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Once your automated test suite runs in an established continuous integration and continuous delivery environment, what steps are next in reporting test automation? As soon as you start performing these tests regularly, you will encounter issues due to changes in product behavior or flakiness - but how do you identify and assess these?
Test Automation Reporting comes into the picture here. Reporting is an integral component of the test automation framework, providing accurate analyses of test results.
As it stands now, the success and survival of any such framework highly depend on how effectively its reporting mechanism is put in place.
About The Test Automation Report
What are test automation reports? It serves as a blueprint that illustrates the overall results of test execution.
They display information such as the number and details of tests run; their steps within those tests that were run; overall execution time as well as individual test execution times; steps which passed, failed, were skipped over or broken; as well as reasons behind any fallen or forgotten Test Cases.
Few Test Automation Reports also display trended results over recent runs, which is useful when analyzing test automation's effectiveness.
Furthermore, when integrated with bug tracking tools, they may say any linked test case or bug IDs - doesn't that sound amazing? Consider whether the Report provides enough details of passed or failed test cases and is valuable enough in pinpointing whether this failure stemmed from script failures or application problems.
Why Are Test Automation Reports Essential?
Test Automation Reports should play a vital role in any automation framework. Understanding their importance will allow for optimal usage within an automation infrastructure.
Results provide the only means to assess automated suites' overall health and stability when they run, so a more in-depth evaluation of your findings may make your framework more stable and robust.
Test Automation Reports provide an effective means of analyzing test results using various parameters, making analysis more accessible by offering in-depth details regarding failure causes and errors that help the project determine its viability as per business requirements.
This Report may assist in many ways, including early bug identification and making analysis more straightforward by offering thorough information regarding failure causes, errors and solutions for more detailed analysis.
Ultimately, this helps assess whether the project is healthy enough or whether changes that fulfill them more fully must be implemented. Reports such as these can also be shared with relevant stakeholders to enable them to keep an eye on product releases over time.
Automation Testing Execution For Beginners
Implementation strategy and how the QA team executes it are integral parts of automation testing's success, and any beginner in automation testing must know this before writing their first scripts.
Before beginning with automation testing, each beginner should become aware of the following:
Determine The Execution Environment
What exactly is an execution environment? Answering this is critical before creating your first test case. An execution environment refers to all components that work with a software application code to produce a fully functional system: processors, networks, OSes, etc.
Execution environments are among the most critical components of testing processes, from hardware and software configuration, operating system settings, test terminals and any related support needed during an investigation or trial.
Integrate Tools Within The Automated Test Framework
Before commencing the testing cycle, all real device clouds must be integrated with the test framework. Any commercial tools from previous stages should already have been incorporated.
Check for compatibility or compelling linking issues between devices; in particular, ensure open-source versions work seamlessly with commercial parent ones.
Develop And Refine Automation Scripts
Some test engineers prefer creating draft automation scripts at the outset of performance testing processes that will cover most functional test cases before finalizing them via iterative methods in an online collaborative cloud environment during the execution phase.
Execute The Automation
At this early stage of development, it's wise to prioritize quality over quantity when creating test automation.
Focusing on creating more functional automated test cases rather than large amounts that must later be disregarded will save time and resources when trying to develop test automation software.
Key Features Of A Good Test Automation Report
Let's examine some features of the test automation report to select one appropriate to our framework:
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Accessibility: Test Automation Reports should not only be accessible to those performing tests, but unfortunately, this is often true when localized tests are run; this could reduce their effectiveness significantly.
To maximize the effectiveness of reports for functional testing teams or organizations as a whole, regardless of which reporting tools are used.
Continuous integration systems may assist greatly with making test reports readily available to all.
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Readability: Test Automation Reports should provide enough details so that it's easy for anyone to grasp test coverage, pass/fail percentage, bug/test case association with failed cases, and failure reasons by simply looking at them.
