5 game changing features

Date: 2018-01-05

Looking at different test management tools and comparing them is boring. Yes. I said it. They all say the same and seem to be doing the same. Well, we in PractiTest are working hard to give our clients far beyond the features and solutions they can get anywhere else. We design our product by looking into our clients job, talking to them and listening to their pain points. We gathered a few of our best features for you. These are features you can’t find all together anywhere else, definitely not on the same quality level as can be found on PractiTest . They will help you organize your process, and will give you back great benefits that translate into time and money saving!

Enjoy!

• No more data mining! Hierarchical filter trees + Advanced search – PractiTest offers you a whole new way to look at your data. Having hierarchical filters means you can slice and dice your data to your convenience. It’s a simple setting that organizes your data in a dynamic way instead of leaving it static. Its like tags but much smarter. Add our faceted search to that and your you will never look at your data the same way. Check out this video to better understand
  
• Fully customizable and adaptive – With PractiTest dynamic structure you can start using the tool “as is” and easily customize it to your (often changing) needs as you go. You can customize your fields (enabling custom views), implement your own user-permission levels, define the workflow of your issues, and reuse your existing data in a smart quick way. Even our pricing is scalable. So no matter if its your team that’s changing, your organization or the whole market – we’ve got you covered.
• Never work twice. For real. We can do it.
  – Permutations – YES, permutations. No more clone change clone change clone change… tell us the basic variables you want to check and we will do all the mix and match for you.
  
  – Step parameters + call to test – write a test once, use it multiple times in different ways and customise it easily each time. learn all about it here
  
  – No more duplicated bugs. A unique solution you can read about here
  
• Communicate with PractiTest in more than one way –
  – bug by mail – external team members are able to report bugs by mail. Amazing.
  – External dashboard sharing and advanced reports – Your boss will see the real deal now. In a way that will blow his mind.
  
• Advanced integrations – more than just transferring results. Our system can actually TALK to other systems.
  

We have some more cool unique features. The best way to learn about them is by setting a free personal demo here and discuss how PractiTest can answer YOUR specific needs.

Free Trial

N/A status for better transparency of your testing efforts

Date: 2017-11-01

Remember this?

It’s the N/A step status we added last year as we saw the need for Not Applicable status.

We took this further and from now on, in case you mark all the tests in a test set/run as N/A, the Run status will change to N/A accordingly

(the same applies also to the Test Status, or even the requirement status)

This small GUI change gives an even more accurate and clearer view into your testing status, enabling you to communicate “neutral” testing efforts as they are, and not appear as “no run” like previously.

From today (Nov 29, 2017) at 7:00 AM UTC, N/A statuses will be calculated and updated all the way from the steps to the requirements. Previous runs with N/A steps, are not touched (and considered as NO RUN), mainly since we didn’t want to touch the history of your runs.

Moving to markdown

Date: 2017-07-01

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been working hard to shift our previous description fields which were HTML based to markdown. The reasons to shift are many – it’s easy, fast, clean and more.

It also enabled us to upgrade the editor we had to a simpler markdown editor, with better UI capabilities and fewer bugs. We were also able to enable rich editing in the steps’ descriptions and expected results, that was not part of the application before.

And in addition to all that, if you now export and import tests from and to PractiTest, the style remains, which makes it even easier to migrate data.

Anyways, to cut the story short, we’re markdown! Enjoy the rich editing in steps attributes, and the (almost) bugs free editor.

Take into account that old description fields (of tests, issues, requirements) were all migrated to markdown (from html). Let us know if you find any issues.

Session Based (Exploratory) Testing

Date: 2017-06-01

PractiTest now includes a new type of test that supports Exploratory and Session Based Testing practices.

• Quick and intuitive – Create Exploratory tests as test instances “on the go”
• Run Exploratory Testing Sessions and create annotations for easy tracking and collaboration
• Report Issues from run – works with all your existing project’s integrations

Exploratory tests in PT allow you to define Charters for your ET Sessions, document annotations as you are running your tests, report bugs directly from your runs, and finally to review your ET sessions with colleagues in order to gather feedback.

Unlike other tests, which are created first in the Test Library and then added to any Test Set (new or existing) before running, the Exploratory Test is created as an instance in the TestSet and Runs module “on the go”, which is more intuitive and supportive for exploratory testing methodology.
Now your Test Sets can contain all types of tests at once: automated, manual and exploratory. This ability to combine various tests improve QA coverage and trace-ability.

Learn more

New Step status: N/A

Date: 2016-03-01

A small addition to your steps run that will make a big difference:

• Now you can choose to set test step status as N/A (Non Applicable) and reflect an accurate testing status.
• Test status will be based on all other steps in the Test run and can be marked as completed.

This small GUI and functionality change is helpful, because it means you can now define certain steps “neutral” so they don’t affect the final run status, and you can still pass tests with N/A steps, rather than the previous “no run” option.

This is meant to give your team and project members a more accurate view of project status.

Read more about Test Sets and Run

End to End JIRA Integration

Date: 2016-01-01

Yesterday (Saturday 23rd) we upgraded our integration with JIRA Server, JIRA Cloud

End to end traceability of your Jira Requirements and Issues in PractiTest for Seamless Jira test management

See JIRA issues directly in PractiTest

JIRA users can now see their JIRA Issues directly in PractiTest including all the relevant testing information.

Linked issues are synced to PractiTest in real time.

Integrate Requirements into PractiTest

Your requirements/User stories are now a part of your testing.

Users can now link requirements directly from JIRA to PractiTest and have testing traceability from end to end, including:

Requirements, tests, issues and the relevant reports.

Requirements are synced from JIRA to have information at PractiTest updated at all times.

Users can choose to link/unlink the Requirement from PT to JIRA.

New projects are now easier to set up than ever before.

Project, issue and PT IDs are automatically populated from your JIRA projects.

Start working with this integration today

JIRA Cloud users : Update was done automatically!

