TestRail vs Notepad++: Which is a better fit?

Berny R.: Hi, my name is Berny. I'm the head of QA. I give TestRail a five, and if you want to know more, click down below. We used to use SharePoint lists to do our test case management, and post that we actually implemented Zephyr for JIRA to manage our test cases, and it became quite clunky. We were really finding that creation of master regression tests for our projects was becoming quite time-consuming, and so at the end of each project we would take hours, if not days, to actually create a regression suite of tests, and so it was for that main reason that we decided to move to TestRail. We had four main reasons why we decided to choose TestRail. One was the ability to be able to easily copy and move our tests from a project suite into a master regression suite. One of the really important features for us is just around being able to navigate quite easily through the system, because we've got some business users who are quite new to test case and creating of test cases, so it needed to be user-friendly, which it was. We have a requirement to integrate to other software like Jira or Ranorex, and so the integration capability for TestRail was extremely important for us. And lastly, the reporting capability. To be able to report out to our stakeholders was really important, and we found that TestRail's reporting capability was really powerful. Getting started with TestRail was actually extremely easy, so much easier than most of the other software we implemented. All we really had to do was create a quick how-to guide for those business users that were new to the system, and we literally just did one hour onboarding induction sessions with the software, which got them going pretty easily. We then imported our tests from our previous software directly into TestRail and we were ready to go, to use it on our first project. When we assessed TestRail, we came up with what I suggest is to look at your top three priorities, those must haves for your test management software. So think about... don't focus on what would be nice to have. Focus on what is really important to you. For us it was that functionality around being able to copy and move tests into a regression suite, was our number one. Number two was our user-friendliness of the system, to be able to get people on board really quickly without having to spend hours trying to learn the system, and reporting. So possibly think about those three items as some of your priorities. I also recommend you download the free trial version of TestRail and have a play-around with it and learn how to use it during the free period. That helps you understand the user-friendliness of the system. If reporting is important for you, I suggest you have a look at the reporting feature, because obviously during test phases when you're actually executing your testing, your stakeholders need to be in touch with how your testing is going, so reporting I would say, have a look at the reporting system. Make sure that works for you. And lastly, if direct feedback from your test automation or your defect management integration is an important factor for you, then I also suggest you have a play-around with how it integrates with your automated tools so that you can get that direct feedback back into TestRail.

Brian B.: Hi, my name is Brian. I'm here reviewing Notepad++. I'm a Solutions Architect for a company. We are a seven-person VAR, and I give Notepad++ a five out of five. Let's see, I tried just the built-in Notepad into Windows, but when I do dev programming work, special characters show up in that application that you can't really easily get rid of. So I switched over to Notepad++ so I could actually get a flat text editor and see what's actually going on with all the characters. I chose Notepad++ because it's free, it does everything I wanted to do, and it had even more features I didn't realize that I've learned over the years that have come in very handy. Very easy. You just install it, and it works just like the built-in Notepad and the Windows, except you can do a lot more with it. You can enable a document list and have multiple things open and multiple tabs open, and it's just a way better version of the built-in Windows Notepad. I would definitely recommend enabling the document list. It helps a lot to just visually seeing what's going on, and you can sort things around. Also, there's a really handy... I think if you hold Alt, there's ways to vertically select things, and there's a lot of features in there. Just check it out. It's been very useful over my career.