TestArchitect Release Notes

TestArchitect 8.1 Update 1 Release Notes

Release Date: February 9, 2015

What's New in TestArchitect 8.1 Update 1

The following new features and improvements are introduced in the latest version of TestArchitect running under Windows.

TestArchitect Client

Enhancements to existing features

1. Variation execution
   Formerly, when both linked and keyword variations were specified at runtime, TestArchitect required eligible variations with keywords to match the runtime- specified keyword set exactly. Now, TestArchitect accepts variations with subsets of the runtime-specified keyword set, with priority given to the variation with the largest subset.
2. Integration with HP Quality Center
   Version Control within Quality Center is now supported. In particular, importing Quality Center tests into TestArchitect or uploading TestArchitect test modules/test cases to Quality Center automatically generates version updates for the affected items of the target system.
3. Integration with Microsoft Test Manager
   Additional options when executing test cases in Microsoft Test Manager
   • Screenshot recording
     Configure the capturing of screenshots of UI-Interacting actions.
   • Include screenshots
     Retain all captured screenshots in the exported HTML test result.
     • Optimized resolution: Included screenshots' dimensions are optimized to save space in the exported HTML test results. Specifically, the screenshots are saved as thumbnail images.
     • Regular resolution: Original resolution of included screenshots is retained. Specifically, the screenshots are saved as full size images.
4. Support for viewing new line and horizontal tab characters in the test results.
5. In the Select Controller dialog box, each controller is identified by its host name, rather than IP address.

TestArchitect Automation

New features

1. Support for Safari iOS and Chrome Android testing
   You can now use TestArchitect to create automated GUI and functional tests in the Safari mobile web browser on iOS devices, and in the Google Chrome mobile web browser on Android.
   • Special handling of JavaScript popups
     (applies to Safari on iOS 7 and later, and to Chrome)
     Due to the manner in which the web browser engines process JavaScript code, modal popup windows produced in a web application with JavaScript cannot be tested in a conventional manner. To address this issue, TestArchitect offers a special set of actions for interfacing with JavaScript popups, including alerts, prompts and confirmation dialogs.

     Action	Description
     click on next popup	Click a specified button in a prompt, alert, or confirmation popup.
     enter text on next popup	Write text to the user-entry field of a prompt popup, then click OK.
     get popup message	Retrieve the messages of one or more recent confirmation, prompt, or alert popups.
     get popup default text	Retrieve the default text of the user-entry field of one or more recent prompt popups.
     check popup message	Check the message strings displayed by one or more popups (prompt, alert or confirmation) against the respective expected messages. Result is Passed if all values match; otherwise Failed.
     check popup default text	Check the default text of the user-entry fields of one or more prompt popups against their respective expected values. Result is Passed if all values match; otherwise Failed.
     clear popup queue	Clear any remaining actions from the popup-handler queue, and clear the popup history buffer.

   • submit form (built-in action): Submit the form to which the given HTML control belongs.
2. Special character functions
   To allow your test procedures to include special symbols and non-printing characters in expressions, the following expression function has been added:
   • #char(code): General-purpose function to return a Unicode character based on its decimal code.
   As an added convenience, the following two special purpose functions may be used for the most common non-printing characters:
   • #newline(): Return a special character signifying the end of a line of text.
   • #tab(): Return a horizontal tab character.
3. ignore tabs and newlines (built-in setting): During string comparisons, ignore horizontal tabs and newlines.

Enhancements to existing features

• get device information (built-in action): An additional argument, unique id, now retrieves a unique ID for the target test device.

Known Issues

1. Mobile web apps may stop responding if the tap built-in action is applied to a given control; however, missing events are triggered on that control.
2. On mobile web apps, automation playback fails to match a window if the Interface Viewer is not closed during testing.
3. On mobile devices, automation playback hangs if JavaScript popups appear right after a web site is opened.
4. In Safari iOS, the navigate built-in action is unable to navigate to a given site if an existing Safari instance is already running.
5. In Safari iOS, the click on next popup built-in action may not work properly in the case of cross-domain web pages.
6. (Windows 8 only) Certain operations result in the creation of defunct conhost processes that may have to be manually killed. Triggering operations include:
   • Using the Android Instrumentation Tool to install TestArchitect Agent to an attached Android device
   • Executing tests with the Python harness
7. Android - Instrumentation tool sometimes hangs if multiple devices are attached to the host machine concurrently when it is launched.
   • Solution: Manually kill the ast.exe process, and relaunch the Android - Instrumentation tool.

Resolved Issues

1. Despite displaying properly in the test editor, non-ASCII Unicode characters are not displayed correctly in exported XML test results.
2. In the event of a sudden power outage, recent edits to the project item in the active tab of TestArchitect Client may be lost if that item has not been checked in, despite having been saved.
3. Occasionally, serial test runs on mobile devices report WARNING: THIS TEST RUN WAS ABORTED in test results, even though test execution completed successfully.
4. Integration with HP Quality Center: Due to incompatible data types, TestArchitect cannot map Quality Center’s Subject and Type fields to user-defined fields in TestArchitect. (Resolution: TestArchitect no longer attempts to map these two particular fields.)
5. Integration with Microsoft Test Manager
   • When you invoke the TestArchitect Execution dialog box to run automated tests, the Save test result confirmdialog box occasionally appears with the warning, “File already exists. Do you want to replace it?”
   • If you enter incorrect repository information into the TestArchitect Execution dialog box, a warning dialog box appears to inform you that the repository cannot be connected. However, the running test is not terminated until a given timeout expires.
   • Each time an automated test is initiated, the information console in the TestArchitect Execution dialog box does not clear the previous data, if any.

System Requirements

The following table lists the recommended hardware and software requirements for TestArchitect.

Recommended system requirements

Additional Resources

• For more information, please visit our website at www.testarchitect.com or email us at [email protected].
• On a system with TestArchitect installed, help is available at:
  Start menu > All Programs > TestArchitect > TestArchitect Help.