Testing ClickOnce Applications

Question

What method would you use for testing a new version of a ClickOnce application (side by side with the current version) amongst multiple users? Are there any best practices (especially as the applications depend on different servers for the live/test versions of SQL / web services etc).

We use internal DNS to set up http://application.ourdomain.test sites to test web based applications. It's obvious from the address bar that you're logged into a test site and it's just a change to the connection string to force that deployment to connect to our test SQL server. Is there any way to approximate this?

Answer 1

For ClickOnce deployment testing, we set up a few virtual machines and have testers connect using remote desktop. The VM desktop backgrounds are an ugly color and say "TESTING" in big bold red letters.

Also, all of our applications display a warning message if the user is about to connect to anything but the production database.

Answer 2

I came across this link text this afternoon, which seems to offer a way of doing it - you have to use different certificates to sign the manifests. I vary the Suite Name in the Publish Options dialog to create different menus.