A new quarterly feature release of Testlab (codenamed Last Resort) is out! This update gives you enhanced reporting, better support for exploratory testing, easier screen and video capturing and a bunch of other enhancements. Read on.
Enhanced reporting
Reporting in Testlab is now much better than before. You can now preconfigure report parameters and publish your reports so that they can be launched with a single click. Reports can be saved to three different scopes: to a project, to all projects or to personal use only.
- New report view added for adding and launching reports
- Preconfigure report parameters and publish your reports with a descriptive name (for example “Critical open issues of BETA” or “Last month testing activity”)
- Save reports to your project, to all your projects or as a private report just for you.
- Launch your reports with a single click
- Time-bound reports such as progress reports can be configured with relative dates. For example, you can configure a testing progress report to always be reported from the start of the current month to the current day. Generating a monthly progress report this way is just a click away.
- New report type added: Testing activity. This reports a summary of all testing activities performed during a time frame or for a set of versions including executed tests and updated assets such as issues, requirements or test cases.
- Listing reports now include all configured custom fields and comments.
- All reports now take into account the project’s time zone and user’s locale for date and time formatting.
- Testlab’s search function also looks up published reports.
Exploratory testing
Pre-planning your testing and test cases is not always possible or desirable. Exploratory testing is an approach to testing where the tester or team of testers ‘explores’ the system under test and during the testing generates and documents good test cases to be run.
This type of testing is now well supported in Testlab. It is possible to add, remove and edit test cases during execution. It is also possible to add notes or comments to test cases during execution. This can enhance communication between testers and even between different testing sessions.
- Add test cases to the test run during a testing session.
- Remove test cases during a testing session.
- Edit existing test cases and their steps during execution.
- Comment test cases during execution and have access to comments entered for test cases’ steps on previous runs.
- Execute test cases in any order by jumping between sessions’ test cases.
All new functions are implemented in a way that they available to all testing approaches.
Capturing screenshots and video
Testlab integrates with Monosnap, a powerful screenshot tool, allowing you to easily capture and annotate screenshots. You can also record a screencast or video. Testlab offers an interface to Monosnap so that you can add the content to Testlab with a click of an Upload button. Alternatively, you can just drag-and-drop captured content from Monosnap to attach it easily to Testlab’s asset.
Captured content is uploaded in a secure way directly to Testlab and stored as a file attachment to your project asset.
- Capture screenshots and annotate them – a great way to highlight any issues.
- Easy and fast.
- Record video and upload MP4 encoded screencast to Testlab.
- Integration supports the desktop client of Monosnap for Windows and Mac OS X.
Other enhancements
In addition to the major features described above, the version includes enhancements such as:
- Test cases can be easily executed directly from the test hierarchy tree context menu. In addition to this, the issue view enables you to easily run the test case the issue is related to – handy when you just want to re-test and verify if the issue is really fixed or not.
- Attached images are shown directly in UI by hovering on them with your mouse cursor.
- When adding a new test run the dialog now features the “Save and start …” button to start executing with the new test run immediately.
- Major performance enhancements in a situation when the project has a huge number of executed tests or test runs.
Sincerely yours,
Meliora team
“On every British nuclear submarine, there is a safe. Inside that safe is another safe. And inside that safe is a handwritten letter from the British Prime Minister, to be opened only if the country has been decimated by nuclear war.” (This American Life, episode 399).
United Kingdom’s nuclear doctrine is unique in a way that each Prime Minister can decide the orders for the nuclear submarines in the event that the British government has been incapacitated by a nuclear strike. These orders are handwritten by the Prime Minister, placed in a safe on each submarine and are destroyed unopened after the Prime Minister leaves office. What action each Prime Minister would have ordered is only ever known to the outgoing Prime Minister. If the orders were ever to be carried out, the action taken would be the last official act of Her Majesty’s Government.