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No code automation testing – ACCELQ vs Avo Assure

Posted on October 6, 2022 by bhargavi

In the digital age, businesses must be able to react to market changes and an increasing customer demand quicker than before. This is why automation of processes is becoming essential for any business that wants to stay ahead of competitors. However, the challenge lies in finding the right mixture of manual and automated testing without compromising on quality standards. ‘No Code Automation Testing’ helps organizations address these challenges by integrating automated testing into their software development lifecycle (SDLC).

In this blog post, we will look at different No Code automation testing tools such as ACCELQ vs Avo Assure and their uses in different software testing phases.

No Code automation testing is a type of testing that doesn’t require any programming skills from testers or developers to create test environments or create automated scripts. It is also known as ready-to-use testing or out of the box testing. In a nutshell, no code automation can be defined as a process of automating software testing by scripting the interactions between the software and the user interface without writing any code. No Code automation testing can be used in both manual and automated testing projects as an integrated part of the overall software testing process. The key advantage of this process is that it removes the technical and programming knowledge requirements from the testing process, making it an accessible option for a wide variety of businesses.

ACCELQ – No Code Automation Tool

An easy to use No Code automation tool, ACCELQ lets you create automated UI tests through its drag and drop functionality. The tool allows you to create test cases for web applications or mobile applications by creating test scripts in its web application. It works on three different platforms, i.e. Windows, Mac, and Linux. It also integrates with functional, load, and other types of testing tools. Some of the notable features of ACCELQ include – single source of truth, real-time collaboration, test case management, etc.

ACCELQ has a lot more in terms of granular control for testing as compared to other no code solutions, such as:

Creating a Scenario in ACCELQ

Basic Details such as Name, Description, Tags are given

2. Map requirements – Establish Traceability (Use Story ID or Requirement ID Tab)

3. Custom Information – Add relevant information or custom fields for Management or analysis purposes

Creating a Test Suite in ACCELQ

A test suite is a collection of Scenarios – all bunched together to execute, analyze and track a particular action or or a number of actions. They can be Static, Filter based or Requirements based.

Create a test suite by
1. Clicking on ‘+’ on the toolbar and selecting test suite
2. Choosing from Static, Filter or Requirement based types
3. Adding custom field information

Setting up a Test Suite in ACCELQ

1. Selecting a Scenario from depending on the type of suite –

a. Static (manual selection)

1. 1. Search from search field and select from one of the available scenarios

ii. Click add button

iii. Review and reorder

b. Filter based (custom field based filters)

1. Add Filter link
2. Select field name, operator, value
3. Click the check mark and confirm the filter

c. Requirements based (Requirement ID based)

1. Select the JIRA or TFS project (integration supported) where the requirements are present
2. Use the Requirements ID or Story ID to search for your specific test suite
3. Select one or more and add to the list of requirements

2. Setting up test case filters

1. Search in the Test Case filter model, click on Add Filter link
2. Select field name, operator (contains or not-contains) and the value
3. Click on the check-mark to confirm the filter. Adding multiple filters or modifying test setup based on your requirements is allowed

3. Editing the test suite definition

1. Navigate to Test cases tab
2. Hover and click on the scenario definition line or test case filter line
3. The Edit button also allows you to choose to edit the test suite

Avo Assure – No code Automation Tool

Avo Assure is a no code automation testing tool that is used to create automated UI tests. It allows the user to record their actions while interacting with the application, and generates automated scripts based on those recordings. The tool can be used to test web applications or mobile applications by creating test cases in its web application. Avo Assure works on three different platforms, i.e. Windows, Mac, and Linux. It also integrates with functional, load and other types of testing tools. Some of the notable features of Avo Assure are – RSpec support, access to command line interface (CLI), parallel test execution, etc.

Some of the features of AVO Assure are

Creating and executing test cases without writing code
Automatically generating test cases with Avo Discover
A visual test environment that shows you progress, current status, and makes management of testing plans and scenarios simpler with a no-code approach

Technically, Avo Assure has browser based administration and screen capture, one button accessibility testing for WCAG standards, Section 508 and ARIA, and you can play around with multiple scenarios in a single VM (independent or parallel depending on test engineer’s choice).

Authoring and Debugging a Test Case with AVO Assure

MyTask Pane->Design Task

2. Add Test Step (+) with Object Name, Keyword, Input and Output.

3. Click on created step

4. Edit->Start Authoring

5. Click on Object Name drop down-> Select Object to populate keywords

6. Add Input and Output values

7. Add Test Step-> Click on Save

8. Debug test case by choosing browser icon

Once Debugging is completed, you get a message stating ‘Debug completed successfully’.