JIRA Server users: Please update your PractiTest-JIRA add-on and contact us.

For more information, please review our JIRA integration page.

PractiTest Maintenance Notification

Date: 2014-08-01

Hello,

As part of on-going operations to improve the functionality and the performance of PractiTest we will be carrying out maintenance operations to our servers during the weekend of August 9th, 2014. Even though most of our maintenance does not usually cause any downtime, this specific operation will require us to have some downtime in our service.

In order to minimize the impact of this operation we have scheduled our maintenance to happen on Saturday, August 9th, 2014 at the following time:

• GMT – 5:00 to 9:00
• CEST – 7:00 to 11:00
• Eastern US – 1:00 to 5:00
• Pacific US – 22:00 (Friday Aug 8) to 2:00 AM
• Eastern Australia – 15:00 to 19:00

You can follow our live updates for this operation via PractiTest’s Twitter account.

As always, we will be more than happy to provide additional information and answer any questions you may have. Feel free to send your questions to our support.

Best regards,
The PractiTest Team

Better Test Sets & Runs Navigation

Date: 2013-10-01

Hello to all PractiTesters!

Recently we performed another update of PractiTest with important additions to make your work better and more effective. Let’s start with some additions to make your work clearer, specially when you are only getting started with the system. We believe that each tester (or non-tester) working with PT should understand our methodology (and read the page at least once).

As part of our Testing Methodology you can see that:

• A Test Set is a collection of Test Instances
• An Instance is linked to a Test (in the Test Library), so that each Test can be linked to multiple Instances
• Each Instance can have multiple Test Runs (where the status of the Instance is the status of its last Test Run).

The Test Legend

To avoid confusion (“where am I right now?”), we added a Test Legend in all testing related entities, indicating the location in the application. We believe that especially for new PractiTesters, this legend will help understand our methodology and the links between the different entities.

The standard Testing Scenario

• Each Test (in the Test Library) is defined only once, with all its relevant steps
• Test Set creation, and their respective Instances, are defined once in a while when there’s a reason to start running these tests ( e.g. a new version /release, new functionality, etc).
• Whenever a user goes to the Instance, and presses the Run button, a new Test Run is created, copying all the steps to the test run (so if the Test in the Library is changed later, the steps in the run will not change)
• If for any reason, an Instance needs to be re-run in a specific Test Set, the tester will create an additional Run and not overwrite the previous run. Ensuring all run history is saved.

Better Test Sets and Runs navigation

In addition to the above we decided to streamline the testing process, making the run button much more powerful, and skipping some screens when they’re not required:

• If the user starts a Run from the instance grid, and the Instance has no required fields or older runs, then it goes straight to the run window (with the steps). Enabling to start and testing right a way.
• In cases when there are required fields in the instance that are not filled, it will go to the instance window.
• And in the case there are older runs (that you want to review before starting your new Run!), it will go to the instance window, showing previous runs, enabling to go and check or update one of those test runs.

We are sure these changes will make your testing experience more productive. And we invite you to share with us additional ideas to make your work even more effective in the future.

Can PractiTest support Agile Test Management?

Date: 2013-10-10

Agile Development and Agile Testing

Today, more and more teams are shifting over to AGILE. One of the interesting facts about agile development is that it comes in many variations, from Scrum to Extreme Programming and more; but regardless of the approach you follow there a number of principles in agile development that everyone agrees to:

• Customer satisfaction is achieved by frequent delivery of useful software
• Changes in requirements are part of the software development process
• Regular adaptation is needed to comply with the changing circumstances

When you work based on frequent deliveries, constant changes and regular adaptations; how can you still manage an efficient testing process?

Part of the philosophy behind agile development & agile testing talks about shifting towards automated testing as the means for covering regression testing & test driven development to achieve more stable code from the beginning. This “advise” is helpful but it still falls short from providing the solution and the guidance needed by a QA team to cope with the challenges of shifting to AGILE.

There are books that talk about this, and Joel wrote about similar topics in his blog. But in the end there is nothing like the experience from working with many organizations that shifted to AGILE with the help of PractiTest, and from the knowledge we’ve gain from our own experience developing PractiTest as an agile team. The tools you use will help you achieve your testing and development goals in the same way that a hammer and the nails help the carpenter to make his furniture, and flexibility & adaptability is a must when you are looking for a tool to help you manage your agile process.

PractiTest Test Management Solution for Agile Development

A quick search on the Internet will show there are many solutions specifically designed to handle agile development, and some of them even claim to support agile testing, but we still see many customers who check them out and find they are missing important functionality needed to cover the testing process.

As a methodological test-management solution, from time to time we are asked to show how we support agile development and testing, and an interesting fact is that we support Agile Testing without having any specific feature developed solely for this purpose!

How do we do it? The answer is simple, we believe in flexibility. PractiTest enables YOU, the user, to customize the system based on your process, your product and your needs.

If you working based on sprints, for example, you can customize the system by creating a custom field called SPRINT and adding it to your requirements (or user stories), to your tests and to the issues in your project. Once you have this field in place you can organize all your data and work based on the sprints you defined. You can then create views and reports that will make it easy for everyone to gain visibility into their tasks and those of the team and allow the whole team to manager their work fast and easily.

What’s even best is that you can modify the values in the fields and even the fields themselves with a small number of “clicks” and in a matter of seconds (without the need to of complicated customizations or processes).

Another aspect common to Agile Testing is the popularity of Exploratory Testing among testers. This approach works mainly by defining testing charters up front and documenting your testing steps at the same time you execute the tests. In PractiTest this is easily achieved with the functionality available that lets you edit your tests steps even when you are running them within the Test Sets & Runs module.

There are many aspects that define Agile Development & Agile Testing, and the truth is that each organization and even each team will approach Agile in their own individual and different way (based on their needs and their constraints). In this same way, we believe that it is not correct or even possible to try to define for you how you should manage your agile testing process. The best approach, the one we believe in, is to give you the freedom to let you decide how to work and to support you process your way!

