PractiTest Updates
December 2025 Updates
Product
In 2025, we focused on helping QA teams improve clarity, consistency, and control across the QA process. Here are some of the key capabilities we released this year:
- SmartFox AI for Faster, Higher-Quality Test Creation: Generate and refine test steps, improve text clarity, and prevent duplicate tests with SmartFox AI and Similar Tests detection, helping teams write better tests in less time.
- More Powerful Dashboards and Drill-Down Insights: Slice data with multilevel filters, drill from dashboards into instance-level details, and allow stakeholders to apply tab-level filters to external dashboards.
- Smarter Traceability Across Requirements and Test Sets: Link complete test sets to a requirement and keep its status aligned with real execution progress, including newly added instances.
- Generate Tests with Steps from Jira and Azure DevOps User Stories: Automatically create tests with structured steps directly from linked user stories in Jira or Azure DevOps, keeping requirements and tests fully aligned.
- Custom Test Workflows with Built-In Approval Control: Customize your test workflow to define project-specific test statuses, control transitions, and enforce edit or execution locks to support structured review and approval processes. This feature is available only for Corporate accounts.
- Collaborative Editing for Safer Teamwork at Scale: Work simultaneously on requirements, tests, issues, and test sets while avoiding overwrites and conflicts, ensuring teams always work on the latest data.
Coming Up
PractiTest Live Training
Join our customer success team for a live training session and ask everything you want to know.
Date: Wednesday, January 14th
Time: 12:00 AM CET
State of Testing 2026 – Roundtable
Join Joel Montvelisky, Lalit Bhamare, Andrew Knight, and Siva Kopparapu for a live roundtable unpacking top insights from the State of Testing™ 2026 report. They will explore what’s really happening with AI adoption, how shifts in tooling and development cycles are reshaping QA, and what the data reveals about future skills, roles, and career paths in testing.
Date: Tuesday, January 27th
Time: 11:00 AM EST | 17:00 CET
PractiTest and Beyond
From Tester to Leader: The Unwritten Rules of Career Growth in QA
In this guest article, QA expert Gagan Sharma shares practical insights on growing from a software tester into a QA leader. The piece focuses on three core pillars of career growth, the role of strong communication, and how adopting a leadership mindset can shape long term success in QA.
Explore the article
16 Best Unit Testing Tools for 2026
This blog reviews the top unit testing tools for 2026 and explains why their real impact comes from integrating results into a centralized test management platform like PractiTest. Learn how the right tools and integrations improve visibility, traceability, and release decision making across teams.
November 2025 Updates
Here are some updates from the past month
Product
Improve Test Step Clarity with SmartFox AI Text Enhance
Refine test steps and descriptions with one click. SmartFox AI helps you quickly refine, shorten, or expand your text. Review the suggestions and decide whether to apply them, giving you cleaner, higher quality tests with less effort. If you need further refinement, you can also guide the AI by adding your own instructions.
Use SmartFox AI Step Generator on Existing Steps
When you open a test that includes steps, clicking on the Step Generator will allow you to replace your current steps or add new ones after them. This gives you a fast way to refine outdated steps or extend test coverage without starting from scratch. Read more in our documentation.
Adding Values through API to Fields
You now have full control over how list fields behave during API updates and imports. A new project setting, Add “values on import/API”, lets you decide whether new list values should be created automatically during imports or API updates. Enable it to allow new values, or disable it to block unrecognized values and keep your data clean. Check out our API documentation.
Mention Users in Descriptions and Steps
Mention teammates directly inside Descriptions and individual Step fields. This makes it easier to assign follow ups, highlight responsibility, and keep everyone aligned within the test itself.
New Account Settings Design
Account Settings has been redesigned and now opens in a separate tab with a cleaner, standalone layout, giving you a more focused way to manage your account.
Coming Up
PractiTest Live Training
Join our customer success team for a live training session and ask everything you want to know.
Date: Wednesday, December 10th
Time: 2:00 PM EST | 11:00 AM PST
PractiTest and Beyond
QA Leader of the Year 2025: Winner Announcement
After weeks of nominations, expert review, and community voting, we’ll reveal the leader who made the strongest impact on their team and the testing community this year in a special LinkedIn Live event. Join us to celebrate the finalists, hear insights from this year’s judges, and recognize the outstanding contributions of QA professionals across the industry.