A Basic Comparison

	ACCELQ	AVO Assure
Design & Orchestration	Universe driven visual test design keeps business focus while generating Application blueprint Embedded frameworks bring modularity for faster development & lower maintenance Develop test scenarios based on predictive analytics and path analysis Model UI and Data flows to maximize coverage with auto test generation	Visual test design Native client & image based object identification Pre-built keywords simplify test case creation Shared object & test repository Test data input automation Debug and reporting support
Client Platform & Connectivity Support	Web Based Desktop – Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS API Oracle Salesforce SAP	Web-based Desktop – Mac, Windows Mobile – Android, iOS SAP – ECC & S4/HANA Oracle – EBS mainframe via emulation API – web services Databases
Integration Support	CI-CD Integration Atlassian Jira Browserstack Microsoft Azure TFS/VSTS Rally Cloud HeadSpin Selenium Jenkins Salesforce Sauce Labs	CI – CD Integration Jira Microfocus – QC/ALM Qtest TFS Atlassian Bamboo Amazon Mobile Farm Sauce Labs Salesforce Linux

Just like any other activity, there are certain scenarios when automation testing is a good fit, and there are others when it’s not. To determine when your organization should start automating, it is important to assess the following factors:

The complexity of the testing process – Automated testing is often used for testing complex and high-volume applications that are difficult to test manually. The process of creating test scripts and writing code for automation can be complex, especially for organizations that are new to automation. Thus, the first factor to consider is the complexity of your testing process. If your testing process is complex, then you should consider automating it.
The frequency of change in the application – Another important factor to consider is the frequency at which the application being tested is changing. If the application being tested is being changed every few weeks or months, then you should consider automating it.

No code automation testing is a great way to speed up the testing process and reduce costs associated with manual testing. Before choosing a tool for your organization, do ensure that it meets all your requirements.

Happy testing!

4 key principles of test automation

Posted on September 28, 2022 by supriya

Testing is an integral part of the software development lifecycle. No software can be deployed without thorough tests. Quality Assurance or QA testing is essential in software development to ensure that the code performs the function it is supposed to.

Tests can be manual or automated in software engineering. Manual testing is a resource-intensive approach that demands QA testers to create test cases or even deliberately introduce bugs in the code to evaluate the effect. It’s similar to crash testing in the automobile industry. Manual software testing is complicated and expensive, so it is often reserved for the end of the production cycle. However, testing a product at the end of production can delay the product launch by months.

A better alternative is automated software testing that allows developers to run tests as often as they want without exerting high costs. The initial investment in automation testing is writing test automation cases. There are several benefits of test automation apart from frequent testing. It gives developers continuous feedback to spot bugs and errors early on. Automated software testing improves design, code quality, and timely launches.

Principles of test automation

Test automation can be achieved in several ways, but developers must understand a few fundamental underlying principles. Familiarity with these key test automation principles will make you a better QA tester.

Entire books have been written exclusively on the topic of test automation. It’s a skill every developer needs to master at some point, and it’s better to do it sooner rather than later.

1. Test automation improves the quality

Code quality is paramount and signifies a product that can be trusted. Several metrics measure code quality in the software industry, including code coverage, number of defects, CI error rate, readability, maintainability, and test failure. Still, none of these can completely define code test quality and only provide an idea about some aspect of the code.

Test automation must improve quality. It is the primary principle of designing automated test cases. With every iteration, tests must be able to find defects before they can reach production, inform developers of underlying loopholes, and check any deviations in the system behaviour. Successful test cases show a high-level view of a project, allowing developers to try different approaches for the same functionality to find the one that works best.

2. QA testing reduces risk

Human reviewers cannot find every error within the code, no matter how many eyes go through the same code. Code review is necessary and productive, but it must be reliable too.

Another essential principle of test automation is that it reliably finds errors. Automate test cases and check the code from top to bottom comprehensively. By progressively running tests to find errors and bugs, find regressions, and check device and environment compatibility, you can bring down the risks and cost through test automation. QA testing is mandatory to ensure no risks or discrepancies exist in the code, even when the most proficient developers work on a project. Programmers might not make a mistake, but using third-party dependencies did not introduce any errors or pose a risk to the integrity of the application. Test automation can evaluate every line of code to ensure no risk.