In other words, they must be simple yet detailed and comprehensive.
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Trend Information: Test Automation Reports should contain a mechanism for comparing runs over time and providing users with a trend chart.
This feature can prove extremely valuable for Product Owners and Managers looking at how well the test automation framework performs; furthermore, trend charts allow QA team members to assess builds brought into test environments.
Examples Of Test Automation Report
After we discuss the various components and complexities involved with Test Automation Reports, let's dive deeper into some of the more frequently utilized Reports used within Automation Frameworks - an open-source project covering various browser automation tools and libraries.
This section highlights several critical reports used herein.
It provides client APIs in multiple programming languages such as C#, Java, and Python; therefore, framework developers must select an Automation Report suitable to each programming language requirement and reporting need.
It offers several test automation reporting tools; here are some popular options:
TestNG
Inspired by JUnit and NUnit frameworks, TestNG has become one of the most commonly utilized unit testing frameworks, including its library with default reporting features and saving reports directly in specific folders.
Alongside its standard test reports, TestNG allows detailed reports to be generated automatically without human intervention.
An emailable-report.html file containing information regarding passed/failed tests/errors and total execution counts/time duration can be generated without manual testing involvement and includes everything from results of passed or failed tests to total test execution counts/time duration data and more.
Allure
Allure is a free and open-source framework designed for test execution reports that are easier to read and comprehend.
As a lightweight reporting tool, Allure allows users to tailor messages according to attachments, test cases, bug information or anything else necessary. Allure integrates smoothly into popular test frameworks like Ruby, Scala, Python, PHP, Java, or C# to produce test execution reports that make sense to read quickly.
JUnit
JUnit is an invaluable reporting tool for Java and Selenium development projects, similar to TestNG, that provides test result reports in an accessible format.
By default, JUnit tests generate simple XML report files during test execution, which can be utilized by custom reports as needed during testing.
Extent Reports
Extent Reports can easily integrate with JUnit, NUnit, and TestNG frameworks with simple integration steps that offer advanced filters and screenshot features that aid test analysis.
As an open-source framework with extensive documentation, it also has features to manage multiple projects simultaneously and collaborate on them collaboratively, allowing Selenium extent reports to display evidence and test case status, enabling stakeholders to make more informed decisions.
4 Steps To Start Automation Testing From Scratch
Defining The Scope Of Automation
An investigation of your team's testing state, amount of test data and execution environment is vital to pinpoint precisely where software quality on your tests is taking place - typically, this means:
- Technical Feasibility Of Your Team
- Test Case Difficulty For Major Features
- Functions being Executed
- Proportion Of Test Components Being Reused.
Selecting An Automation Testing Tool
Although test automation offers several benefits, only some projects find test automation beneficial. While automation tools have greatly assisted some QA teams and companies, others may waste valuable time, effort, and financial resources trying to implement automation software.
Selecting an effective automation testing tool takes time and effort. Still, it is essential for effective automation testing in the long term. Please read on to choose an ideal automated testing solution.
Planning, Designing, And Development
As part of an automation testing strategy, keep the testing process's goals, framework features and design, and the timescale for scripting and running test cases in mind when planning and creating an automation software testing strategy.
Executing Test Cases And Building Your Reports
Step three involves the execution of automation test scripts that respond to test data input. Test execution may occur directly using an automated testing tool or through management tools which activate an automation testing tool instantly.
After regression testing has concluded, a comprehensive report detailing this phase provides a consolidated view of what has been tested on your project.
Conclusion
Studying the significance of test reporting tools reveals that selecting an automated reporting tool is just as crucial to accurate test automation framework selection as testing activities on real devices and browsers - no matter which open-source tool is chosen as a test automation reporting solution.
By testing requirements on an actual device, your app will be exposed to actual user conditions, allowing for the identification and resolution of critical issues for seamless user experiences.
A cloud solution designed to simultaneously run automated tests across thousands of real devices.
