Is there any updated information regarding the best practices for creating a development environment? What is the starting step?
I did see a few questions on the same topic, but not much information.
Ideally you want the configuration of any non-production environments to match your production environment as closely as possible. This will reduce the friction of moving solutions from one environment to another and help reduce the number of surprises.
I think this goes without saying. I'm looking for a bit more specific information
It's a very vague question. Please provide some more specific things that you are looking to learn.
Our test/development environment is simply as close of a replica to production as we can get, short of replicating the actual data. To test specific scenarios we sometimes attach a copy of the production repository database and point it to an empty directory. The repository works just fine without having access to the files. Otherwise, we'll briefcase across specific folder structures for certain processes.
yes, it is a vague question. I am not the person that installed the LF suite, but now I need to create a development environment. Where should I start?
Ouch! That is painful to have to figure out where somebody left off. As far as configuring the Laserfiche server, you probably just need to walk through the configuration of the existing components (aside from the repository, we'll get to that). If you can install a new server that closely matches that configuration, you'll be most of the way there.
That will include, installing the Laserfiche Server and probably Workflow. Depending on your environment, you may have to install Web Access, and WebLink. There are pretty good references in the documentation for the specific install steps. There isn't right now a good way to replicate licensing, so you'll need to license the dev server with your existing license infrastructure.
Once you have LFS running, you can create a repository that matches the existing configuration. You can walk through them both and make sure that the dev repository is configured the same. The reason I mentioned leaving that until later is because it's pretty easy to get LFS working. Most of the detail is in the repository.
There's a lot of details here. Please don't hesitate to ask about specific pieces as you get to them.
Thanks a bunch! Will reach out if needed