3. Be mindful of subtle design changes that test scripts can miss

When writing test case scripts, QA engineers often focus on testing the new functionality implemented in the software but overlook the design changes. For test automation, while creating test scripts, you must proactively anticipate any design changes that might result from code changes. For instance, an update of the application code can improve its functionality. However, it can introduce colour changes in the interface that test scripts might not check if you have not included a condition to review display changes. While not a critical error, it indicates that the test automation is not entirely reliable.

4. Test automation should require low maintenance

Developers are focused on writing concise code to create products that deliver excellent customer experience and perform as expected. Test automation ensures they can work on writing code rather than fretting over repeated testing. As a QA tester, you should focus on writing test scripts that are easy to execute and maintain.

Any reliable and practical test suite will require periodic maintenance to keep it in good shape for repeated use. Here are a few tips for writing and maintaining test cases:

Tests should be enough to be effective, not more. If you notice that with a small change, test cases are breaking, you might be using too many tests and need to remove a few.

Choose the proper test depending on the situation. For instance, unit tests are laser-focused and can be deployed faster, while UI tests are comprehensive and use a lot more resources. Healthy test automation follows the test pyramid approach.

Keep tests reliable and avoid flaky tests; otherwise, your test suite can waste time and create frustration. Flaky tests fail even when the code is correct or show an error for no apparent reason.

Conclusion

Developers who think precise testing is expensive are unaware of the cost of poorly tested code. Bugs and defects in a product can quickly spiral out of control, and practical test automation is the only way to ensure it never happens. QA engineers should consider the top QA testing trends when writing test cases.

Are you looking for QA testing opportunities? Join Talent500, where you will find opportunities with fast-growing startups and Fortune 500 companies.

What is an SQA plan?

Posted on September 21, 2022September 21, 2022 by bhargavi

Software quality assurance (SQA) is a method of ensuring that all software engineering processes, methods, activities and work items are monitored and conform to established standards. Standards may include ISO 9000, CMMI model, ISO15504, or a combination of these standards along with others.

SQA strives to encompass all software development processes and activities, from defining requirements, coding, debugging, and all other activities until release. As the name suggests, it focuses on preserving and delivering quality for a software product.

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) plan

A Software Quality Assurance Plan revolves around making sure that the product or service teaches the market trouble and bug-free. It should also meet the requirements defined in the SRS (software requirement specification).

The purpose of an SAQ plan is three-fold. It comprises the following:

Establishing the QA responsibilities of the team in question
Listing areas of concern that need to be reviewed, audited and looked at
Identifies the SQA work products

An SQA plan will work alongside the standard development, prototyping, design, production, and release cycle for a software product or service. For easy documentation and referencing, an SQA plan will have different sections like purpose, references, configuration and management, problem reporting and corrective actions, tools, code controls, testing methodology, and more.

SQA activities

These are, quite simply put, a set of activities common to normal SQA operations.

Creating the plan
It consists of the engineering activities to be carried out, and ensuring the right skill mix in the team. It also lays out the specifics of the actions to be taken in different situations as well as the tools and procedures specific to the plan.
Checkpoint lists
Evaluation of quality of activities at each project stage. This means that there are regularly scheduled inspections and adherence to the schedule.
Executing formal technical reviews
FTRs are used to evaluate the design and quality of the product prototype. Quality requirements and design quality for the prototype are discussed in meetings with the technical staff.
Multi-testing strategy
Adopting multiple testing approaches to cover all bases and ensure the best possible quality.
Process adherence
Designers, developers, and other technical staff must conform to established processes and employ defined procedures. It comprises the following:

Product Evaluation – the product is evaluated against the specifications laid out in the project management plan.Process Monitoring – verifies that the steps taken in software development are correct and match the steps against the documentation.
Control changes
Manual and automated control tools are used for validating change requests, evaluating the nature of change, controlling and if required, arresting the change effect. In effect, this makes sure that the software being developed does not stray too far from the outlines.
Measuring Change Impact
If defects are found, the concerned department issues a fix. The QA team then determines the change and the extent of the change brought by the fix. The change should be stable and should be compatible with the whole project. There are software quality metrics that allow managers and developers to observe these activities and monitor changes throughout the SDLC of the product or service.
SQA Audits
The audit inspects the entire SDLC process to the established procedure laid out in the SQA plan. Non-compliance and missed faults can be unearthed and fixed due to this.
Record and report keeping
Keeping SQA documentation and information with associated stakeholders. This includes audit reports, test results, reviews, change request documentation, and other documentation generated during the entire SDLC.
Relationship management
Managing and interfacing between the QA and the development team, thus keeping roles in check and responsibilities ahead of the individual.

