Deployment Guide

Deployment checklist and manual deployment procedures. For automated CI/CD workflows, see the CI/CD & Deployment section.

Deployment checklist

Before deploying to production

1. Test locally — run both frontend and backend locally, test the feature end-to-end
2. Test on dev — deploy to dev, test on dev.app.ubcbiztech.com
3. Create a PR — get code review from at least one other developer
4. Check CI — make sure the packaging check and build pass (see Backend Workflows and Frontend Workflows)
5. Check for breaking changes — database schema changes, API contract changes
6. Check environment variables — new env vars need to be added to Vercel dashboard or GitHub Actions secrets
7. Deploy backend first — if both frontend and backend changed, deploy backend before frontend to avoid the frontend calling endpoints that don't exist yet

After deploying to production

1. Smoke test — visit app.ubcbiztech.com and test critical flows (login, registration, admin)
2. Check logs — monitor CloudWatch logs for Lambda errors
3. Monitor Vercel — check Vercel dashboard for build errors or runtime issues

Manual backend deployment

To deploy a single service:

cd services/events
npx sls deploy --stage dev

To deploy all services:

cd services
for DIR in *; do
  cd "$DIR"
  npx sls deploy --stage dev
  cd ..
done

Monitoring and logs

Frontend (Vercel)

• Vercel Dashboard → Deployments tab for build logs and runtime logs
• Vercel Analytics for performance monitoring (via @vercel/analytics)
• Vercel Speed Insights for Core Web Vitals (via @vercel/speed-insights)

Backend (AWS)

• CloudWatch Logs — each Lambda function writes to its own log group
• API Gateway — request/response logs in CloudWatch
• DynamoDB — table metrics in the AWS Console

# View logs for a specific function
npx sls logs --function eventsGet --stage prod

AWS Console reference

Rollback

Frontend

Vercel keeps all previous deployments. To rollback: go to Vercel Dashboard → Deployments, find the last working deployment, click "..." → "Promote to Production."

Backend

Revert the Git commit and push — the deploy workflow will redeploy:

git revert HEAD
git push origin dev

Each deployment also creates a CloudFormation stack that can be rolled back in the AWS Console.

Related pages

• CI/CD Overview — environments, automated workflows, pipeline summary
• Backend Workflows — what deploys on merge, release, and PR
• Frontend Workflows — Vercel, Node.js CI, Prettier
• Environment & Config — stage variables and configuration

Infrastructure as Code

Frontend Infrastructure

Backend Infrastructure

Adding New Environment Variables

Frontend (Vercel)

1. Go to Vercel Dashboard → Settings → Environment Variables
2. Add the variable for the appropriate environments (Production, Preview, Development)
3. Redeploy for the change to take effect

Backend (AWS Lambda)

Add the variable to serverless.common.yml under provider.environment:

provider:
  environment:
    MY_NEW_VAR: ${env:MY_NEW_VAR}

Then set the value:

• Locally: Add to your .env file
• Deployed: Set in your CI/CD pipeline or as an SSM parameter