Last week in Tel Aviv we had a SIGiST’s (Special Interest Group in Software Testing) quarterly meeting, where QA managers and engineers gather to see presentations from selected QA groups and talk about various topics related to our testing work and its day-to-day challenges.

During this session we had the chance to, among other ineresting presentations, see a very informative and consice presentation on how Delek uses PractiTest to manage their exploratory testing efforts.

As part of the presentation, Gavriel Gutshtein explained how they are able to manage their exploratory testing in coordination with the rest of their scripted testing efforts, documenting all their tests (including their exploratory sessions) in PractiTest, and providing full visibility to the team and their external stakeholders on the tasks and progress of their projects.

In addition to the way in which they use PractiTest he also talked about how, by blending scripted and exploratory testing, they are able to reduce their total testing efforts and at the same time increase the stability of their released products.

Hi,

This weekend we released a new version of PractiTest with many features requested during the last couple of months.

Dashboard
- Added the option to create a Private Dashboard tab where each user can define the graphs and information he wants to see.
- Dashboard graphs are now clickable and will allow users to “zoom-in” and see the data behind the specific pie or graph displayed.  So, for example, in a pie chart of the bugs for your release you can click and see the specific ones that are in status rejected or open.
- We added the ability to personalize which dashboard tab you want to be displayed by default on each of your projects.
- Added new dashboard items for test instances.

Exporting, Reporting and Printing
- We added the ability to print specific issues, tests, test sets and requirements straight from the form.
- Expanded the support to export specific custom views from all the modules in PractiTest.

Test Execution
- Users can now see the attachments defined in the test library as part of the test instances running within a test set.
- We added a visual indication when adding test instances to your test set whenever a specific test is already part of the given test set.

General
- Improvements to the Multiselect fields.
- Plus a number of additional smaller features and fixes.

As the amount of feature requests grows from month to month we’d like to remind and encourage you to use our User Feedback Forum in order to let us know what additional functionality you’d like to see in PractiTest.  Remember that this forum is there not only to add your own requests, but also to vote for the features requested by other users that you’d also want to see in PractiTest.  This in turn will help us plan and prioritize our work based on your priorities.

Feel free to let us know what you think by leaving comments and sending us your feedback!

Hi,

This weekend we released a new version of PractiTest with one feature in particular that has been requested by a number of customers – the public release of our Automation XBot Plugin.

Using the XBot, you can run automated tests and scripts created with virtually any tool (Selenium, Watir, QTP, etc) or any homegrown testing framework.  You can learn more about the XBot from our Automated Tests documentation, and if you want to take part in this Public Beta just send us an email and we will activate this feature in your projects.

XBot Automation Settings

This version comes with a number of small additions in the Report Center, such as the ability to export your reports to PDF format as well as to work with Views on Requirement Reports.

The current release also fixes a number of smaller issues that were reported by some of you in the last couple of weeks.

We’ll be happy to get your feedback on these or any of the rest of PractiTest, you mail us directly or use our User Feedback Forum.

Hi,

Last night we released a new version of PractiTest with many of the features you’ve requested either using our feedback forum, or by contacting us directly.

Here’s a recap of this release’s main new features:

• Dashboard customization – control the information you display as part of your PractiTest Dashboard. Customize the graphs and tables you show in your project’s dashboard, when you login to the system, according to your personal and specific needs and constraint

Customize the graphs on the dashboard

• Run your tests in either Compact or Extended mode – we introduced a new way to run your tests in “Compact mode”.  This mode allows you to see many steps together displayed in a convenient grid format.   There are still some functions that are available only on the “Extended mode”, such as attaching files or manually linking issues, but if you have long and short steps, or if you are running Exploratory Testing Sessions you may find this mode more convenient.

An example of running a test in a compact mode

• Step Count field in the Test Library
• This version includes other small enhancement such as a “Run Next Test” button in the Test Run Window, Information Tooltips, enlarged comment fields, and some bug fixes

We hope you find it useful!

Don’t be shy and use our User Feedback Forum to help us develop more great features.

Yesterday (Nov 16th, 1:00AM GMT) we experienced some availability issues with PractiTest.  Within a short time the team managed to handle everything and we were able to return to full service as usual.

We believe in honesty and openness, that’s the reason we log this and all issues we experience in our company blog (http://www.practitest.com/blog/category/issues/).  To serve as a reference, our last availability issue was back in June 2009 (17 months ago!), and a result of it we decided to shift to Amazon EC2 mainly due to the better SLA we were able to receive from them.

We’re still investigating the current incident, but it was reassuring to see that our monitoring services and fast resolution procedures were able to kick-in promptly and effectively.

We are also very proud that our previous availability issue was 17 months ago, and we will do our best to keep this level of service availability going forward.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.