More information about custom views and custom fields.

Radwin

Date: 2013-10-01

“When you post an issue they get back to you promptly and their turnaround is second to none. They’ve even included some features we requested in their releases. You can’t get better than that.”

Kfir Hemed, Head of the Verification Unit at Radwin

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Date: 2013-10-01

“With the help of PractiTest’s customization 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.”

Hein Eltink, test coordinator for the PACTA project

An interesting take on current events: What Can IT Project Leaders Learn from the Healthcare.gov Fiasco?

Date: 2013-10-01

The latest news headlines regarding the healthcare.gov debacle are an excellent example of how not to launch a new website, application or any other IT product. The common development pitfalls — lack of visibility and communication were imminent throughout the whole development process.

As many of you will agree, lack of visibility and communication are illnesses suffered by many software development and IT projects. The problematic signs are usually there, but they are not communicated to higher management.

Without the proper visibility into the process and without the ability to understand the status of the project at all times, management cannot make the correct decisions to ensure the success of the project. Healthcare.gov is an unfortunate example of the catastrophic consequences of noise interfering with the message communicated to higher management.

How can such problems be avoided? … More on the subject in our latest PR release

Improved Preview popovers – only by a button click

Date: 2013-10-01

Since we released the new GUI last month, we got some amazing feedback from our users.

We did an online survey, to explore more about the things you liked and those you though we could still improve and we found that although most of you really loved the changes we did, you still thought we had some things that could be improved.

Many users found it annoying that when they moved their mouse over the id in the grid, the popovers would open automatically; and we also had couple of bugs in this feature (which we fixed in one of those patches we’re doing all the time…) We even added a place in the personal settings to disable those popover from popping automatically.

But we really think this is a great feature and so we decided to solve the issues that were “annoying” some users. We started by changing the functionality so that when the mouse is over the id (hover), we now show the “info” button, enabling the users to click to see the preview but only with a mouse click; and another mouse click to close it.

In addition, we added some useful information to those previews. Tests -> now you can see the first 5 steps, TestSets -> now you can see the first 5 instances, Requirements – > the traceability.

We are sure this feature is now a lot better and it provides even more value than before.

Note: the disable popover flag in the personal settings settings works (turns off the popover) in the places where the feature would have been opened in the “old way” without pressing on the popover button (not in the grids). But we foresee that in the next couple of releases this flag will become irrelevant as we migrate all the popover functionality to work as it is doing in the grids today.

Freeman

Date: 2013-10-01

“The PractiTest team has always been great to work with. If I have found an issue they respond back quickly and very professionally. Without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, we are getting a great product with great support that fits the needs of our department.”

Stephen Musal, Freeman’s Lead QA Tester

Core-Apps

Date: 2013-10-01

“Thanks for a great product!”

Michele Williams, Core Apps

Work better now with PractiTest new & improved GUI

Date: 2013-09-01

Ever since PractiTest was launched, we have always made sure to be in tune to our users’ adaptive needs. Taking into account your requests and feedback we have implemented some changes, refreshed and improved our GUI.

Now we can proudly announce our GUI update – “PractiTest Style 2013”. The new style improves and streamline your daily processes, so now you can work in a more organized and intuitive manner.

Here’s a glimpse of the improvements:

Neutral colors and smart design

One of the first changes you’ll notice is the new color palette. Neutral colors that will help avoid distractions so you and your team can concentrate on your work.

“New” and “Edit” screens

You will notice the new “Edit” and “New” screens have a new design, with easy input fields and better use of the space on your screen.

Tabular step run window

A new and more useful design for steps in Test Sets & Runs, This new design integrates all the functionality of the extended view with the advantages of the compact view.

Rollover Preview

The “old” GUI used to have a right pane in the various modules, which made the whole grid look awkward. So we took it away, and added a popover when hovering those items, to see the fields. The popover was added to most of the entities in the program.

Better support for tablets!

As it is now common use to work on tablets while testing operations, we made sure the new GUI was able to re-size itself and adopt to the various platforms you might use.

And there is so much more!

___________________________________________________________

We know that sometimes changes can prompt questions and so we will be more than happy to assist you any way we can via our support team. We will also be delighted if you want to write to us to share your thoughts and comments on this new GUI.

We hope that you like what you see. And thanks for using PractiTest.

– The PractiTest team

PT GUI change – what and how

Date: 2013-09-01

Heads up for PractiTest clients
If you think you’d like to use our staging environment with the new GUI to get a feeling of the new system before the deployment, please don’t hesitate to contact us (email to support).

As many of you already know, we’re are going to be upgrading our GUI in the next couple of weeks.

We’ve been wanting to do this project for a while now, but we started the concrete process only around April 2013. The idea was to improve a number of aspects in the User Interface, and also perform some technical changes and optimizations to our existing platform.

Here are some of interface issues we wanted to solve as part the GUI project:

• Make better use of the available screen – most of our users use desktops, with large HD screens, when testing their software. We thought it was about time to make better use of the width of these wide screens and avoid the scroll if we can.
• Flexible Text Areas – we have text areas in numerous of places (entities’ description, steps’ descriptions and more). Having them with a fixed height forced customers to use the scroll many times (either when scrolling the whole page, or scroll inside the text area itself). Now, these text areas expand and collapse dynamically as needed!
• Replace the issue right pane with a preview pane. The “old” GUI used to have a right pane in the issues module that we didn’t like. It made the whole grid look awkward and usually it was used only to view the fields (and not to edit them). So we took it away, and added a popover when hovering those items, to see the fields. The popover was added to many other grids as well.
• Better support for tablets. As much as we said that our users work with their desktops, we found that a number of users are starting to work with tablets during part of their testing operations. The new GUI is smart enough to resize itself all the way to “tablet size” and help you work seamlessly with these devices.
• Reduce the amount of tabs we have in each entity. It came to our attention that we had too many tabs and that we could reduce this number by grouping part of the information into existing tabs. So now, for example, you will be able to add comments and attachments from the general tab.
• And many other changes and improvements.

