During the testing phase of most Planning implementations, developers need to create test user accounts. I typically create at least one test user for each security group so I can verify that the correct access has been assigned. With an on-premises Hyperion Planning implementation, this is easy – simply create user ID’s in the Shared Services native directory. With PBCS, creating bulk test ID’s can be difficult, as each user ID requires a unique e-mail address. If you need 50 test users, should you create 50 fake/temporary e-mail accounts? Luckily the answer is no.
The Easy Way . . .
Gmail has a clever feature that allows developers to use the same address (almost) for all test user e-mail accounts, and it involves the “+” sign. Specifically, the plus sign and everything to the right of a “+” in a Gmail e-mail address is ignored. Here’s an example. Let’s say I want to create one test account per security group, and I have the following groups:
- Sales_Read
- Sales_Write
- Marketing_Read
- Marketing_Write
- Executive_Read
- Executive_Write
I created a free Gmail account with the e-mail address pbcstest@gmail.com. If I try to use this same e-mail address for all six of my PBCS test accounts, I’ll get an error. Each account requires a unique e-mail address. However I want to manage all of my test accounts from a single e-mail address. To do this, I need to use a “+” sign in the e-mail addresses of my test users.
Here’s an example. For the Sales_Read group, I might create an account called Test_Sales_Read. When I assign an e-mail address to this account, I’ll use pbcstest+sales_read@gmail.com. Gmail will ignore the plus sign and the text to the right of the “+”. All confirmation e-mails will be send directly to the pbcstest@gmail.com account. I can create as many users like this as I want, as long as the text to the right of the “+” sign is unique for each account. PBCS will treat the e-mail addresses as if they are unique. My six accounts above might look something like this:
When Oracle Cloud sends the user ID confirmation messages with temporary passwords, they will all be delivered to pbcstest@gmail.com.
On a Personal Note . . .
This feature isn’t just useful for PBCS. Imagine creating rules within Outlook that route your personal e-mails to folders based upon the following:
- myaccount+netflix@gmail.com
- myaccount+bankstuff@gmail.com
- myaccount+amazon@gmail.com
- myaccount+travel@gmail.com
- myaccount+odtug@gmail.com
Let your e-mail OCD run wild! (and simplify the creation of PBCS test accounts)