Guidelines for Beta Testers

If you are a DVD Register beta tester:

As a beta tester you are trying out software that is not quite fully baked and may contain software bugs or incompletely implemented features. The purpose of beta testing is to obtain user feedback and to discover bugs and issues that are have not been identified by the designers of the software. You should keep the following guidelines in mind:

1. Install the beta software but do not over write or remove your latest production release. By default a new DVD Register software release will install in a new folder. Use the beta software as you normally would but do keep your production software up to date with additions to your catalog. It may not be possible to upgrade from one version of beta software to another but it will always be possible to upgrade from one production software release to another.
2. Once the production software has been released, you should download and install the production release. It is not possible to provide support for beta software after the beta test has been concluded.
3. The best approach to testing is to use the software as you would normally and observe and report any issues that appear as unexpected error message or failures of the software to as you would normally expect. Some suggested tests:
   • Upgrade your catalog from the previous production release
   • Open each form
   • Open each report
   • Open any custom reports that you have made
   • Export and Import a backup file
   • Open the Rapid Entry form and add a few new titles to your catalog
4. When reporting an issue try to explain how it is possible to reproduce the issue. What were you doing immediately before the issue occurred? If there is an error message report the error number and the verbatim text of the error message.
5. Sometimes errors are site dependent and cannot be reproduced in the development environment. This may be because you are running an operating system such that is not used for development testing or there may be interactions with other programs that you have installed on your PC that have over written certain commonly used libraries. You may be asked as a follow-up to an error report to try certain procedures. Try to follow these instructions exactly and report back your observations about the procedure.