It would be convenient if there were a way (e.g., a global flag) to indicate that the Evergreen system is explicitly a test or staging system as opposed to a production one. In particular, the case where a test system is cloned from a production database.
Such a flag could drive things like:
- Adding something to the OPAC header to indicate the status of the system (similar to the maintenance message)
- Similarly, adding something to the staff interface (e.g., a warning in the navbar and on the slash page) to do the same
Such a flag and a standard way of indicating the nature of the Evergreen system would reduce the need for dealing with custom OPAC templates and staff interface tweaks. It could also be used to adjust the behavior of test systems, e.g., to prevent them from sending email unless further steps are taken to explicitly enable email.
I agree that we need a better, visual way to distinguish Test staff clients from Production.