In addition to the externally perceived changes in the GUI, we also did some important improvements to the GUI infrastructure “behind the scenes”. One of them was the adoption of Twitter Bootstrap.

There were many reasons for selecting this framework, and the main ones are the following:

• We like its clean and simple design, and we feel it helps us to set design boundaries.
• It encourages us (as designers and developers) to use their standard, and we love coding standards 🙂
• It is quite easy to implement, even in a large application such as PractiTest.

• It has almost all the components we need, and we can probably get rid of some collected javascripts code.

• It supports responsive design.

Here’s how the Tests’ grid looks now:

And so, after completing the design of the Graphical Interface, we started the development phase of the “new GUI project” on April. We did in parallel to all the rest of the on-going projects on a separate git branch.

We’re happy that up to now we’ve achieved the following accomplishments:

• Changed ~ 27k lines of code (w/o white-space changes)
• Made 752 commits
• CSS lines of code dropped from ~8000 lines down to ~1000 lines in separate files- making it much more maintainable
• We started to use only css.scss (instead of css), once again for easier code maintenance
• We revised a lot of the javascript code, using namespaces, and refactoring old stuff
• We dropped most of the images we used, using instead fortawesome (which will make everything load faster via sprites)

Completing this GUI project (which is now in advanced testing stages) was very intensive. We had to scope out many items we wanted todo (revise reports GUI, change to a standard grid, and more), that will be postpone for further releases in the coming weeks/months. But overall we are very happy and excited with the results!

Finally I’d like to thank the people who worked hard to make this project happen: Einav, Ortal, Boris, Joel, Nir & Stas

New GUI Design is on the way!

Date: 2013-08-01

PractiTest was initially released in 2008. Back then we designed the GUI almost on our own, and we were anxious to get the product out for beta usage.

Since then, the application has continued growing based on our product road-map and the comments & ideas from our ever expanding user base.

Over the years many things have changed, we modified our logo, we moved to a new office location, and all the time we got requests from of our users to refresh and improve parts of our GUI, to streamline some of our processes and to organize the information a little better.

Until we reached the point where we realized that it was the correct time to shift to a new and more professional 2013-style GUI; one that supports both current and future features, and that will be based on the benefits HTML5 technologies and more.

So about half a year ago, we started this “new GUI” project. The project itself included thousands of code changes, an upgrade of the libraries we use, and major changes to our css and app layout; all this resulting in a faster, cleaner and better application.

We showed some of the changes to a limited number of customers, and their positive reviews literally blowed us away!

Here’s a glimpse of what’s about to come:

1. Neutral colors and smart design

One of the first changes you’ll notice is the new palette, with neutral colors to help you concentrate on your work.

The new toolbars and the overall design of the system has been focused on displaying more information, doing so with a more structured and intelligent approach.

2. New and Edit screens

The screens to create Requirements, Tests, Tests Sets and Issues will also have now a more structured design.

With a more flowing design to better use all your screen, grouping fields based on type (e.g. user, dates, etc), and decreasing the number of tabs by grouping more information areas together, such as Attachments and Comments on the General Tab.

3. Step Edit and Execution windows

Steps were also upgraded based on a number of comments and requests we got from our users.

Steps are now displayed in a grid like view. Run and Step status is more evident based on the color of the step’s name, and a new-integrated view will provide all the advantages of the compact view with all the functionality (e.g. report bug ids, add attachments, etc) of the extended view.

And much, much more…

These is only a small sample of the improvements that will be provided with the new GUI design of PractiTest.

We expect to release this “new GUI” project within the next month or so (by October). PractiTest Account Managers – you can expect to get access to see these changes in the next 2 to 3 weeks.

If you have any questions or comments please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Introducing PT Labs, cloning issues between projects, TestSets & Reports API

Date: 2013-06-01

We’ve kept busy during the last couple of weeks working on the new product GUI, but in the meantime we’ve also released some features and improvements that a number of our users eagerly requested:

• PT Labs.
  With the increasing number of ideas we keep wanting to develop and include into PractiTest, we choose create the PT Labs project as a testing ground for experimental features that aren’t quite ready for primetime. But that we think provide great value to many of our users.To check out the PT Labs section simply go to Settings and then to the Project tab.
• Cloning issues between projects.
  One of the first features to enter the PT Labs project is the ability to clone bugs between projects. Once you activate this feature in the settings you will be able to copy your bugs between the different projects based on your development process.
• Test Sets and Reports API.
  As many of our customers keep making extensive use of our API we got multiple requests to add API coverage to the Test Sets and to the Reports areas of PractiTest.

As always, we invite all of you to continue providing us with feedback and ideas on the features you’d like to see added to PractiTest as well as any other improvements you can think about. Just add your feature requests to our Product Feedback forum.

See you all in our new update!

Import tests and steps, improved graphs settings and more

Date: 2013-04-01

In the last couple of weeks we released a number of improvements to PractiTest to help you work better and faster:

• Additional advanced settings in Dashboard Graphs.
  These settings let you create wider graphs to handle more information, and they also allow you determine the colors of your graphs easier and with a higher level of control for each of the categories in the graphs themselves.
  

• Ability to import Tests and Steps from one file in one operation.
  This is one of the biggest requests we got around this feature. PractiTest now allows you to import all your test information (including the steps) in one go.
  To learn more about this feature and how to work with it you can read this suport article on how to import tests and steps.

• Work directly with MS-Excel files such as XLS and XLSX. This will allow users to work faster, without the need to convert their files to CSV.

Make sure to contact us and to keep telling us what you want to see improved or added into PractiTest. We’re always happy to get your feedback.

See you all in our next update!

Rich Text Formatting, Improved filter definition, Import & Export settings, and more

Date: 2013-01-01

During the last month we’ve been gradually rolling out a number of features and changes aimed at improving the system and to answer the requests received by a number of users.

