en-us/articles/4413191771149-Overview-of-URL-redirects).
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 runs a performance review on sandbox during code lock. CMS changes can be made; however, Optimziely recommends limiting the size and amount of changes during this time as this may negatively impact the results. The CSD or Partner initiates a ticket for this activity. See [Go-live performance spot check](https://docs.developers.optimizely.com/configured-commerce/docs/go-live-performance-spot-check) for guidelines.

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.
Root/Apex Domain SSL Preparation	Partner/Customer	After DNS Records Created	If you are specifically using our redirect server for the Root/Apex 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 Root/Apex domain.
Run Sitemap Integration Job	Partner/Customer	After launch	Run this job and verify the robots.txt file is correct for crawlers to reach the sitemap. Partners can customize the sitemap in code to control how the sitemap is built: Override methods in JobPostprocessorBuildSitemap. Add pipes to the BuildSitemap, AddSitemapUrls, and SubmitSitemap pipelines. BuildSitemap retrieves all urls in the sitemap, such as product, category, and brand. AddSitemapUrls adds a URL to a sitemap file. SubmitSitemap lets you add or change where the sitemap is sent, such as Google or IndexNow.
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.

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