Automated software engineering techniques

There are a number of open source testing tools as well as commercially used tools available for this purpose. Here are the most used examples.

Selenium
A portable software testing tool and automation tool for web applications. A test domain-specific language is also provided. To write test cases one can use programming languages including C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Scala, and Groovy. Selenium is a product suite of software consist of the following components:

HP UFT

HPE Unified Functional Testing was previously known as HP QuickTest Professional. It offers testing automation for functional and regression testing for software applications. It is a user-friendly IDE that provides the best sort of API and GUI testing.

SQA implementation phase

Before building an application, developers and the SQA team create a development plan. To ensure that the SDLC plan gets executed, the developers write the SDLC plan while the SQA team writes the Software Quality Assurance plan. The application that is about to be developed is already halfway done if the documents by the developers and the SQA is well written and organised.

In this phase, the SQA team’s responsibility is to ensure the implementation of the proposed features of the intended application. Along with the implementation, the method of developing the application will also be tracked by the application. There are some design methods that can be used such as language or framework. The SQA team helps the development team in selecting the proper framework or language.

The most important task of the SQA team at this stage is to implement clarity of the coding. Developers could easily write the code of the application but there is a tendency to overdo the coding. The SQA team emphasises the organisation of the coding which should be understood easily. Aside from the coding, the comments within the language are also checked thoroughly. The comments should clearly define each function.

The SQA team checks the software’s documentation. The documentation clearly states the function of the application.

SQA standards

In a typical SQA, compliance is demanded against the following standards. This may be a single standard, more than one standard, or a mix of these standards.

ISO9000
CMMI level (Capability maturity model Integration)
TMMi (Test Maturity Model Integration)
ISO15504

To remain compliant with the above-listed standards, there are a few techniques that are listed in the SQA plan. These SQA techniques include auditing, reviews, code inspections, design inspections, simulations, functional testing, walkthroughs, static analysis, standardizations, stress testing, path testing, Six Sigma principles, and more.

These techniques when used in conjunction with the defined SQA plan save development costs, time, and maintenance costs, boost reputations, increase product safety and give more benefits.

SQA is an interconnected, inter-reliant, and overarching umbrella activity that remains of paramount importance through the SDLC. To say the least, it is a prerequisite for market success and keeping up investor and consumer confidence. It ensures high quality and makes sure that the software product or service remains aligned with the business needs and functions as required when deployed.

CI/CD integration with automation testing

Posted on September 14, 2022September 14, 2022 by harvar

CI (Continuous Integration) & CD (Continuous Delivery) has been gaining a lot of attention and is the most hyped topic in the technology world. It helps the companies to ship their products quickly and efficiently. Initially it was difficult to implement CI/CD in projects but now with a lot of tools available in the market, it is becoming quite easy to make your project implement continuous integration with ease and speed.

Among all the different types of tools available in the market, the most used one is Jenkins. In fact, as per Slintel data, Jenkins has a market share of 47.69%. But we can’t avoid the fact that some more tools like Bitbucket, CircleCI, TeamCity are also claiming their existence gradually.

The point to gain attention here is the use of Selenium tests in Jenkins. With the feasibility of CI/CD, a team would want the regression suite designed with Selenium to execute each time there is change in software code. To achieve the same, we need to integrate our automation suite into CI/CD tools to schedule the run.

Why we need CI/CD integration with automation testing

Due to the Agile process and frequent changes in features, the number of builds provided by developers has been exponentially increased. Continuous integration involves committing code changes to master regularly, triggering a build if applicable and testing the software each time.

To really get the benefits of CI, your team members should aim to commit changes at least daily. However, even on a small team, doing this level of CI/CD automation testing manually would involve a huge amount of repetitive work tasks. This is where the automated testing comes in.

If you’re manually running 10 builds a day at 10 minutes each, that’s 100 minutes wasted in deployment! Furthermore, testing the same again would be tedious, and due to multiple release cycles the quality would be compromised.

The above mentioned approach not only puts the developers behind the schedule, but it’s also going to impact their attempts to push changes to production due to delay in testing and at the end it will reduce the company’s bottom line with new products and features. So to resolve the same, we need to come up with processes which can help us to automate the deployment and testing process on the go, just like Jenkins pipeline does in the release cycle.