• Rich Text Formatting. Allowing users to add text effects such as bold, italics, underline, as well as colors, bullets and numbering. With the rich formatting we are also providing support for Right to Left text orientation* (as required by our Hebrew and Arabic speaking customers).
  
• Improved filter definitions and view exporting. As part of our new features we redefined the way users create and edit filters, improving the usability of this control. We also added the option to export each view as part of the view control itself (see image bellow).
  
• Import and Export Settings. We decided to group the importing and exporting functions and place them in their own tab as part of the settings, making it faster for users who want to perform regular exports of all their projects in one place.
• Plus additional bug fixes and smaller features.

We invite all of you to continue providing us with feedback and ideas on the features you’d like to see added to PractiTest as well as any other improvements you can think about. Just add your feature requests to our Product Feedback forum.

See you all in our new update!

* To enable RTL (Right to Left), goto Settings -> Project, check the enable RTL checkbox & Save

Improved Filters, Enhanced Attachments and more

Date: 2012-11-01

Yesterday night we released a new version of PractiTest. This update comes with a number of features and improvements.

• Improved filters. New GUI that makes it easier to manage your filters, as well as the ability to see the filter criteria for the whole filter hierarchy. In addition to this, the filter pane now loads a lot faster than before.
  
• Enhanced attachments. Graphical attachments now have a thumbnail that allows you to preview the image before opening it.
• Additional functionality to issue integrations. Displaying bug IDs in reports.
• And many other enhancements and features.

As always, we want to hear more from you about the stuff you’d like to see if include or improve in PractiTest. Feel free to contact us via our support team.

See you all soon in another PractiTest update!

Server issues and backup restore

Date: 2012-10-23

Yesterday (Oct 22nd) about 5:45 PM GMT (10:45 AM PDT) our web hosting provider Amazon (AWS) started experiencing performance and connection issues.
These issues caused a large number of Internet service companies, including PractiTest, to become unavailable.

We were able to regain temporary access to our servers between 11:30 PM GMT and 12:15 AM GMT, but then the system came down once again.

After evaluating all our options we decided that the best way to solve this issue would be to bring up our latest backup of the system and restore it to a completely new server farm in a different Amazon hosting zone.
We performed this operation and we were able to bring full access to all our servers and services at Oct 23, 8:45 AM GMT (1:45 AM PDT).

Still, the last full backup that was available to perform this operation was from yesterday at 12:00 noon GMT. This means that all information entered between 12:00 noon GMT and 6:45 GMT as well as what was entered for the 45 minutes the servers were up later in the day was not restored.

As a serious web service provider we understand that access to project data is your highest priority and our top-most responsibility.
We are still working to try to bring back the information that we were not able to restore, and we will work with the accounts affected to make it available to them as soon as possible in a separate server.

In parallel we are working on understanding what measures we can implement to lower the risk of issues like this happening once again in the future.

We apologize for any troubles this issue may have caused and will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

More about this Amazon AWS outage.

SAS, Redhat and PractiTest Collaborate Around Next Generation Testing and QA Management

Date: 2012-10-01

We are pretty excited about the announcement released a couple of days ago around the successful collaboration between SAS, Redhat and PractiTest, as you can read from the official press release.

The announcement comes to communicate the vast success SAS has been having managing the testing and Quality Assurance aspects of their deployment projects in the UK.

As was described by James Ochiai-Brown, SAS Senior Solution Architect: “PractiTest gives us the ability to manage our testing in a structured way, and more importantly, demonstrate to our clients the quality assurance that they demand…”

This PR also comes to emphasize the value gained by the relationship between PractiTest and Redhat, as part of the Redhat Innovate program, to which PractiTest was accepted late last year.

If you have questions about any part of this Press Release feel free to contact us.

Improved Reports, advanced options on Dashboard items and more

Date: 2012-08-01

Last night we released the latest PractiTest update that included a number of features aimed at improving the reporting and Testing Intelligence capabilities of the system

• Dashboard graphs and tables in reports. This was a request that came from a number of users who wanted to add graphical elements to their reports. The feature allows users to add any graph (pie-chart, bar-chart, or progress graph) or any distribution table from the dashboard to any report in PractiTest.
  

• Select what parts to include in your Detailed reports. Another field request that asked to control the sections included as part of your detailed reports. Starting today you can select whether to show (or not) sections such as comments, history, etc as part of your reports.
• Control the colors of your dashboard graphs. A simple yet powerful feature that let’s you choose what colors to display for each category in your graphs.
• Choose where to display graphs’ legends. An additional field request to define where to place the legend describing the graphs. You can now choose if you want to display this legend inside the graph, at the bottom of the graph, or not to display the legend at all.
• Graph entity preview. This one is the team’s favorite 🙂 – a simple preview of the dashboard items within the settings, to show you how the graph will look based on the definitions you just set or modified.
  

Clearly we are interested in getting your feedback on these or any other features of the system. Send us your requests to our user forum, and your comments to our support (support-at-practitest-dot-com).

See you all soon with another PractiTest update!

* Also for this upgrade there was no downtime.

Introducing our new PractiTest logo

Date: 2012-07-01

As you may have noticed, earlier today we modified our Website.

Basically we wanted our users and potential customers to understand why our Intelligent testing platform improves the QA planning, design and execution processes; ensuring product status transparency and reducing time to market uncertainty.

As part this update we also introduced our new logo, that includes a drawing of our mascot, the testing fox.

Why did we add a fox to our logo?

For many of us (testers) this is a trivial question, but still to make sure we don’t leave any doubts out there, the answer lies in the similarities between the “personal characteristics” of a fox and those of a good tester.

Think about a fox for a second, how he behaves in nature and what traits help him survive and even exceed in his surroundings.

