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DEPLOY�Coupa Release Management Playbook

Coupa Standard Release Process Guidelines �Version: 2.0 (rev. 1) | March 13, 2019

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Playbook Table of Contents

Introduction
Coupa Release Management
The Standard Release Process (SRP)
Seven Plays to a Winning Major Release Upgrade
The Four Maintenance Release Quick Plays
Appendix

All information contained in this document is confidential and proprietary. Coupa reserves the right to make changes to this document and to its services. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Introduction

Welcome to the Coupa Release Management Playbook

This document describes the Coupa Release Management Process (RMP). It utilizes a playbook theme to help illustrate the release management concepts and processes.

Why This Document was Created

The Coupa Release Management Playbook has been prepared to help you evaluate, plan for, and successfully upgrade to the latest version of your Coupa Business Spend Management platform. In this playbook, you’ll find recommendations and best practices to guide you through every step of the release management process.

Who Should Read This Document

This document is written for Coupa administrators, IT leads, and Procurement leads who are looking for information to help ensure successful platform updates and upgrades.

How to Use This Document

We recommend that this playbook be read from beginning end to provide foundational knowledge of the Coupa Release Management process. After the initial reading, the playbook may serve as a reference tool for future updates and upgrades.

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COUPA RELEASE MANAGEMENT

4

Release Management Overview
Release Types

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Coupa Release Management: Overview

In addition to performance and design improvements, major releases encompass industry leading capabilities, best practices, and innovative advances. Customers who are prepared to adopt these innovations quickly are best positioned to take advantage of them.

With every major release, Coupa offers both eLearning courses and live webinars to review the latest features and innovations. You’ll find the schedule of upcoming webinars at learn.coupa.com.

Coupa’s Release Management approach provides a continuous stream of innovation with major releases scheduled three times per year.

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Coupa Release Management: Release Types

22.1.0

You can find the current release number within your instance of Coupa under:

Setup > Company Information

.0

Unscheduled fixes for critical issues that impact a majority of customers

Daily Update

.1

Scheduled fixes for customer reported issues and critical security issues. Every two weeks.

Maintenance Update

New features and functionality. Three time per year: January, May, and September

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Major Release

Coupa Release Management includes three release types:

Major Releases – There are three major releases per year. January, May, & September
Maintenance Releases – There are usually eight standard maintenance releases associated with each major release
Daily Releases – There is no standard number for daily releases. These are released as needed in support of each a major release.

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Coupa Release Lifecycle�Continuously rolling out new features and functionality

Code Base

Environments, Sandbox & Prod

Major Releases

New features turned off

No features, only fixes in maintenance updates

Fixed release schedule

Configuration, not coding

Major Release

Maintenance update (every 2 weeks)

Jan

May

Sep

T0

T0-6w

T0-4w

T0-2w

T0-1w

Sandbox deployment

Production deployment

Production deployment notification

Sandbox deployment notification

T0-8w

Release Notes

There is (1) code base across Coupa. All customers get a min of (2) environments, and there are (3) major releases a year. Most new features must be actively enabled – not automatically on. And, there are only fixes in maintenance updates. All releases follow our published release schedule. This approach allows you to take advantage of new features and fixes through configuration, not custom coding!

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COUPA STANDARD RELEASE PROCESS

8

Overview
Benefits

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Coupa Standard Release Process: Overview

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Coupa’s Standard Release Process (SRP) is a method of simplifying the release management process without compromising quality or adding risk.

The SRP automatically manages your maintenance release updates for you.

All sandbox instances are automatically updated with a new maintenance release every two weeks. All production instances are updated with maintenance releases during the week between sandbox updates. Example: Everyone on Release 22.0.0 will update to maintenance release 22.1.0 at the same time.

Note 1: daily releases are considered critical fixes and are applied to all production instances for the effected release.

Note 2: Work with your CVM to manage the release window changes and requests.

The SRP allows you to create your own major release upgrade schedule from a list of predefined windows.

You have the option to choose from three sandbox windows and three productions windows for your major release upgrades. Please contact your Customer Value Manager (CVM) for the details on creating your SRP schedule.

