August 2018 Summaries

A small office dealing with a neglected kitchen found a tech-savvy solution by developing an app to automate and fairly assign daily dishwasher responsibilities among staff. This app, built using Postman and integrated with Slack, selects a volunteer each day by accessing and updating an Airtable database that tracks kitchen duties, and then notifies the chosen individual via Slack. The process involves a series of automated requests: selecting the volunteer with the fewest prior duties, updating their count to ensure fair rotation, and posting the daily assignment in a Slack channel. The system runs automatically every weekday at 8 a.m. using a Postman monitor, similar to a cron job, and the team plans to enhance it further to accommodate holidays and schedule swaps. Meanwhile, the app has proven to be an effective interim solution for managing kitchen cleanliness until they eventually opted to hire external help for the task.

Earlier this week, Newman version 4 was released, offering significant improvements aimed at enhancing stability and easing contributions to the open-source command-line tool that enables running Postman collections from the command line. This update discontinues deprecated features and separates feature-heavy reporters into their own codebases, particularly the popular HTML reporter, facilitating independent feature enhancements without affecting Newman. Upgrading to version 4 is optional but recommended, as it involves changes like merging the --no-color CLI option with --color and improving CLI parameter parsing to eliminate unintended side-effects. The update also includes a shift from Node v4 to Node v6, leveraging better performance and enabling additional features in the Postman Sandbox. While the transition to Newman v4 should be smooth, users are advised to review the changelog, readme, and migration guide for a comprehensive understanding of updates, including bug fixes related to CSV parsing and instructions for installing custom reporters with updated Docker images.

Sessions in Postman provide a mechanism for managing variable values locally, allowing users to work with private data such as login credentials without affecting shared team environments. This feature is particularly beneficial in team workspaces, where members can maintain their own copies of variables, referred to as CURRENT VALUES, without overwriting the shared INITIAL VALUES. Previously, any changes made by one team member would sync across all users, potentially causing conflicts. With sessions, individuals can update their session values locally and decide if and when to sync these changes to the cloud, thus enhancing collaboration and privacy. To use sessions effectively, it's recommended to set placeholder text for variables intended for team override and utilize the Quick look icon to manage session variables easily. Sessions allow team members like Chakrit and Chris to input their personal credentials into a shared collection without altering the placeholders, ensuring seamless collaboration without data conflicts. Users can reset local changes to initial values or persist session variables across the entire workspace to maintain consistency.