You can say that in order to survive in the wild a fox he needs to be:
– Smart
– Crafty
– Creative
– Sneaky
– Adaptable
– Ingenious
And the list goes on and on…

Now let’s look at the Tester in his natural habitat:

SMART – OK, who’d ever say that his job allows even “dumb” people to succeed… But in the case of testing we know that due to the level of complexity required of us, as well as the multitasking and context-switching that define our day-to-day tasks testers need to be smart enough to quickly grasp the challenges ahead of them and successfully approach them in the most intelligent way – without wasting time over-analyzing the situation.

CRAFTY-ness in testers refers to the way we are required to make use of the tools we have at hand, and at times even to come up with new tools to complete our jobs.

CREATIVE-ness allows us to look at an issue and come up with interesting and new approaches to understand and solve them. Sometimes it is how to test a component, other times it can be how to find the complete scenario of a difficult bug, regardless of how you see it, a tester needs to be able to find the solutions by reframing or zooming out from their tasks.

SNEAKY – as the saying goes, it takes a thief to catch a thief! And so, a tester needs to have a sense of sneakiness when he sets out to hunt for bugs. One of the tips I give beginning testers is to go and check the bug database for defects that were detected and fixed in past versions. Understanding the way bugs sneak into the system is always a good way of catching new bugs that used “old ways” to sneak in.

ADAPTABILITY is also something that allows a good tester to juggle between the testing tasks, bug verification tasks, “trouble-shooting with support” tasks, feedback to developer tasks, and all the other tasks that fill out our daily task list.

Finally INGENUITY or cleverness is what allows us to keep coming up with answers and different approaches to the challenges faced everyday.

So, why did we choose a fox? Because a tester needs to be like the fox that works in small groups and even though he’s not the strongest, or the fastest in the forest, he is still able to catch his prey successfully and elegantly.

How to Best Manage Distributed Testing

Date: 2012-07-01

We all see it happening and a lot of us are part of it – the distributed testing (and development) phenomenon – a project tested by engineers in different locations either locally – working from home, or the office, on different shifts and in different departments, or internationally – anywhere in the world, and in a range of different time zones.

QA managers and testers know what a coordination and management nightmare distributed testing scenarios can be. If everyone isn’t on the same page, not only do testing teams miss deadlines but they don’t catch and properly follow up on all issues and bugs, and this leads to… well, we all have a story or two of where this leads.

Although distributed testing has been around for years, there are teams out there that still use Excel to manage their testing procedures. Now, don’t get us wrong. We think Excel is great. We use it too, to keep track of our departments’ budgets, for some of our scheduling and to import/export testing-related files. These days, Excel can even be accessed via the Web and mobile and it does enable a degree of collaboration. But, for managing testing, the most efficient – and dare we say, smartest – method is to use a dedicated testing solution, created by testers for testers and the way they need to work.

As lots of you already know, PractiTest is a great testing solution. It allows managers to manage and gain control of their processes in the way that makes sense for the particular project, taking into account the departments, assignments, and people involved. There are so many features that make it a thorough and dependable testing management solution but here we’ll mention just a few – those more relevant for distributed testing.

• PractiTest facilitates the communication that is crucial to successful distributed testing – by keeping everyone up to date with tasks, issues, bugs, statuses, etc. and making the work routine clear to all. And, because it’s cloud-based, no matter where in the world testers are doing their job, the system is fast and responsive.
  
• QA managers simply set up and organize test runs, assigning them to testers – wherever they may be. Each step performed reports independent results including actual outcomes of the test, so the status of who’s working on what, and where it stands is clear to all.
• Issue workflow is managed in a single system including work on bugs, enhancement requests and other tasks. For example, managers can define the workflow for bugs, specifying which groups may perform the different transitions between them so that rejecting issues can be limited to team leaders, or permiting only testers to transition a bug from Fixed to Closed, etc.
• Duplicate bugs are prevented from being submitted – a potential scenario when many testers are not necessarily in direct contact. The system scans the database for similar descriptions to the bug currently being entered into the system.
  
• Managers can set up email notifications for alerts on work on issues of particular importance.
• And more…

We encourage you to find out more about PractiTest so that you too can make distributed testing manageable and successful.

Wavion

Date: 2012-06-01

“With PractiTest we finally connected Marketing, R&D and QA in one system, streamlining our whole product – development process – from requirements to testing. The results: shorter development and testing cycles, and a product that is closer to market demands.”

Uriel Perlman, Head of QA, Wavion

Delek Corp.

Date: 2012-06-01

“With PractiTest we manage testing of three separate applications (ERP, point-of-sale, and payment processing). This means that separate QA teams in different sites use PractiTest to manage tests and bugs.
No doubt, this is the best product in its price category: PractiTest is solid enough to support multiple testing environments and complex scenarios, yet it’s very intuitive for everyday use (such as filling in bug information and opening new projects). Their support is second to none; a mail is normally replied within the hour; sometimes directly by phone.”

Ophir Amitai, QA Manager, Delek Corp.

Symcotech

Date: 2012-06-01

“PractiTest enables us to organize our tests and report bugs into one database, in a unified and pre-defined mode, providing us with much-needed order and enabling us to streamline our testing process.
As a service provider working in complete transparency with our customers, we found the PractiTest dashboard and reporting mechanism a superior tool for providing our customers with a clear and precise view of development status. In this way PractiTest helps us reach our goal of maximal customer satisfaction.”

Hila Vax, QA Team leader, Symcotech

Plimus

Date: 2012-06-01

“We were looking for a solution to organize our testing process and keep control of our quality. PractiTest supplied what we needed, with its organized and structured test case management solution.”

Gilad Breslawer, QA Team Leader, Plimus

Improved instances grid, multi level linked list and more in PractiTest’s latest release

Date: 2012-04-01

We open this month with the latest version of PractiTest, released on april 1st. This version includes new features and updates, most of them were requested by our customers.

Here are the main changes made in the latest version:

• Our new and improved Test Instances grid: You can now select to see any field taken from the original test (in the Test Library) as part of your test instances grid (within the Test Set). So you can now filter the instances in the grid based on the Test fields (just click on the Columns button)!
  