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Coupa Standard Release Process: Benefits

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Benefits of Coupa’s Standard Release Process include the ability to:

Roll out new features and functionality in a controlled manner
Eliminate manual upgrade requests and ticket submission
Facilitate visibility and predictability in Coupa’s release schedule
Provide repeatable upgrade activities
Reduce testing time and resources needed for releases
Enhance proficiency in resolving varies functionality issues and deploy to production in a timely manner
Increase support efficiency and speed support case resolution

Adopt the latest innovations when ready

Get the latest security and operational innovations

Accelerate resolution to support issues

Enjoy the latest quality enhancements

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SEVEN PLAYS TO A WINNING MAJOR RELEASE UPGRADE

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Seven Plays to a Winning Major Release Upgrade

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Post Upgrade

Release�Research

Sandbox Upgrade

Business Process Acceptance Testing

Communications

Production Upgrade

Major Release Management Process

7

1

2

3

Integration Testing

4

5

6

To help you plan for each Coupa major release, we recommend that you follow a 7-step project plan.

We’re calling this plan the 7 plays to a winning major release upgrade!

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Play 1 – Research Release

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Research the release

Visit the Coupa Success Portal to find full information on every Coupa release.

www.success.coupa.com

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Play 1 – Research Release

1

Start with the How to Use Release Notes section
Check out the Upgrade Impact List to see all the new features and any changes they might introduce to your permissions and integrations
Move on to the Roles Updates to learn what new permissions were added to our standard roles
Examine the Integration Updates to learn about changes introduced to integration formats
Browse the New Features section for the apps you've purchased
See the Resolved Issues list to see if any issues you might have reported may have been resolved

Read the Release Notes

Release notes provide a review of all new features, feature enhancements, and the upgrade impact.

Release notes can be found at: https://success.coupa.com/Support/Releases

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Play 1 – Research Release

1

Start by looking at the platform updates. If there changes to your custom roles and/or integrations, you'll want to verify their behavior.
Then consider what other changes might affect your business logic. Are there changes to how approvals work? Is there a new opportunity to simplify?
Move on to the apps you have licenses for, and decide if there's something you want to implement and/or to learn more about their new behavior.
Review the information on other apps if you’d like to learn more about them and their activity

You'll need to know what apps you’ve purchased (i.e. do you have an invoicing or sourcing license?), what custom roles you've created, and what objects are integrated with other systems in your organization.

Identify changes that might impact your custom roles and integrations, and review the new available features

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Play 1 - Research New Features and Functionality … Part 2

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We recommend that you limit the number of new features and functionality you plan to implement. Be sure the new features make business sense.

1

Identify the new features and functionality you plan to implement

Note: If this is your initial upgrade into the auto-upgrade process and it involves jumping more than 3 major releases, consider asking your CVM about a Customer Adoption Manager (CAM) engagement. CAMs can help guide you through a multi-release upgrade as one of their many service offerings.

Schedule two meetings, at a minimum, with your internal stakeholders to identify and discuss new release features and functionality that will benefit your company’s current/future business processes.

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Play 2 – Sandbox Upgrade

Use Your Sandbox

Your sandbox is where you can become familiar with a new major release prior to moving it into production. In your sandbox environment you can see the impact of the release on your current configuration and if changes need to be made. You are able to configure new features and functionality, giving stakeholders time to determine if it is right for the company.

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2

Prepare for the Upgrade

Refresh your sandbox instance a week prior to all major release upgrades by submitting a support ticket. A refresh is not automatically performed by Coupa as part of the standard release process – you must request this via ta support ticket. This will allow your sandbox to maintain fresh production data. This step is not necessary and not recommended prior to maintenance releases.

Note: For US based companies, sandbox SRP are usually performed on Monday evenings between 6 and 10 PM (Pacific Standard Time). See the Upcoming Release Schedule.

