Xray provides powerful capabilities for analysis of test results and coverage on a per environment basis, allowing users to easily understand how tests and requirements are on specific target environments.

However, Xray is somehow  limited on the management capabilites of Test Environments; they are created similar to labels and they're available to all your Jira projects. You may require more advanced management capabilities for your Test Environments, such as the ability of defining and manage them on a per-project basis. Fortunately, there is Apwide Test Environment Manager which complements Xray built-in features, allowing you to fully manage Test Environments, their availability amongst other.

Brief overview of Apwide's Features

Apwide Test Environment Manager is a complete Test Environments management solution.

A Test Environment is composed by the definition of an "application" and a "category".

An "application" is an abstraction of some generic application entity; it's not exactly a "JIRA project", although it may be bound to the versions of some given project. An environment "category" defines the purpose of the Test Environment. More information on the core concepts here.

Some of Apwide Test Environment Manager features include:

• ability to manage Test Environments
  • create/edit/remove
  • manage the status of a Test Environment
  • manage the deployed application version on a Test Environment
• Environment Roles (i.e. permissions per team)
• track the historical status changes (e.g. the availability) of a Test Environment
• track the deployed versions through time on a Test Environment 
• plan custom events, and Jira issues, on Test Environments using the Timeline
• subscribe to changes on Test Environments 

Features and Limitations

The current integration with Xray allows you to:

• visualize and manage Test Executions planning dates (begin & end date) in the Timeline page; it's possible also to manage Test Plans, as long as you also assign Test Environments to them;
• use (exclusively or complementarly) the Test Environments managed by Apwide Test Environment Manager whenever creating Test Executions;
• assess information related with Test Environments, such as its current status, right in the screens where Test Environments may be present (e.g. reports, Test Execution issue screen).

As limitations, please consider that:

• all information shown about a Test Environment is always the current one; in other words, if you look at the Test Environment information on a Test Run or in a Test Execution, you are not looking at the information at the time that entity was created/run; you're always looking at the current information about that Test Environment.

Installation

In order to use  the new extenders that Xray provides, you need to:

1. Install Xray version 3.2.0 or above;
2. Install Apwide Test Environment Manager version 6.2.0 or above;
3. Install Apwide Xray-Integration version 1.2.4 or above;

Configuration

The configuration is managed in "Apwide Xray-Integration" app settings.

The integration needs to be explicitly enabled; it's also possible to enforce the usage of Apwide only based Test Environments.

Use cases

Assign a Test Environment from Apwide in Test Executions

Whenever creating a Test Execution, or whenever editing an existing one, you can specify a Test Environment being managed by Apwide Test Environment Manager.

Depending on the Apwide Xray-Integration configuration, you may be limited or not to use just Test Environments from Apwide. 

Assess in loco Test Environment information

It's possible to assess in loco, current/actual information about a given Test Environment.

1. In Test Execution issue screen

2. In the Test Runs section, in the Test issue screen

3. In the reports

Define and restrict Test Environments per project

Visualize and manage planning dates and allocation for Test Executions and/or Test Plans

Test Executions can be planned right in the Timeline view provided by Apwide Test Environment Manager.

1.

References

• https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1212239/apwide-test-environment-manager?hosting=server&tab=overview
• https://confluence.apwide.com/display/TEM/Test+Environment+Manager
• https://confluence.apwide.com/display/TEM/Xray+integration