• Multi-level linked-lists: in previous versions, you were able to create linked-list field, whose values depend upon a previously created list field, so that your linked lists were limited to 2 levels only (parent-child). Now you no longer have to settle for a 2-level linked list, and you can create linked lists with as many levels as you need.
  For example, you can create a regular list field to denote the OS you are working on, then a linked list of Browsers showing you only the browsers available for each OS, and then a second linked list of Browser Versions showing you only versions relevant for the selected browser.
  

• New notification list: users defined as Administrators can now add other users to an entity – notification list, to make sure their users receive messages when changes are made the entity
  

• Improved dashboard pie-charts, with easy to read labels located outside the different sections.
  

We hope you enjoy and benefit from these new additions, and as always, we are waiting for your feature request if you have further suggestions or comments, don’t hesitate to let us know!

PractiTest joins Red Hat Innovate!

Date: 2012-03-01

We are happy to announce that PractiTest has been selected to participate in Red Hat Innovate.

Red Hat Innovate is a new initiative launched by Red Hat, the world’s leading Open Source Software Company. The initiative aims to assist innovative software development start-ups to build on the power of the open source community.

Red Hat – vote of confidence means a lot to us, and we are very excited to be offered this partnership. This opportunity will help us keep doing what we do best – developing and innovating in the field of software testing.

A quick guide to Agile testing in PractiTest

Date: 2012-02-01

More and more teams are switching to Agile development, in order to increase their efficiency and meet the competitive requirements of the field and their users.

Agile software development is very different from more traditional forms of development. As such, it – only logical that adapting an Agile development methodology will require a change in the testing process.

Managing your Agile testing process using PractiTest

Agile testing is a team effort, and therefore requires high-quality communication between team members. Since the testing process may seem less “organized”, it – very important that the relevant information is available to all parties involved. You should always know what should be tested, who – testing what and where everything stands.

Here at PractiTest we are ardent believers of agile development and testing, and we try to design our test management software accordingly. Many of our features can contribute significantly to your agile testing process (as well as make your life a lot easier regardless of your testing methodology). Using Traceabiliy between entities, dynamic views instead of rigid folders, the flexibility of our customization settings, and the graphical information displayed in the Dashboard – your testing process can be more effective than ever before.

User stories

In more traditional testing methods, you would use the Requirements module to define how your system under test (SUT) should work, and what should be tested. In an Agile testing process, you can replace the traditional requirements with user stories – short and precise descriptions of your end users’ needs. You can then organize your User Stories using Custom Views.

Sharing tests in the test library

In PractiTest you can write and manage your Acceptance Tests (i.e. – tests designed to ensure that your requirements are met) within the Test Library, linking them back to the User Story where they originated.

You can then use the history, comments and notifications features to allow everyone to add their inputs into these tests, and to be informed about any changes made by other users.

You can simply create a test for each User Story, where developers can provide their inputs to testers as they come up with ideas during the design or coding process.

Creating tests sets for each user story

We recommend creating Test Sets for each User Story Independently. These test sets can contain the acceptance tests, functional tests, and any other testing operations needed for a specific User Story. This way you can get a better sense of coverage and completion for each User Story. It is also recommended to use the Tractability function to link between tests and their user stories.

Grouping issues based on their target sprint and user story

When you report issues, use custom fields to assign them the sprint in which they should be solved.

Also, in order to have tractability between issues, tests and requirements, you should link your tests to their relevant user stories. You can report issues directly from your test runs (using “fail and issue”), or link the issues back to the tests they originated from, for full tractability.

Using views to organize your issues based on Sprints, Users Stories, Modules, etc.

A good practice is to use the Issues Module not only to report bugs, but also to manage all the tasks of your User Stories and Sprint. Create tasks to keep track of the activities of your project and their individual statuses.

Provide visibility using a Summary Dashboard and additional Dashboards per User Story

You can use the Dashboard to keep your team up to date with the status of the Sprint in general, and of each User Stories in particular.

With the help of the views you have in each of your modules, create one dashboard centralizing all the information for your Sprint, and then create additional dashboard tabs with information for each User Story independently.

Alerting before loosing unsaved data, multilists on the dashboard, improved account visibility and more

Date: 2011-12-01

Just before the end of the 2011, and maybe as a starting point for 2012, we just released (this last Wednesday) and update to PractiTest with additional features requested by many of you during the last couple of months.

The feature list is extensive, but here is a summary of the highlights:

• User alert before leaving a page with unsaved data. A simple yet useful reminder for those cases when you “accidentally” left a page with issues or tests and you forgot save your work before hand.
• Multilist support on the dashboard. This feature will allow you to create graphs and tables also for fields of type multilist, providing enhanced visibility into your project.
  

• Added instance count field to the Test Set Grid. Similar to the Step Count in the Test Library, providing added visibility into your Test Sets
• Improved visibility into the users in your account. Showing Account Administrators a list of their users by the projects they are assigned to, and of the projects with all the users in them. This feature also allows you to delete users from all projects simultaneously.
• Email notification for users when added to a new project. Making sure your users are aware of new assignments or additional projects they can now access via PractiTest.
• And many additional smaller features and fixes

As always, we invite you to go to our User’s Feedback forum and update us with the features and options you would like to see included in PractiTest. This information is really important to us to make our system better and more aligned with your needs.

From all the PractiTest team and family, we hope you had a pretty cool and fun 2011, and we wish 2012 is you an event better year; a year of happiness, success & fruitful testing!

Stuff that worked and lessons learned from a Service Outing

Date: 2011-12-01

Improved grid, attachments to steps, fast filters and more

Date: 2011-10-01

PractiTest product support is getting an upgrade!

Date: 2011-09-01

We've been making changes over the last several weeks to better support our customers at PractiTest. As our client-base grow, so do the support requests, and our need for more automation and integration to our workflows.