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Play 2 – Sandbox Upgrade

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6 Weeks

4 Weeks

3 Weeks

2 Weeks

1 Weeks

Sandbox Update Notification

Sandbox Update Base on Assigned Schedule

Production Update Notification

Production Update

Upgrade

Release Notes Available

Business Process Testing & Integration Testing

New Feature Research

Communications

Your sandbox instance will be upgraded based on your assigned schedule.

Contact your CVM if you have specific needs!

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Play 3 – Business Process Acceptance Testing

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Break Down Your Test Strategy into Manageable Plan

Script review
Workflow review
Improving script effectiveness/efficiency
Eliminating extraneous scripts
Regression testing
Defining testing metrics and continuous improvement

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Play 3 – Business Process Acceptance Testing �Script Review

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Here are some questions to help get you started – you’ll likely have some of your own:

What are you testing?
Why are you testing it?
Who will be doing the testing?
How are you using Coupa today?
How do you want to be using Coupa with the new features of a major release?

3

When approaching a major release, you need to review your test scripts

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Play 3 – Business Process Acceptance Testing�Workflow Review

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Daily Operations

As a company matures with Coupa, people find efficiencies within the designed workflow or add additional day-to-day activities that can be performed within the

application.

New Features

A major release is the time to work with various departments to make sure your tests accurately reflect how each department is using Coupa

today.

Business Workflow

When you first implemented Coupa, you made assumptions on how the workflow would be utilized and created tests to cover those processes.

End to End

All test scripts should be in a single document with a reporting page that shows the current status of all tests.

Revisit how your end users are using Coupa to assess and update your test scripts as needed

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Play 3 - Business Process Acceptance Testing�Improving Script Effectiveness/Efficiency

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Frequently, release test scripts come from User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and are focused on testing the software. Now is the time to move them to Business Acceptance Testing (BAT) and focus on the workflow.
After Go Live, eliminate tests that focus on software validation – this should now lie in the hands of Coupa.
Make sure your tests cover common, everyday work processes that you perform within Coupa. If you aren’t utilizing or planning to implement a specific part of Coupa, you shouldn't test it.
Make sure each test case is unique; never duplicate test steps if at all possible. Your goal should be to the widest test coverage with the least amount of tests.

3

Focus on the software supporting your business processes – not how the software works

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Play 3 - Business Process Acceptance Testing�Improving Script Effectiveness/Efficiency

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Plan your testing in advance. If there are dependencies for certain tests to be completed, make sure you take those into consideration when planning the order of tests.
If you are not using a testing management application, keep all test scripts in a single document with a reporting page that shows the current status of all tests. Multiple files may lead to multiple people trying to exercise the same tests.
If there are tests that need additional time to complete (auto-close PO, scheduled reports etc.) run these first so you are not waiting for the results once all testing is complete.
Test in as accurate an environment as possible. If you are running AP tests, log in with a user who has that role or take advantage of the "act as user" functionality and test with a user in that position. Just adding a role to your Admin account may produce inaccurate results.
Don’t open multiple browser tabs for testing different roles. Use Privacy mode on the browser or different browsers for different roles to make sure there is no browser cache crossover that may produce invalid results.

3

Look for ways to improve testing efficiency

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Play 3 - Business Process Acceptance Testing�Eliminating Extraneous Scripts

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Review your test scripts for coverage, timing, and efficiency.
Cull any test cases/scripts that duplicate testing effort. If a script has the same test steps as another, review why you are testing, and either update the test to unique steps or remove it all together.
Identify tests that can be combined to reduce the number of scripts.
Consider how you are using Coupa today. Are there test cases that were created to exercise aspects of the service you are no longer using? If so, remove the scripts from your current test suite.
Pro Tips: �1) Just because it can be tested doesn’t mean it should be tested.�2) Keep things simple – don’t over-complicate the activity.

3

Keep the test script count low

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Play 3 - Business Process Acceptance Testing�Regression Testing

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If you have any software issues that are specifically targeted for correction within a release, then a test script should be created to confirm their resolution.
Once a regression is confirmed to be resolved, the test case should be used for the next one to two major release test cycles, but not for minor releases, unless the Release Notes specifically call out this issue.
After no more than two major releases, the regression test case should be archived.

