Hit Subscribe Digest, March 23

1. Staging Environments

I often think of myself as a lapsed programmer these days, since outside of the occasional bit of javascript, I don’t really do anything technical anymore.  But hey, at least I still write unit tests when I do.  Anywho, as the programming world gets more DevOps-y, it’s hard for me to keep pace with the goings-on, so it’s nice to peruse some foundational articles from time to time.  For instance, this article from Architect, explaining the essentials of a staging environment these days.

2. Test Data Manager

I guess it makes sense, but I never knew that a test data manager was a thing.  I imagine there are a lot of complexities involved with dummying up real, but not-too-real test data for non-production environments, especially when you think of PII and other compliance concerns.  So, it stands to reason this is a role that would involve in the enterprise where, I must confess, I have not spent a lot of time since starting a remote business.

3. WP Redirect

Inasmuch as I ever look at anything technical these days (apart from the aforementioned Javascript), it usually has something to do with client Wordpress site and SEO, which invariably leads to discussions around canonicals and redirects.  So I perused this post about wp_redirect on RequestMetrics’ site with some interest.

4. ServiceNow Testing

Inasmuch as I keep up with the goings-on of the technical world, I’m familiar with ServiceNow and its workflow automation capabilities for enterprises.  Maybe someday (hopefully when I’m long-retired) Hit Subscribe will be big enough to need that.  At any rate, what I didn’t know was that there were first class testing capabilities for it.  But apparently there are.  Tricentis actually offers an entire ServiceNow Testing capability.

5. Slack and Jira

I don’t have much occasion to use JIRA these days, but I do use Slack a lot.  And, in either case, I’m somebody who can appreciate a good, time-saving integration.  So it’s good to know that this guide to Slack and JIRA integration exists, in case we ever wind up using the latter.