Stage your guide

You can set up staging environments to test guides before publishing them to your full audience. This lets you preview guides without affecting your live analytics or creating a segment just to limit who sees them. The staging environment mirrors your production environment and is only accessible to your internal teams. This article covers the different types of staging servers, how to set them up, and how to clear guide data in those environments.

Note: Once you've created a staging server, any guide that's set to Staged is only published in the staging environment. A guide that's set to Public is published in both the staging and production environments.

Before you begin

You must be a subscription admin to set up a staging environment.

Staging server types

When you add a staging server, you specify it as a domain, host, or wildcard. Each type determines how Pendo matches host names to your staging environment.

• Domain. A domain name includes the address you add and all the subdomains beneath it as staging servers. For example, staging.example.com, qa.staging.example.com, and test.build.staging.example.com are all included as staging servers when you enter staging.example.com as a domain. Use this when you want to cover a whole branch of your environment with one entry, including any subdomains that might be added later. Domain names are always hidden (obscured).
• Host. A fixed, exact host name, such as qa.example.com. Pendo matches that exact host name only. Hosts are only obscured if Obscure staging server names is turned on in your subscription settings. See Obscure staging names in this article for more information.
• Wildcard. An address that uses * or ? to match multiple servers at once. Use this when your staging environment has multiple servers that follow a predictable naming pattern. Wildcards can't be obscured, so if keeping your server name private is important, consider using a domain or host instead. 
  • The asterisk * matches any number of characters. For instance, *.qa.example.com matches build.qa.example.com and test.qa.example.com.
  • The question mark ? matches exactly one character, and all other characters must match exactly. So qa-?.example.com matches qa-1.example.com and qa-2.example.com, but not qa-26.example.com.

Add a staging server

Add staging servers in Settings > Staging. You can add a domain, host, or wildcard. Choose whatever best fits your environment.

1. Go to Settings > Staging in the top-right corner of the page.
   
   
    
2. Select + Add Server Host/Domain.

3. Enter the domain, host name, or wildcard that you want to use as your staging server.

   

4. Select Add in the bottom-right corner of the window when you're done. This adds the staging server to your list of environments.

You can then go to the guide details page for any guide you'd like to push to this staging environment. To learn more about this, see Test and deliver your guide.

Obscure staging names

By default, your staging server names are visible to anyone who inspects your production site's code. If that's a concern—for example, for security reviews, compliance requirements, or keeping internal naming conventions private—you can turn on Obscure staging server names.

1. In the top-right corner of the page, go to Settings > Subscription settings.
2. Find the Security and privacy section.
3. Turn on the checkbox to Obscure staging server names.

Clear guide data

Once your staging environment is set up, you may want to test how a guide behaves before publishing it. Because some guides only display once for each visitor, dismissing a guide stops it from showing again. To see the guide again during testing, you'll need to clear its data. This is especially useful when you've made changes to a guide and want to see it from the beginning.

Warning: Before you clear guide data, make sure the guide hasn't previously been set to Public. If the guide was published and then moved back to Staged, clearing the data will reset it for any visitors who already saw it while it was live.

The Clear guide data option is only available when a guide is in Staged status.

1. From the left-side menu, go to Guides > Guides.
2. Select the guide you'd like to clear the data for.
3. In the top-right of the guide details page, select Clear guide data.
   
   
    
4. Select Clear Data to confirm.