3

Balance your regression testing efforts

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Play 3 - Business Process Acceptance Testing�Defining Testing Metrics and Continuous Improvement

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It’s important to define test metrics around both the ratio of successful tests as well as the length of time it takes to run each test case.
As your testing matures you should use these metrics to review the types of test cases you’re using and begin considering how to balance coverage.
For example, if you are focusing too much on a certain area, or if certain tests take an overly large amount of time compared to the times the activity is performed within Coupa, it may be time to revisit the necessity of certain tests.
By understanding the time it takes to run your tests, you can better plan your testing resources and your testing plan for efficiency.

3

Create metrics for your testing

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Play 4 – Integration Testing

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Many Business Process Acceptance Test (BAT) concepts and guidelines also apply to integration testing. However integrations have a specific focus on data and include additional areas to factor into testing.

Here are some areas to consider:

Inbound/outbound dataflow
Data validation

4

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Play 4 - Integration Testing�Inbound/Outbound Dataflow

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Confirm the Data is Being Received

The key focus of an integration is to move data from one system �to another.

Coupa inbound integration specifications are the same for all customers for a given major release. Regardless of the source (i.e., ERP system, credit card supplier, etc.) data coming into Coupa will be in the same format for that major Coupa release.
Coupa outbound integrations are more flexible. Coupa customers use the outbound integration data in numerous ways (i.e., ERP systems, data warehouses, etc.). Your should have test scripts for each of the outbound integrations your have built for Coupa to target.
Regardless of the integration type, test scrips should answer the basic questions:

Is the data being received?
Is the data being received on time?

Data Warehouse

ERP

4

Coupa

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Play 4 - Integration Testing�Data Validation

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Validate the Data Is Correct

Data integrity is the most important aspect of data integration. If the data isn’t correct, it doesn’t matter that it is received on time.

More information:�Release Notes will also inform you of changes to the Integrations platforms, especially around the API calls. Also visit: https://success.coupa.com/Integrate/Technical_Documentation. �Click on the type of integration for a link to review changes between the two most recent major releases.

4

Integration test scripts should answer the basic question: Is the data correct?

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Play 5 - Communications

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Maintaining an effective communication plan for your Coupa user base (all end-users and suppliers) promotes increased user adoption, decreased user errors, and improved system proficiency.

INFORM YOUR USERS

New Features
Training and FAQs
Scheduled Down Time
Process Changes
Fixes and Updates

Tip: When you communicate any system downtime for the upgrade, extend the duration to include enough time for you to perform post upgrade validation.

5

Maintain an Effective Communications Plan

Recommended: Always have an upgrade readiness meeting a minimum of 3 days before your scheduled major production upgrade.

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Play 6 - Production Upgrade

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Because you are on the standard release plan, you don’t have to submit a support ticket to upgrade. Coupa will deploy the new release to your production instance based on the assigned schedule you selected with your CVM. Production upgrades are scheduled for Fridays.

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It’s time! Let’s upgrade!

A couple of additional tips:

Create a checklist of all sandbox configuration changes needing to be applied to production and who will apply them post upgrade.
If there are special post upgrade tasks you need Coupa to perform, submit a support ticket a minimum of 3 days prior to the upgrade.

An email notification will be sent to you once your production instance is updated.

Coupa locks your production instance during the upgrade window. No one has access – company employees, suppliers, even Coupa administrators are locked out. Once you receive the notification from Coupa that your production major release upgrade has completed, any of your end users can access the system. This is why your communication plan is important.

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Play 7 - Post Upgrade

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Perform post go-live configuration (if any)
Check approval workflows
Validate scheduled integration jobs
Validate scheduled reports
Update process documentation
Document lessons learned

Many companies mainly focus on the negative aspects during a lessons learned review. We recommend that you also consider the positive aspects. This will allow you to identify opportunities for efficiency gains. As example, you may find that you don’t need as many resources to support a major release upgrade as originally planned.

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Activities and considerations �once your upgrade is complete

While it’s not an exhaustive list, here are a few things that you should do after a major release upgrade:

Be sure to evaluate lessons learned!

