App Orchard Sandbox

Environment Guide
January 14, 2020

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Table of Contents
 What Is an Environment?......................................................................................................................3
 Epic Release Cycle..................................................................................................................................3
 App Orchard Sandboxes ......................................................................................................................4
Release Schedule .............................................................................................................................. 4
Production and Master Environments .......................................................................................... 4
APIs in Different Environments ..................................................................................................... 4
Customer Environments ................................................................................................................. 5
 Summary of Changes .............................................................................................................................6
January 14, 2020 ................................................................................................................................ 6
December 3, 2018 .............................................................................................................................. 6

App Orchard Sandbox Environment Guide 2

 What Is an Environment?
An environment is a single instance of Epic’s code and data. App Orchard provides sandbox environments
to test apps before publishing to the marketplace. Each Epic customer also has various other environments
used for training, testing, reporting, production, and other needs.

 Epic Release Cycle

Before the Epic August 2018 version release, Epic used the naming convention “Epic YYYY” for each
released version. Starting with the August 2018 version, Epic releases quarterly updates. Each release follows
the naming convention “Month YYYY”.
In addition to this naming convention, each Epic upgrade version has a corresponding version number.
These numbers appear in various places in the system, such as the URL used to access APIs in the sandbox
environments.
Here are a few examples of update names and their corresponding version numbers.

Update Name Version Number

Epic 2017 8.3 or 83

Epic 2018 8.4 or 84

August 2018 8.5 or 85

November 2018 8.6 or 86

February 2019 8.7 or 87

May 2019 8.8 or 88

August 2019 8.9 or 89

November 2019 9.1 or 91

February 2020 9.2 or 92

Regular upgrade releases happen quarterly, scheduled early in the months of February, May, August, and
November each year. Note that Epic does not publish version numbers with trailing zeros.

App Orchard Sandbox Environment Guide 3

 App Orchard Sandboxes
Release Schedule
App Orchard provides three sandbox environments for vendor testing. With quarterly updates starting as of
August 2018, it is important to know which environments are available. In general, they follow this format:

Format Example 1: Between August Example 2: Between August

and November of 2018 and November of 2020

Current version environment August 2018 August 2020

Update as of last May Epic 2018 May 2020

Update as of previous May Epic 2017 May 2019

The current App Orchard environment will be upgraded to the current version within a few weeks of each
quarterly release.
Every year, we will update the previously released versions to the previous two May releases in late summer
before the August update.

Production and Master Environments

Vendors will be able to test in the Production environments of each sandbox. The Production environments
are refreshed every Sunday at approximately 8:00 P.M. Central Time.
If App Orchard contributors want their build to persist for more than one week, an Epic Technical Services
representative must transfer a copy of their build into the corresponding Master Sandbox environment.
Production is refreshed to a copy of the Master environment every week.

APIs in Different Environments

Some APIs are only usable in newer environments. When choosing APIs on the App Orchard website, be
sure to check the First Available Epic Version in the API General Information.

If an API’s First Available Epic Version is newer than the environment you are using, the API will be
unavailable.

App Orchard Sandbox Environment Guide 4

Customer Environments
Each customer typically has a variety of environments for training, testing, reporting, production, and other
purposes. Here is an excerpt of a general customer environment strategy:

POC TST PRD

RPT SUP

The Proof of Concept (POC) environment allows for access to initial build and validation of workflows.
FHIR, HL7, and Kit APIs are usually not available to test in POC.
The Test (TST) environment is where most of the testing takes place. Better data is available for testing, as
well as all the features needed for integration that aren’t available in POC, such as APIs, Interconnect, and
interfaces.
Depending on the customer, POC and TST environments might be refreshed at some point. Make sure to
know these schedules before starting to test.
The Production (PRD) environment is where all the users’ work and patient data is stored.
The Support (SUP) environment is a nightly or, less commonly, weekly copy of PRD. Typically, only
Hyperspace is available. It is meant to troubleshoot issues with production data without potentially affecting
production.
The Reporting (RPT) environment is a near real-time copy of PRD. It is a data source for analytical reporting.
Epic Data Courier is used to transfer configuration (build) from one environment to another. You need to go
through an authorized customer analyst to promote your build through the environments.

App Orchard Sandbox Environment Guide 5

 Summary of Changes
The following is a general summary of recent changes.

January 14, 2020

 App Orchard now hosts the previous two May versions, rather than the previous two February
versions.

December 3, 2018
 Initial publication

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