Multiple-select lists, Issue status resolution, and more added features
Date: 2010-01-01
With this new year we are releasing a new version that brings some of the functional features requested by many of you lately:
- Multi-select lists, with the ability to choose more than one value for the same field.
- Issue status resolution field, in cases where you want to add not only a status but a resolution. For example to specify the kind of fix performed, or the reason an issue is being rejected.
- Bulk deletion of tests, when doing mass operation on tests that require you to delete large numbers at once.
- And other smaller features and fixes throughout the system.
As always, we invite you to share any comments or feedback with us, both via our support hot-line or our user feedback site.
Last but not least we wanted to wish you a Joyful, Successful and most importantly Happy New Year!
SVN Integration, links between issues, template tests and more
Date: 2010-01-01
We started the New Year full of energy, and we continue working hard to implement the important things our users ask for.
So, even though last week we delivered a set of cool testing features, we decided not to wait any longer and release a new PractiTest version this weekend with some additional things that were ready to be released (we don’t believe in letting our users wait needlessly)
- SVN integration. Covering the end-to-end development process by linking between the Issues handled in PractiTest and the changes to the code base itself. Click to learn more about our svn-integration.
- Links between issues, great for multiple cases such as duplicate bugs, related tasks, etc.
- Template tests flag, to create a specific type of tests that is not to be run but serves as a template to create test suits and views. To activate this flag go to the Settings > Project Fields tab.
- Statistics for numeric fields in the Test & Execution module. Useful for things like calculating the estimated effort to run a set of tests, or the mean time it took to execute tests.
- And other changes and fixes.
In addition to stuff above, we also did some cosmetic changes to the GUI of PractiTest to re-organize the screen and provide more working space on the screen (something that is always on high-demand). As part of this changes we took out the settings tab and placed it as a link on the top right of the screen, just in case you were wondering where that tab had gone…
We invite you to continue sharing with us your feature requests and wishes. The best way to do this is by going to PractiTest’s Users Forum and adding or voting for the things you’d like to see in the Platform.
Improving your filters, and allowing you to see your “ancestor’s attachments”
Date: 2010-02-01
Our latest updated comes to answer some of the “small-feature” requests we’ve been getting from the field these last number of weeks. We decided to make it a small one, so that it would allow us to continue developing the cool new functionality that will be available shortly (teaser – it rhymes with passports…)
This update comes with the following additions:
- New filter criteria to display entities based on whether one of more of their fields are “empty” or “not-empty”. A simple change to make a world of difference.
-
- When a test has been cloned from a previews test, the system will also allow you to see the attachments of the original test(s) and not only those of the current one.
- PractiTest now remembers the status of the Folder Tree in the Test & Execution module, and it will not expand it whenever you enter the view.
- And many small fixes and improvements related to working with large number of views and folders, cloning operations, filtering with dates, etc.
See you all real soon with a new update!
More permissions and better Account Visibility
Date: 2010-02-01
During the few weeks we concentrated a lot in our back-end server infrastructure, resulting in today’s upgrade with few functional additions, but bug fixes and back-end related stuff.
These are the two small features that we did add to this release:
- A specific permission type related to the Custom Views, which means, if you’re not the owner / author of the view, and don’t have this permission (by default Administrators only), then you cannot change other’s views. You can change your own views though.
- ‘Account Settings’, available only to Account owners, near the ‘settings’ link. The Account Settings shows to the Account owners how many projects there are under their account, the users’ license information, and the keys for using our API.
PractiTest Reviewed by IsraelTest
Date: 2010-02-01
Hi,
On July 2009, we got reviewed by IsraelTest blog. Since the review is in Hebrew we decided to translate it to English and share it with all of you: IsraelTest_Product_review.pdf
New Reports Module and better Tests batch operations
Date: 2010-03-01
This weekend we released a new update to PractiTest.
As always it came with many small fixes and improvements, but it also included 2 major improvements that were high in our users’ wish list:
- Reports Module
- Improvements to the Test Batch operations
Reports Module
Even though it is still in Beta, we’re very happy launch the Reports module in this version.
What you see today is only a subset of the reports we’ll be having in the future, but we believe it already provides some great value.
The heart of the module, the Report Center, is where you create your reports and where you can see all the previous reports generated for your project:
In this first release you can create reports based on 3 templates: Tabular, Traceability and Detailed report; and you can use these templates for each of the PractiTest entities (Issues, Tests and Requirements).
This is how the new reports definition window looks like:
We will be happy to get your feedback as well as ideas for the additional features you like to see within this module. Please provide share with us your comments on our Feedback Forum.
