How To Test Three Rings

Once you’ve signed up with the test team, you’ll receive an email when we begin a two-week test period.

Use the web address beta.3r.org.uk for testing purposes. Make a habit of checking the address bar of your browser periodically to ensure that you’ve not accidentally found your way onto “live” Three Rings. (You might like to ensure you’re logged-out of “live” Three Rings before you start testing!)

A video introduction can be found below, or scroll down for a full explanation:

Video Introduction

Video: How to get started testing

Video: How to report a bug

Logging in

The beta site gets updated with a copy of live data at the start of each test period.

Using your own account

You can use your regular Three Rings account on the beta site if you like: just be aware that –

  • The beta and live sites are separate: if you sign up to a shift in one, it won’t be reflected in the other, but
  • Both sites are capable of sending real email and text messages: if testing Comms or related functionality, be considerate and don’t send real messages to people who aren’t co-testers

Using a generic account

The following generic accounts are free for you to experiment with in the beta site, if you prefer –

  • A powerful administrator account:
    Username: demo_admin
    Password: Admin!login
  • A regular volunteer account:
    Username: demo_user
    Password: User!login
  • A “regional” administrator account:
    Username: demo_region
    Password: Region!login

Be aware that others might be using these generic accounts too and so things can change without warning.

Thinking like a tester

Once again: remember to test using the address beta.3r.org.uk!

Review the release notes for the milestone release you’re helping to test. This is a list of the new and changed features, which are the parts of the system we’re most-interested in getting feedback about. They’re also where you’re most-likely to find a bug, although just sometimes a new feature in one part of the system can have an unexpected knock-on effect in a completely different part, so be ready for that!

Consider:

  • Focussing mostly on trying out the new features, seeing that the work as you’d expect, and/or trying out “edge cases” of unusual-but-plausible ways to use them to ensure they don’t break.
  • Also taking a little while to do your “regular” Three Rings tasks, whatever they happen to be, to be confident that things work they way they ought to.

Reporting a bug

If you find something that doesn’t work as you’d expect, drop us an email on beta-feedback@www.threerings.org.uk to let us know about it. Please let us know as soon as you’re confident that you’ve found a bug, so that we can try to address it in time for further testing to take place.

A great bug report often includes the following information:

  • The username (never send us passwords or API keys!) you were logged in as
  • What you did, step by step
  • What happened
  • How that differed from what you expected to happen
  • Anything else “around” the area that you’ve tested, to help us narrow down the source of the problem (e.g. did you try in a different browser or a different way)

For example, here’s a good bug report:

To: beta-feedback@www.threerings.org.uk
Subject: Bug when signing other volunteers up to historical shifts

While logged in as demo_admin, I tried to sign up volunteer demo_user to the 20:00 shift last Sunday by drag-and-dropping them from the “volunteer bin”. The volunteer wasn’t signed up, and instead of seeing the rota I saw a page that read “Error 500” (screenshot attached).

Normally I can sign other volunteers up for historic shifts when logged in as a rota manager. I was still able to sign this volunteer up to future shifts as normal, but a variety of past shifts all failed in the same way.

My browser is Edge on Windows 11, but the same problem also happens in Mozilla Firefox.