Deployment Previews

Deployment previews let you and your team experience changes from each deployment in a sandboxed environment without pushing them to production. This allows you to view, test, and validate updates safely before they go live.

When a deployment is triggered in Slate, a unique preview URL is automatically generated. This URL provides access to the deployed version of your application and serves as a live preview.

The preview remains accessible until the deployment is manually deleted from the Catalyst console.

Slate creates a new URL by default every time any of the following takes place :

1. You manually initiate a deployment from the Catalyst console either by integrating and deploying code from your private Git repository or providing any public repository URL.

2. An automated deployment is triggered in Slate when any changes are pushed to the integrated Git repository’s branch or pull request.

3. You create a Slate deployment by executing commands in the Catalyst CLI.

4. You upload your application’s files as zip directly in the Catalyst console using the Direct Upload feature.

The key advantages of deployment previews are:

• Enhanced collaboration : Teams can share preview URLs with developers, designers, and non-technical stakeholders facilitating collaborative reviews. This ensures everyone is on the same page and can see the exact changes in real time.

• Early Bug Detection : By providing a live environment for every code change, deployment previews help in catching bugs and issues early in the development cycle. This reduces the risk of deploying problematic code to production.

• Version Comparison : Teams can compare different versions of the site side-by-side, using access URLs from different branches or pull requests to evaluate changes and decide on the best implementation.

• Immediate Feedback on Changes : Deployment preview URLs provide an immediate, live version of changes made to your code, allowing developers and stakeholders to test and review new features, bug fixes, and updates in real time.

You can view the Slate URLs of all your deployments from the Slate Home Page in the console.

Alternatively, you can also fetch the access URL of a particular deployment from the Deployment Overview section of that deployment.