Batch Edit & Batch Clone on the Tests Module
There are some features in the system that we know people use all the time, for example the batch edit and batch clone features within the Tests Module.
Still, until today, this feature had a small problem, there was no easy way to set a field to empty once it was already filled with data. So on 95% of the cases this was enough, but we decided to go the extra mile and make this feature right 100% of the time.
We updated the edit/clone form in a way that let’s you decide what fields you want to modify by first selecting the checkbox next to the field name (if you want to leave this field “as is” just leave it unchecked). If you want to set a field to “empty”, simply select to modify and choose the empty option (of the drop down, or un-select the checkbox for example).
We are already busy working on the next batch of features to be updated shortly.
So see you in our next update with more cool features!
MS Study finds that SMBs using hosted solutions perform better
Date: 2010-03-01
We stumbled upon a report from Microsoft saying that Small & Medium Businesses using hosted services and solutions perform better financially than those using in-house software. You can check their press release here.
To summarize their findings, the study performed by a third party research firm showed that companies using SaaS and Cloud Based products, such as PractiTest :), showed higher revenues than those using traditional in-house solutions. The research also pointed at the fact that both awareness as well as the migration of SMBs towards SaaS solutions is growing year after year.
Michael Korbacher, a director in Microsoft, said that “Using pay-as-you-go cloud technologies, small and midsize businesses can now afford and easily have access to enterprise-class, secure services across any platform.”
The study also quotes Dale Vile, research director of Freedom Dynamics saying that “This whole picture corroborates the notion that technology and hosted services can provide tangible business advantage, even for smaller companies, and it – not surprising to see that investment in IT and hosting goes hand in hand with good financial performance.”
So what we always knew that makes perfect sense now gets a formal approval: SaaS solutions such as PractiTest are good for SMBs since they allow them to get the best possible products at accessible costs, and not only taking into account the price of the licenses but also the overall cost of installing and maintaining these solution in-house.
Starting to support Exploratory Testing and adding a bunch of other good stuff in this upgrade
Date: 2010-04-01
Hi,
We performed another PractiTest upgrade this weekend, and we’re happy to announce that we are starting to support Exploratory Testing sessions with the help of some cool new functionality:
- You can create an empty test and start running it without steps, meaning that you can create your Exploratory Testing Charters based on a description of what you want to achieve with your test.
- We added the ability to Add, Delete or Modify your Steps during the run of the test; so that as you progress through your Exploratory Session you can record the stuff you tested and keep the log for future reference.
- At the end, you can update the original Test with the new / updated steps, so you can reference it or reuse it in the future.
In addition to the stuff above we also added features requested by users:
- We modified and drastically enlarged our Custom Memo Fields.
- After setting the run-step status to ‘Passed’ the focus on the page ‘jumps’ directly to the following step so that you don’t need to constantly scroll down.
- We added the ability to see more than 20 lines in the Test and Issue grids, so that you can see more or all your data more comfortably:
And as always we included some minor fixes.
Let us know if you have any comments, issues or additional requests.
The PractiTest team.
PractiTest on Facebook
Date: 2010-04-01
After many requests from the field we finally created a PractiTest page on Facebook.
You are invited to become fans, check out what we are up to and receive updates from there as well.
Mandatory system fields and additional Reports
Date: 2010-05-01
Yesterday we performed an upgrade that mostly included infrastructure changes and minor bug fixes, but also some of the features requested by our customers:
- System fields can be defined as mandatory, just as regular custom fields
- We included a couple of additional Reports covering Test Executions (the runs)
- We added column sorting support for the Test grid
Sort Support to Test Grid
Also for this upgrade there was no downtime
PractiTest Tour
Date: 2010-05-01
We just finished recording a new web-tour of PractiTest.
The Tour covers the Issues, Tests, Requirements and Reports Modules, as well as some of the platform’s customizations. We hope you’ll find it useful (click on the Play icon):
Feel free to send us your comments.
PractiTest integration with JIRA, Bugzilla & FogBugz
Date: 2010-06-01
This week we performed a system upgrade with a feature that was being requested repeatedly by a number of users: the ability to integrate PractiTest with Bugzilla and FogBugz.
This upgrade also comes to improve our existing JIRA integration, and it enables Organizations to keep working with their available Bug Tracking systems, while allowing them to link these “external” defects into PractiTest and gain the traceability between the 2 platforms. You can learn more about this integration and how to configure it from our help pages.
In addition to the new and improved integrations (and to some additional issues fixes) this upgrade includes improvements to PractiTest’s import mechanism, helping users by providing more feedback on errors during the import process.
