How to test your Dado experience

Dado offers a range of tools to help you make your final checks and tweaks, when you're preparing to launch your experience. The three most useful features for testing are described below.

Testing tool	Best for:
Preview	Checking that everything is scheduled appropriately in your experience Testing that target audiences have been set up correctly Reviewing the content of each message and task
Send Test	Checking the notifications that will be sent for tasks and messages Testing that target audiences have been set up correctly
Enrolling test users	Testing the entire experience in real time Testing sub-sections of the experience in real time Testing triggered tasks/messages Checking your enrollment form works correctly

Testing with Preview

Best for:

Checking that everything is scheduled appropriately in your experience
Testing that target audiences have been set up correctly
Reviewing the content of each message and task

The Preview feature gives you an overview of all the content in your experience, laid out on a vertical timeline. It's a great way to get a high level view of what happens when, as well as enabling you to check individual items in the experience.

You can open Preview using the Preview buttons in both view and edit modes of the experience page

Preview uses color-coded labels to indicate who each item is assigned to. You can use the filters at the top to show only certain assignees (eg just the Manager tasks/messages) and/or certain item types (eg just messages)

Clicking on any item in the preview will open the full content of that item in a new window:

In the Customize Preview settings you can

Change the date used in the preview
- For instance, select the first day at work for your next onboarding cohort, to see how the experience would play out for them
Select an individual user, and preview what the experience would look like for them
- For instance, choose an existing employee in a particular location and/or team, and see how the experience would be customized based on that

Testing with Test Send

Best for:

Checking the notifications that will be sent for messages and tasks in your experience
Testing that target audiences have been set up correctly

You can send yourself (or a colleague) a test of any Task and Message in your experience, using the Test Send feature. Tests can always be sent via email, and also by Slack or Teams if you've set up those integrations.

Click on 'Test Send' in the centre of the Task/Message window. You can then enter the address to receive the test. You'll also be asked to select some sample users. These users will not receive an email; Dado will just use their data to customize the test you receive. This includes:

replacing variables with the data about that user
- i.e. instead of receiving a message starting Hi Participant: First Name! , your test will start Hi Abdullah!
determining which version of the content you receive, depending on which target audience that user belongs to
- if you send a test of a task that has 2 target audiences (US employees and International employees), and you select a US-based test user, you'll receive the US version of the task

You might see this error message when selecting a test user:

This message indicates that the user you've selected doesn't fit into any of the Target Audiences who are set to receive this message. We recommend you seek out this error to test that your Target Audiences are set up correctly.

For instance, if you have a task set to send only to US-based employees, try selecting an employee based in another country as a test user. If you see the error message shown above, you can be reassured that your target audience is set up correctly!

Testing by enrolling a test user

Best for:

Testing the entire experience in real time
Testing sub-sections of the experience in real time
Testing triggered tasks/messages
Checking your enrollment form works correctly

The most comprehensive way to test an experience would be to go through the entire experience yourself. However, that often requires more time than you want to spend on your pre-launch testing. Instead, we suggest enrolling test users at different points in your experience and testing just those parts of the experience.

If you've opted for our Employee Experience Design & Implementation Service, your Customer Success Manager will set up test users for you when you reach the pre-launch testing phase. If you need test users outside of this period, you can either import them yourselves from a Google/Excel Online spreadsheet, or contact our customer team, who can set them up for you.

Enrolling test users with an Enrollment Form

If you will be using an enrollment form to enroll people in your experience after launch, we strongly recommend testing this way. Another advantage of this approach is that it lets you create as many test users as you like!

Go to your enrollment form. You should see this highlighted in green, at the top of your experience page in view mode
Fill out the enrollment form with your test user's details and submit
You now have about 10 minutes to adjust this test user's experience before it starts
Go to your Experience page (in view mode), and scroll down to the Participant's table. You'll now see your test user listed here
1. If you've enrolled a user with a start-date more than 2 weeks in the future, you'll need to uncheck the Show only active experiences toggle to see your test user
Click on the test user to open their individual experience view, which is where you'll make your adjustments. See below for a list of the adjustments we recommend.

Enrolling test users via manual enrollment

If you won't be using an enrollment form, and you already have some test users in your account, this is a good choice.

Go to your Experience page (in view mode), and click on the blue Enroll button in the top right, then select Enroll manually from the dropdown
Select the test user you want to enroll from the list in the new window that now appears
1. If you can't find your test user, it's likely because they don't meet the enrollment criteria set up for your experience. You can check these criteria in the edit mode of your experience, in the Participants section.
Click next, and click on your test user in the left hand column of the window.
You'll now be shown a preview of their experience. This is your moment to make the necessary adjustments to enable your testing (see below).
Once you've made your adjustments, click enroll. Your test users experience will start after about 10 minutes.

Adjusting your test user's experience

There are a few standard ways to adjust your test users' experiences, to enable you to safely test different aspects of the experience.

Changing supporting actors

We strongly recommend you always change the supporting actors for your test users, to make sure external parties or colleagues who aren't part of your testing don't receive unexpected notifications.
To change supporting actors, start by opening up the individual experience you want to change
- Scroll down to the Participants table, and click on the test user whose experience you want to change
In the new window that opens, look for the relevant supporting actor dropdown, and select a new user. Now click Save in the bottom right.
If you're testing the experience with the help of a colleague, you can swap roles with each other – one person can be the test participant, and the other person the test manager.

Skipping earlier/later parts of the experience

Let's say you're testing an onboarding experience, but you only want to test what happens after the new hire's first day at work. This is easiest done by a) adjusting the test user's first day at work, and b) skipping pre-first-day-at-work content.

The same logic applies for testing other sub-sections of your experience.

Start by opening up the individual experience you want to change
- Scroll down to the Participants table, and click on the test user whose experience you want to change
Adjust the date on which your user starts the experience using the date controls. Then click the save button in the bottom right.
Skip content you don't want to test right now, by using the skip buttons. Then click the save button in the bottom right.

Unenrolling your test users

You can't enroll test users multiple times simultaneously in the same experience. However, when you've finished testing one thing, you can easily unenroll that test user, and then re-enroll them again.

For instance, you could use the same test user to test the first week of pre-boarding content in an onboarding experience, then unenroll them and re-enroll them with different adjustments to test the first day at work content.

Impersonating the people enrolled in an experience

When you're testing an experience, you often want to check the tasks/messages for multiple actors; and to check future tasks/messages. Dado's impersonation feature allows you to do both of these, and lets you complete tasks on behalf of those users. This can be very helpful when checking that the completion of one task triggers the start of another.

To impersonate people in a particular experience, start on the Experience page, in view mode. Scroll down to the Participants table and click on your test Participant.

In the screen that opens up, there is a drop-down in the top right. In this drop-down you'll see the option to open the task page of any individual involved in this experience. These are the real task pages, so you can even complete tasks from these pages.

When you're testing an experience, it's often faster to use this dropdown to impersonate different roles in the experience, rather than wait for notifications to be sent.