One of the major roles of CI/CD integration is when the team is working in multiple time zones. Working in different time zones increases the duration of testing without CI/CD. If the developer team pushes the code in PST, and then if the testing team works from IST, it will take the QA another 12 hours to start testing. So instead of manually testing or triggering the automation suite, we can use the CI/CD pipeline to trigger our automation suite after the code is being pushed by developers.

Steps to integrate AutomationSuite with Jenkins

In this section, we will integrate the Automation Suite with Jenkins job, so that whenever required we can trigger our test suites from the pipeline or even schedule the same. Remember that in the below demo we are using testNG.xml suite and the framework is designed with Maven pom.xml.

Prerequisite for running :
– Automation suite in testNG.xml
– Jenkins server access with valid credentials

Step 1

Integrate testNG.xml suite with pom.xml. To do that, we have to pass the path of testNG.xml suite inside the suiteXmlFiles tag. We need to remember that the path which has been provided here is the path of testNG.xml suite used in our project, so you need to use the path as per the suite located on your setup. Instead of Regression we can also pass the path of Smoke, Sanity, BVT or Confidence suite.

<suiteXmlFile> tag of pom.xml:

<configuration>
<suiteXmlFiles>
<suiteXmlFile>resources\testNG_xml\RegressionSuite.xml</suiteXmlFile>

</suiteXmlFiles>
</configuration>

To get the entire pom.xml with dependencies required in Selenium Automation Framework, refer the link below:

Click link here for pom.XML

Step 2

Go to your Automation project path and open the command prompt. As shown below, project name is “Task” and we have opened cmd @project location:

Step 3

Enter maven goal for test as: “mvn clean test” in the command prompt and hit ENTER. This will execute all the test scripts present in our suite and provide the execution status. This step is very important before starting the integration with Jenkins.

If it fails while running in the command prompt then we need to make sure to fix all the issues before moving it to the Jenkins server.

Step 4

Go to Jenkins, click on New Item as shown in below screenshot. This new item will help us to create a new Jenkins job where we can integrate the automation suite which has all the test scripts for the regression suite.

Step 5

Provide the name for the job, in the below screenshot we have provided the project name as “UiAutomationG11” and select “Maven Project” click on OK button. We need to release that as our automation framework is in Maven so we are selecting Maven project, if you are using Gradle then you have to select accordingly.

Note: Always provide a meaningful name to the project with proper naming convention.

Step 6

Go to Build Select “Invoke top-level Maven targets”, then enter the Goals as “clean test”, and put the pom.xml path of your project in the “POM” section as shown below. Now click on the “Save” button which is in the left bottom section.

Remember that as we are using it for demo so our pom.xml is in our local machine and we are providing path of the project in the POM section, but if you are trying to implement at project level then you need to integrate your GitHub repo link in Jenkins so the code will be pulled from repo directly.

Step 7

To run the suite, click on the Build Now button as shown below, once you click it will trigger the automation suite and test scripts will get executed. After the execution will get completed we can see the status of the job run, and if it fails then the console output can be used to get the error logs for further fixes.

Benefits

The most important benefit that the team will achieve is attaining the quality with the utmost pace. Below are some of the most important benefits of continuous integration with Automation Testing:

Faster release cycle

Pacing up the build and testing cycle will allow the team to get new features into production quicker. It also helps to reduce the testing execution exponentially by triggering from the pipeline. Pipeline helps the organization to accelerate the release rate.

High quality

Any software development process that includes continuous testing is on its way toward establishing a critical feedback loop to go fast and build effective software by making the automated suite part of the pipeline. As we run our suite after every change done by the developer team, it always provides a quality check of each and every code pushed to the code base. Most importantly, the pipeline with continuous testing builds quality into the CI/CD pipeline and reduces risk and waste in the software development lifecycle.

Simplify rollbacks

Integration of automation with the pipeline helps to put a check on code changes. If the tests fail, we can easily rollback the changes to working state. In most of the cases, we basically rollback to the last successful build.

Conclusion

Automated testing plays a key role in any CI/CD pipeline. Although creating automated test suites will take some time & money, making it part of the pipeline to run a check on every deployment soon pays for itself.
Whenever developers make some changes to the code base, pipeline integration helps to run the regression and make sure that new changes haven’t impacted the existing features. So apart from validation, the automation in the pipeline provides confidence to the development team.

In the current market scenario, if you are trying to move to a product company or SDET role, then knowledge in CI/CD is a very important attribute. If you want to explore opportunities in a similar field, do check Talent500

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