PractiTest chosen by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Date: 2010-07-01
After reviewing a number of tools and alternatives, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs chose PractiTest for SaaS-based QA management for its outsourced IT projects.
“The fact that it was available to all parties involved simply through the Internet was one of the main reasons for choosing PractiTest. Another one was that there would always be a unified and up-to-date view of the project…”
“PractiTest helped us enormously to keep track of the project – progress and avoid misunderstandings”.
“With the help of PractiTest – customizations we were able to define new issue types and better cluster the information, allowing us to filter out data and generate more accurate and detailed reports. We recommended PractiTest within our Organization to be used in further projects”.
Read the full case study here.
More flexible and scalable Test Management
Date: 2010-08-01
This week we performed a PractiTest system upgrade to implement a feature we’ve been planning for some time: a more flexible and scalable Test Management model.
This new model allows you to create and manage a Test Library with all the Tests you need to validate your application or system. It then provides a separate tab, called Test Sets & Runs, where you plan and run your testing tasks (or cycles) based on the tests already written and available in the Test Library.
This new model enhances the flexibility and scalability of your testing process:
- Allowing you to create a test once in the Test Library and re-use it multiple times on your Test Sets (or even multiple times in the same Test Set).
- Makes it easier to manage your test repository by having only one copy of each test.
- Provides a quick and easy way to track the status of your test throughout their lifecycle by looking at all their runs from a new Test Sets tab available on each of your tests in the Test Library.
The new model is available by default in all PractiTest project created from this moment on.
Since we don’t want to disrupt the work in existing projects we will provide users with a period of time in order to migrate their projects from the previous to this new testing model. To migrate your project or to get more information simply contact your PractiTest representative or send an email to our support team.
5 cool features of PractiTest that hardly seen in any Test Management Tool
Date: 2010-08-05
Why PractiTest?
Sometimes potential customers ask us to help them understand whether PractiTest is the best solution for their needs. We believe that having Joel working with them to help define their process and customize the platform to their needs is invaluable.
But there are a number of additional cool features that make PractiTest a unique solution. We want to show you (only) five of them:
- Anti-Bug Duplication mechanism – Duplicates, bugs that are reported more than once in the system, are a pain for every organization. The overhead and the waste of time of looking for the original bug, defining it as a duplicate, and rejecting the new one is something that we all would like to save from our daily lives.
What if you knew the bug you we are writing right now is a duplicate of an existing bug?
PractiTest comes with a built-in solution to the duplicate-bugs problem: the minute anyone starts entering a bug the systems instantly displays the similar bugs candidates, enabling the user to decide whether this bug is a new one or not.
- Bug by mail – With PractiTest you can report Issues directly from your email client. This is great if you have customers or field engineers (sales, support, etc) who don’t have access to PractiTest, or if you want to forward someone’s bug directly from your inbox to the system:
- Unbelievable Customizations – not only can you customize the fields for your Requirements, Tests & Issues, but you can also implement your own user-permission levels and even define the workflow of your issues.
Read more about PractiTest’s customization - Hierarchical custom views – This is one feature that, once you understand how it works and the value you get from it, you cannot stop using it.
The basic idea is that you can organize your tests-tree based on any fields you choose, for example release version, but ALSO, based on product component and sub-component, and ALSO based on Run Status, etc.
Unlike folders where the Tests are only shown in one place, with views you can show a single test in multiple different trees based on your needs. This is similar to how gmail works with Tags, but BETTER!
Read more about our hierarchal custom views. - Integration with SVN – This is a must for many development teams who choose to work in this very organized way. For each issue you can see all the SVN commits linked to your issues, and also instruct SVN not to allow a commit without an issue being assigned to it.
You can about our integration with SVN
Writing this post made me realize we have a lot more to write about, but maybe I’ll leave that to a latter post.
5 cool features of PractiTest that hardly seen in any Test Management Tool
Date: 2010-08-05
Why PractiTest?
Sometimes potential customers ask us to help them understand whether PractiTest is the best solution for their needs. We believe that having Joel working with them to help define their process and customize the platform to their needs is invaluable.
But there are a number of additional cool features that make PractiTest a unique solution. We want to show you (only) five of them:
- Anti-Bug Duplication mechanism – Duplicates, bugs that are reported more than once in the system, are a pain for every organization. The overhead and the waste of time of looking for the original bug, defining it as a duplicate, and rejecting the new one is something that we all would like to save from our daily lives.
What if you knew the bug you we are writing right now is a duplicate of an existing bug?