Date: Wednesday, December 10th
Time: 11:00 AM EST | 17:00 CET
October 2025 Updates
Here are some updates from the past month
Product
Get Instant Traceability Insights Right from Your Dashboard
The new Traceability dashboard item lets you view live lists of Requirements or Test Sets based on filters you define, so you can instantly assess coverage and execution status at a glance. See key details like entity IDs, status, and linkage types (Tests or Test Sets), all without navigating between modules.
Learn more about Dashboard items
Report Issues Directly from Exploratory Tests to Jira with Ease
Reporting bugs from exploratory sessions to Jira just got better. Now, when you click “Fail & Issue” during a session, you’ll see a redesigned screen that clearly displays your Jira projects, all mapped fields, and issue details, making issue reporting faster and more intuitive.
Read more about Exploratory Testing
Coming Up
PractiTest Live Training
Join our customer success team for a live training session and ask everything you want to know.
Date: Wednesday, November 12th
Time: 10:00 AM EST | 16:00 CET
Inside the 2026 QA Budget: Real Strategies from QA Leaders
Join us for a panel discussion exploring how QA leaders are planning for 2026. We’ll unpack how QA’s evolving role is shaping budgets, how to balance efficiency with innovation, what metrics truly drive value, and forward-looking strategies for staying ahead.
Date: Tuesday, November 19th
Time: 11:00 AM EST | 17:00 CET
PractiTest and Beyond
PractiTest 2025 QA Leader Award!
Now’s your chance to spotlight your QA Leader of the Year, nominations are officially open! A panel of industry experts and the PractiTest team will review all submissions, followed by a public vote to help select the finalists.
- Nominations are open until November 5th
- Community voting ends on December 5th
- Winner announced December 10th
Closing the Loop: Actionable QA Insights with PractiTest & testRigor
Running automated tests is only just the beginning. This article explores how QA leaders can turn automation results into meaningful decisions by integrating tools like testRigor with PractiTest. Learn how to unify execution data of both automation and manual tests, surface key insights, and make informed release decisions.
September 2025 Updates
Here are some updates from the past month
Product
Link Test Sets to Requirements for Smarter Coverage
You can now link a complete Test Set to a Requirement, making it easier to manage coverage in a way that truly reflects test execution. Once linked, all tests within the Test Set are automatically associated with the Requirement, and its status will reflect the Test Set’s execution progress. Any new test instances added to the set are included in the calculation, keeping your coverage up to date without manual effort.
Slice Your Data Smarter with 4-Level Hierarchical Auto Filters
You can now nest Auto Filters up to four hierarchical levels, giving you more control over how you organize and drill down into your data.
Build smarter filter trees based on any combination of list, multi-list, or linked-list fields. For example, Version → Run Status → Testing Phase → Operating System. This helps you surface exactly the data you need, especially in large-scale projects with complex QA structures.
Enforce Test Run Order per Test Set
In addition to the existing option to enforce test run order across your entire project, project admins can now enforce run order at the individual test set level. This means you can choose specific test sets where instances must be executed in sequence, while maintaining flexibility in others, allowing for more tailored control over your execution strategy.
Coming Up
PractiTest Live Training
Join our customer success team for a live training session and ask everything you want to know.
Date: Wednesday, October 8th
Time: 12:00 CEST
Stop Chasing AI Hype – A Webinar with Joel Montvelisky
AI is everywhere in software testing, but not every promise delivers. This session cuts through inflated claims to focus on where AI genuinely adds value. Joel will explore practical, high-impact use cases that enhance test coverage, efficiency, and decision-making, while offering a smart framework for adopting AI in a way that complements your team’s skills and drives measurable results.
Date: Tuesday, October 21st
Time: 9:00 AM EDT | 15:00 CEST
PractiTest and Beyond
Building a Future-Ready QA Team: Skills, Roles, and Strategies for 2025 and Beyond
Great QA teams are enabling quality from planning through production. This article explores how to build modern QA teams that lead with strategy, agility, and product awareness. Learn about T-shaped testers, evolving team models, and how to foster a culture of ownership and continuous learning.
