Release Preview Programme

The Release Preview Programme gives Champion Users structured access to each upcoming Activator release on the staging environment, ahead of its rollout to production.

Every client in the programme has a dedicated staging tenant that is always running. The Preview Period is not when access is granted — it is when Anthill signals that the release on staging is ready for preview use, and when enablement sessions and deep dives are scheduled. The staging tenant itself is available at any time.

The programme exists to help clients prepare — exploring new features, testing tenant-specific configurations, planning internal change management, and preparing communications. It is not a sign-off process, and participation does not give clients control over the production release schedule.

Participation is by invitation through your Anthill account team.

What participants get access to

During the Preview Period, Preview Programme participants can:

• Use their staging tenant with the upcoming release already deployed

• Explore new features and improvements ahead of production rollout

• Test features currently behind feature flags, and plan internal enablement and communications accordingly

• Attend enablement sessions and feature deep dives hosted by Anthill

• Share observations and early feedback directly with the Anthill Product team

Understanding the staging environment

Staging is a preview and preparation environment — not a replica of production. Before joining the programme, it is important to understand how staging differs from what your users experience in production.

Because of these differences, what you see on staging — including any errors, visual inconsistencies, or differences in content or design — may not reflect what your users will see in production. Design systems in particular vary both from tenant to tenant and from environment to environment, so visual differences are expected and normal.

How to interpret what you see

This is the most important part of participating in the programme.

Observations on staging are input, not failure signals. If you encounter something unexpected, we want to hear about it — but it should be shared as feedback, not treated as a blocker.

Anthill maintains a strict quality gate before any release enters production:

We do not deploy to production if it would introduce regressions or make the product worse for any client. This is non-negotiable.

By the time a release reaches your production tenants, it has passed internal validation against this standard. The staging environment exists so Anthill can find and fix issues before they reach production — not to give clients approval authority over the release schedule.

If you spot something during the Preview Period:

• Share it with your Anthill contact or raise it through Support

• It will be reviewed against our quality criteria

Participation guidelines

To make the programme valuable for everyone — and to keep it sustainable — we ask participants to approach it in the right spirit.

Use the Preview Period to:

• Prepare internal communications and change management materials

• Test feature flag configurations and plan your enablement approach

• Attend deep dives and ask questions about what is coming

• Share specific, constructive feedback through your account contact

Keep in mind:

• Staging behaviour is not a reliable signal that production is broken

• Content and design systems on staging reflect your SBX/TEST DAM endpoint and environment-specific configuration, not your production setup

• Support is not available for staging tenants

• Attempting to block or delay a production deployment based solely on staging observations is outside the scope of what this programme is for — Anthill's quality gate, not client preview, is the release control mechanism

Anthill's commitments

In return, Anthill commits to:

• Giving Preview Programme participants clear notice when each Preview Period begins and ends

• Hosting enablement sessions and feature deep dives during each Preview Period

• Responding to feedback raised during the Preview Period