PractiTest comes with a built-in solution to the duplicate-bugs problem: the minute anyone starts entering a bug the systems instantly displays the similar bugs candidates, enabling the user to decide whether this bug is a new one or not.
- Bug by mail – With PractiTest you can report Issues directly from your email client. This is great if you have customers or field engineers (sales, support, etc) who don’t have access to PractiTest, or if you want to forward someone’s bug directly from your inbox to the system:
- Unbelievable Customizations – not only can you customize the fields for your Requirements, Tests & Issues, but you can also implement your own user-permission levels and even define the workflow of your issues.
Read more about PractiTest’s customization - Hierarchical custom views – This is one feature that, once you understand how it works and the value you get from it, you cannot stop using it.
The basic idea is that you can organize your tests-tree based on any fields you choose, for example release version, but ALSO, based on product component and sub-component, and ALSO based on Run Status, etc.
Unlike folders where the Tests are only shown in one place, with views you can show a single test in multiple different trees based on your needs. This is similar to how gmail works with Tags, but BETTER!
Read more about our hierarchal custom views. - Integration with SVN – This is a must for many development teams who choose to work in this very organized way. For each issue you can see all the SVN commits linked to your issues, and also instruct SVN not to allow a commit without an issue being assigned to it.
You can about our integration with SVN
Writing this post made me realize we have a lot more to write about, but maybe I’ll leave that to a latter post.
Better TestSets, Trac integration and more in latest upgrade
Date: 2010-09-01
It’s been more than a month since we introduced the new scalable Test Management model with TestSets and Test Instances.
In this release we improved the functionality around this new model:
- Reporting for Test Instances
- Sorting Test-Instances, inside a TestSet
- Adding a whole Test-view to a TestSet
- Improved GUI when adding the Instances
In addition to the above and the bug fixes we also added a one-way integration with Trac, like we already have with Bugzilla, Jira, and Fogbugz.
Notifications Change
The change that we believe would be mostly appreciated by you is the change in the notification mechanism. Until today, the notifications were sent to the user, according to his preference:
From this update, the notification will not be sent to the user who’ve made the change. There’s no reason to send me an email with the notification of change in a Test, if I’m the one who did that change. So let’s assume there’s a new Issue – the system checks who should be notified for this issue : all the users whose preferences is “for all issue changes” + the author if the author have check in “where I am the author” preference + the assignee, if the assignee set on his preference to be notified. So before sending PractiTest will remove from this list the current user (who, is in this case, the user who created this new issue). In a way, from now on, PractiTest is smart enough to really send only the notifications you need.
Manage your tests and issues from your iPad
Date: 2010-09-01
Would you like to manage and run your tests from your iPad? with PractiTest you can! What do you need to do? just login from your iPad (using Safari). A picture is worth a thousand words, so here it is:
Views and Filters in the Requirements module
Date: 2010-10-01
This week we rolled-out a new PractiTest update. This version comes with a large number of features and improvements that came directly from our customers’ feedback.
One of the biggest additions is the expansion of the Views & Filters functionality into the Requirements module. This features was requested by a number of users who realized Hierarchical Views is what they need in order to manage their requirements more effectively.
As an example, Views can allow you to classify requirements as a hierarchical product tree and also organize them based on Versions and Releases you have in your project plan; you will also be able to group them based on the customer that requested the requirement, or on the cross over functionality it covers. As you see, the possibilities and flexibility are endless – and so are sometimes our users requirements 🙂
Some additional functionality added as part of this version is:
- Expansion of the Actual Results field in the test runs. Giving you more space to add results and format them to provide a better description of your findings.
- Save & New button in the Requirements, Tests and Issues. This button will assist you when entering multiple entities for a single product area, by allowing you to save the entity (i.e. test) and keeping all the fields in the general tab so that you don’t need to enter them once again from the beginning.
- Hide / Show all Step Details in the Test Library Steps. Providing a better and faster way to go over your steps when reviewing or updating your tests.
- And an a large number of smaller features and fixes around views, exporting, emailing, search, tags, etc.
We greatly appreciate your feedback and encourage you to continue sharing your requests via our Users Feedback Forum.
Handled Availability Issues
Date: 2010-11-01
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. 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.
Dashboard customizations, run compact mode, and more in latest release
Date: 2010-12-01
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
- 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.
- 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.
PractiTest Reviewed by IDC
Date: 2010-12-01
Last month IDC published a Private Vendor Profile on PractiTest.
The report includes: Company Overview, Company Snapshot, PractiTest Watch Factor Score Versus Watch Factor Average Score, Potential Market, Market Disruption, Competitive Landscape, Technology/Solution and more.