How to Maximize the Business Impact of the QA Team
QA’s value goes far beyond bug reports. In this article, we explore actionable ways to boost your QA team’s strategic influence, whether it’s improving release confidence, reducing cycle time, or aligning testing efforts with business goals.
August 2025 Updates
Here are some updates from the past month
Product
Drill Down from Dashboards to Focused Instance Data
You can now click on dashboard items such as bar charts, pie charts, or distribution tables to explore specific instance data. When you select a data slice, for example, all ‘Passed’ instances for a specific tester, you’ll be taken to the Instances View in the Test Sets & Runs module, automatically filtered to match the data you clicked.
Milestone-Based Tracking Enhancements
We’ve added two improvements to help you track releases more efficiently with milestones:
- Tab-Level Dashboard Filters by Milestone – Filter an entire dashboard tab by milestone to focus on a specific release and its progress at a glance.
- Multi-Level Auto Filters – Create auto filters based on milestones and combine them with additional criteria like testing status or assignee, for more granular reporting.
These enhancements make it easier to stay on top of release progress and organize your views around what matters most.
Tab-Level Filters Now Available in External Dashboards
When sharing dashboards externally with stakeholders outside PractiTest, they can now use tab-level filters. This allows non-PractiTest users to filter dashboard data by fields such as milestone or assignee, giving them more control and clarity without needing a PractiTest account.
Coming Up
OnlineTestConf 2025 – September 15
Join us for the next edition of OnlineTestConf, the pioneering virtual event that puts testing innovation, practical knowledge, and real-world insights front and center. This year’s agenda features leading voices in QA covering hot topics such as:
- Ensuring Software Security
- Expanding Testers’ Virtual Toolbox for the 2030s
- The Evolving Role of AI in Testing
Date: Monday, September 15th
Part 1: 08:00–12:00 CEST / 2:00–6:00 PM AWST
Part 2: 11:00 AM–3:00 PM EDT / 8:00 AM–12:00 PM PDT
PractiTest Live Training
Join our customer success team for a special live session focused on test automation. Learn how to integrate your automated tests into PractiTest, manage results, and combine them with your manual testing efforts for full visibility and traceability.
Date: Thursday, September 18th
Time: 10:00 AM EDT / 16:00 CEST
PractiTest and Beyond
PractiTest Recognized in Forrester’s Autonomous Testing Platforms Landscape, Q3 2025
PractiTest was named in Forrester’s Q3 2025 report on autonomous testing platforms, highlighting its role in uniting AI-driven testing with real-world QA orchestration. With SmartFox AI and end-to-end test management, PractiTest helps teams stay efficient, traceable, and aligned with business goals.
PractiTest Named in Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Global Trade Finance Transformation in Banking, 2025
PractiTest was recognized for its Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) capabilities, highlighting its role in helping financial institutions modernize QA with clarity, compliance, and control. By supporting BDD alongside manual, exploratory, and automated testing, PractiTest enables a unified process with full traceability and stronger business impact.
July 2025 Updates
Here are some updates from the past month
Product
Instance View in the Test Sets & Runs Module
Instead of the default list of Test Sets, you can now switch to an Instance View to see a flat list of individual test instances across all test sets. This view lets you quickly access instance-level details such as the instance name, associated test set, and other fields based on your selected filters. Read more about it in our Test Sets & Runs documentation.
Support for Rich Text Field Mapping
You can now map rich text fields from Jira to Memo fields in PractiTest, preserving formatting and improving field compatibility.
Coming Up
PractiTest Live Training
Join our customer success team for a special session about our newest features including Collaborative Editing and SmartFox AI Step Generator.
Date: Wednesday, August 6th
Time: 11:00 AM PDT / 2:00 PM EDT
PractiTest and Beyond
The 15 Most Common Types of Errors in Software Testing and How to Prevent Them
From missed edge cases to vague requirements, testing errors happen — but they don’t have to. This article breaks down the most frequent mistakes teams make and offers practical strategies to prevent them through better planning, smarter automation, and stronger collaboration.
The Ultimate Guide to SAP Testing: Best Practices to Streamline Enterprise Solutions
Testing SAP systems isn’t just about stability, it’s about safeguarding business-critical operations. This guide covers best practices for building a scalable SAP testing strategy, from handling complex interdependencies to streamlining S/4HANA upgrades, regression cycles, and cross-platform deployments.