Managing test environments with Jira
Where are these robots?
When I was a little boy, I dreamt of the year 2000, with flying cars and robots doing all the tasks that are so laborious for us humans.
Today, even though we talk about automation and DevOps all the time, most companies still use Excel spreadsheets and wikis to manage their releases and test environments — no sign of robots.
How often have you heard sentences like... in your IT organization?
- “Which version have we deployed on our staging environment?”
- “Where can I test the latest fix? Can you send me the URL?”
- “We just wasted all day testing the wrong version!”
Often already? Well then you're in the right place, you should keep reading 😉
Questions like this are asked over and over again because it takes a great deal of effort to share such information and keep it up to date. The sources of this information are usually in an admin console, an Excel sheet or on an intranet page. People often have access to this information but they prefer to ask for it - not because people are lazy, no, but because the information is often hidden somewhere or is simply too complex to understand.
To find a way into the lives of Jira users and Xray Simplify customers who have to deal with a wide variety of test environments and applications on a daily basis Has Xray had since Versione 3.2 via integration with Apwide, a powerful Jira app for managing releases, test environments, and deployments.
We have selected three use cases to show the power of this new integration!
1 — Manage your release and test plans directly in Jira
Where do you manage your release and test planning? On a Confluence site? On a calendar? Or in an Excel document, for example? Do you manually update the start/end date to plan your test plans/executions?
With the new Apwide integration for Xray, you can plan directly in Jira and share this information directly in a Jira dashboard or a Confluence page. Even users who do not have a Jira or Confluence account can access the information and receive updates in real time, for example on a public dashboard!
Move and resize events in the timeline simply by dragging and dropping. Start and end data of Xray Test Plans/Executions are automatically adjusted.
2 - Always test in stable test environments where the correct version is installed
How can you ensure that you're testing the right version of your application? And how do you know when test environments become unstable?
You can see all this real-time information in the Xray screens:
- Environment URL
- Environment status (Up, Down, Slow, Unstable?) As well as the history
- Current installed version and its history
- Environment information (owner, login information, location, etc.)
You also have the option to subscribe to test environments and events to immediately receive news when new versions are deployed or a status changes.
From today on, you will only be testing correct versions on stable and relevant test environments!
3 — Book test environments for your test plans and test executions
If test environments need to be shared with different teams, how can you ensure that the environment is ready at the right time with the right configuration for your test plan or test execution?
Apwide and Xray take your Jira workflows to the next level:
- In a booking request (Jira Issue Type), you select the test environment you need and the data when the environment is needed.
- The team responsible for the test environments automatically receives an email notification. With this notification, the team can:
- Visualize booking conflicts and correct them on a visual timeline
- With just a few clicks, plan that the correct versions are deployed and data is updated in good time
- Approve your booking request
- As soon as your booking request is approved (or rejected), you will receive a notification and you can start planning or running your tests in Xray!
Ready to take your release and environment management to the next level?
This is a guest post from David Berclaz, Apwide Co-Founder.
Swarmit is a partner of Apwide and Xpand IT (Xray and Xporter). We're happy to help you take your testing with Jira to the next level. Would you like to know more?
Your Swarmit Team - Empowering Teams
#Apwide, #Atlassian, #Jira, #Testing, #Xray, #SwarmitPartners
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