Skip to main content

Tips for Testing the SDK

Handling State and Flow Inside an Application Form

Storefront - Enterprise customers using the SDK can build custom workflows and user journeys depending on the state of an application form in the Bold Penguin environment. It's important for SDK customers to account for all potential states of an application form during its lifecycle to build the best experience.

Application Forms can be in the following four states when using the SDK:

StateDescription
incompleteAn application form has been started but the user has not answered any questions, or an application form has been started via Quote Start API but was not marked as in_progress during creation. This state is only possible when the previously mentioned conditions have been met and an application form cannot revert to this state from another state.
in_progressAn application form has been started but all available question sets have not yet been completed, or an application form has questions that have been edited after quotes have been received.
complete but not quotedAn application form has been completed and all questions have been answered, but no quotes were available.
quotedAn application form has been completed with all questions answered, and either two or more quotes have returned (regardless of the number of quote requests), or where there is only one quote request and it has been fulfilled with a quote.

Each of these states can be obtained via the getApplicationState selector. For complete but not quoted, the getQuotes selector must also be used to check whether there are quotes in the store.

stateDiagram-v2 [*] --> incomplete incomplete --> in_progress in_progress --> completed completed --> quoted completed --> in_progress quoted --> in_progress completed --> [*] quoted --> [*]

in_progress and incomplete application forms typically do not need additional testing because the state is managed by Bold Penguin, however for your user journey and business logic it's important to test what a completed application form with quotes looks like, as well as an application form that has been completed but no quotes have been returned or there are no eligible carriers.

End-to-End Testing

Storefront - Enterprise customers using the SDK are often tempted to test an exhaustive list of combinations of application form answers and quote responses. This is time-consuming and unnecessary.

Bold Penguin will provide a list of basic test cases that will have been validated. Bold Penguin encourages partners to create specific test scenarios that are best aligned to their business needs. The majority of testing should happen in your development environment. During production launch, please communicate with the Bold Penguin team the expectations for production testing so we can align with our carrier partners and ensure we are monitoring applications closely. We recommend using Bold Penguin Test as the business name to easily identify the designated production tests.

Bold Penguin recommends that customers use the browser's "incognito" or "private" feature in development and testing.

Testing Application Form Data

In addition to using the document provided by Bold Penguin for testing quote functionality, you can create generic application forms for the purpose of testing your application. The vast majority of testing should happen in your development environment beta. You can test in production, but this can cause issues related to billing. If you test in production please work with your Bold Penguin team and use Bold Penguin Test as the business name to insure you are not billed.

When testing we have the following tips:

  • Test your application in Private Browsing or Incognito modes. Application form data will be saved to your session otherwise.
  • While most data can be mock data, please use a real email address. Often customers will adopt for an alias such as myname+boldpenguin@mydomain.com instead of myname@mydomain.com.
  • If you want to ensure the most number of quotes returned, use common business types such as Florist, or Nail Salon.
  • If you want to ensure the least number (perhaps 0) of quotes returned, use very uncommon business types such as Space Freight.
  • Generally, you should be able to successfully quote business if you keep experience and years in business to >= 10 years, include a decent amount of revenue like $100,000, and avoid extra services.
  • For WC, also include at least one employee and avoid using a monopolistic state in your address (North Dakota, Ohio, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Washington, and Wyoming are all monopolistic states).
  • Put the same square footage for occupied and total footage when asked. Some carriers will decline to quote or refer if you're a minority occupier of a building.
  • Revenue and payroll totals need to be sufficiently high to stay within appetite. Revenue should generally be within ~10% above payroll. Some carriers will decline to quote if these numbers vary by more than 20%.