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FOUR MAINTENANCE �RELEASE QUICK PLAYS

4

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Maintenance Release Updates

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Maintenance release updates are less elaborate than major release upgrades. We recommend that you follow a 4-step project plan.

We’re calling this plan our four maintenance release quick plays!

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4 Plays to Maintenance Release Update

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Production Reminder & Update

Maintenance Update Process

Maintenance Notifications

Sandbox Update

2

4

1

³Maintenance

Release Testing

We remind you that

we’ll be updating your production instance to the new maintenance update release on Wednesday and Production Update on Friday.

4

Maintenance Release

testing should not be as thorough as a major release as no new features are added – simply fixes to existing issues.

3

We notify you of the

pending maintenance update and provide release notes describing the issues resolved on the Wednesday one week prior to the production update

1

We update your

sandbox instance with the new maintenance update on Monday

2

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Appendix A – Customers Not on the Standard Release Process

Appendix B – Coupa Can Help

Appendix B - Release Management Best Practices

Appendix C - Release Management Upgrade Questionnaire and Project Plan Template

Appendix D - Reference Material

CONGRATULATIONS

Wow! You’ve completed the �Release Management Playbook.

Now it’s time for you to get busy and put what you’ve learned into action. Review the plays again in detail, then start building your 7-play and 4-play project plans.

Also, be sure to look at the Appendix for additional tools and resources to support your success.

APPENDIX

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Appendix A�Coupa Customers Not on the Standard Release Process

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For those not on the Coupa Standard Release Process, upgrades must be directly requested by contacting your Customer Value Manager (CVM). Once finalized, the release management approach described below is executed.

Note: Some Coupa Customer may use this same approach for maintenance releases too.

Review the

Release Notes

Sandbox Upgrade

Sandbox Testing

Production Upgrade

Obtaining release notes
Understand changes between releases
Identify new release features your company wants

Submit support ticket refresh sandbox with production data
Refresh sandbox
Submit support ticket to upgrade sandbox to �current release
Upgrade sandbox
Turn on new features in sandbox

Conduct integration testing
Conduct user acceptance testing

Submit support ticket to upgrade production to current release
Upgrade production
Turn on new features in production

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Appendix B�Coupa Can Help

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If your production instance is on Release 15 (R15) or less and you need assistance on a multiple release upgrade�Please contact your Coupa Customer Value Manager to discuss release management services to help you upgrade your production instance to the latest version and on to the SRP.

If you need additional assistance or resources to develop or execute your Business Process Acceptance Testing�Please contact your Coupa Customer Value Manager to discuss Field QA Services.

For more information on Coupa Releases�Be sure to visit success.coupa.com to get the latest release management updates, information, and documentation.

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Appendix C�Release Management Best Practices & Strategies

While this is not an exhaustive list, below are some of the release management best practices you should follow:

Use this playbook
Work with your Customer Value Manager
Participate in the Coupa Community
Simplify Coupa Configurations
Communicate With Your Users
Minimize Implementing New Features During Major Releases
Eliminate tests that focus on software validation
Make sure your tests are looking at the everyday work processes that you perform within Coupa
Make sure to test custom roles and liquid PO templates
Make sure each test case is unique
Test in the most accurate environment as possible

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The key to a successful upgrade is to read the docs, decide on your changes, plan your testing, and execute your plan in sandbox, communicate the upgrade and move to production

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Appendix C�Upgrade Questionnaire and Project Plan

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For additional documentation to support you through the release process, please contact your Coupa Customer Value Manager (CVM)

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Appendix D�Reference Material

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Coupa University Webinar Recording – UAT Best Practices

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/4446726664254033667

Coupa University Webinar Recording – Release Best Practices:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/5798622392509305348

Coupa Release Notes and References:

https://success.coupa.com/Support/Releases

Integration Technical Documentation:

https://success.coupa.com/Integrate/Technical_Documentation

Coupa Release Management:

https://success.coupa.com/Success/Release_Management

Coupa Test Script for new Features:

https://success.coupa.com/Success/Release_Management/05_Receiving_Updates