That’s why we have migrated to new PractiTest help platform (via Assistly). This will make support more efficient. What you can expect is the same level of support, with the following visible changes:

• All support will be answered right in your inbox.
• A new knowledge-base, with the same articles you're used to.
• Later on, an easier ticket submission right from the app instead of opening your email or creating a ticket in the help site.

We are confident this new system will make our excellent support even better.

Radwin: ‘a Top-Notch Test Management Tool’

Date: 2011-08-01

We at PractiTest were very excited to hear what Radwin’s Kfir Hemed had to say about us. Hemed is head of the Verification Unit at Radwin, a world leading communications equipment vendor. His team has been using PractiTest for large scale testing cycles.
In Hemed’s own words:

“I liked the product, the simplicity, the ease of use. I decided to run one set of tests for a month and see how it goes. After the first trial we tested a bigger version, and only after that went smoothly – we moved all of our testing to PractiTest.”

“We never had a system crash or slow down. It – easy to deploy – the logic of the system and the UI are clear – and the learning curve is very quick. This is very beneficial for us because we frequently loan testers from other departments, and they start using PractiTest in no time.”

“The results are effective and better managed testing cycles: accurate planning that is executed on schedule, with clear logging of each and every test, issue and bug. With an average cycle exceeding several hundreds tests – that’s a big advantage.”

Radwin: ‘a Top-Notch Test Management Tool’

Date: 2011-08-01

We at PractiTest were very excited to hear what Radwin’s Kfir Hemed had to say about us. Hemed is head of the Verification Unit at Radwin, a world leading communications equipment vendor. His team has been using PractiTest for large scale testing cycles.
In Hemed’s own words:

“I liked the product, the simplicity, the ease of use. I decided to run one set of tests for a month and see how it goes. After the first trial we tested a bigger version, and only after that went smoothly – we moved all of our testing to PractiTest.”

“We never had a system crash or slow down. It – easy to deploy – the logic of the system and the UI are clear – and the learning curve is very quick. This is very beneficial for us because we frequently loan testers from other departments, and they start using PractiTest in no time.”

“The results are effective and better managed testing cycles: accurate planning that is executed on schedule, with clear logging of each and every test, issue and bug. With an average cycle exceeding several hundreds tests – that’s a big advantage.”

Launching Test Automation Support

Date: 2011-06-01

Does your team have automated tests?

• Do you run automation as part of your tests?
• How do schedule and execute your automated scripts?
• Do you generate reports out of your automation? Do you do this together with your manual tests?

It’s great to see how test automation is becoming more common in today’s testing organizations. Something that used to be mainly a buzzword in the industry, is becoming a helpful tool to many teams around the world.

Regardless if you use Selenium, QTP, or even home-brewed scripts, automation is more and more a part of everyday QA life. Even though it is still far from being a Silver Bullet, as many tool vendors want us to believe, it allows to streamline our processes and to develop more stable products, helping us release high quality products faster than before.

The problem is that, in order to make proper use of automation you need to manage it and integrate it into your overall testing process. For example, you need to understand what part of your tests are automatic vs. manual; or sometimes you are asked to generate reports that will show your stakeholders the overall testing status of your product (regardless if the test is automated or not!).

What were we looking to solve?

After getting a number of requests from users to expand PractiTest’s functionality to manage (also) automated tests we started searching for the best possible solution.

Basically we wanted to come up with an approach that would allow users to:

1. Manage their tests and runs, whether manual or automated, in one place.
2. Increase the visibility of the automation efforts and teams, eliminating any communication or coordination issues.
3. To see the results of all my tests in one place, creating comprehensive reports.
4. Providing a solution that is simple to deploy and flexible enough to manage as many tools as possible.

Our solution – the xBot automation agent

So, after talking to our users and reviewing many possible approaches we chose to develop what we call the xBot automation agent, a small java utility that runs on every OS (Windows, Mac, Linux) and is able to execute scripts written on any tool or any language.

Users who want to run automated test simply map their automation scripts to tests in the Test Library, they then create a Test Set with their scripts, and schedule the time when they want their tests to start running. When this time arrives the xBot gets from PractiTest the order to execute the scripts locally. Finally after each test is run, the agent uploads the results to PractiTest as part of the test execution log.

Public release of the xBot agent

In the beginning of the year we started a private beta with a limited number of customers who had asked for this functionality. Later on, in February, we released the public beta in order to get more feedback on the solution.

In May and June published a number of posts in our QAblog, linked-in and other forums, asking testers what are their biggest challenges when coordinating automated and manual tests.

Now, after taking the feedback from the Beta and the inputs from the web, we are proud to release this new solution to support automated testing via PractiTest.

We hope you’ll like our solution and invite you to keep providing us your feedback. Here’s more information about the xBot and PractiTest’s support for Automated Tests.

Affiliate Program

Date: 2011-06-01

Do you know a company that may benefit from PractiTest? Now you can earn money by recommending users to work with PractiTest.

PractiTest will pay a referral fee of twenty percent (20%) of net revenues for the life-time of your referral, subject to a minimum requirements.

PractiTest Affiliate Program is simple:

• In order to receive a referral fee you need to refer at least one new paying customer every twelve months, generating a minimum US $400 revenues per month.
• As long as this minimum milestone is kept, you will receive the referral fee of 20% for all the accumulative accounts you referred!

As you can see, this is an awesome affiliate program so go ahead and check-out the details. This is your chance to benefit both yourself and your colleagues, by recommending PractiTest.

How Delek uses PractiTest to manage their Exploratory Testing

Date: 2011-06-01

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.

Dashboard & Reporting features, Test Sets’ improvements and much more

Date: 2011-03-01

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!

Automation Tests Support Beta is now Publicly available

Date: 2011-02-01

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

1. 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.
   
2. 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:
   
3. 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
4. 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.
5. 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.
   

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:

1. 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.
   
2. 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:
   
3. 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
4. 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.
5. 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.
   

Writing this post made me realize we have a lot more to write about, but maybe I’ll leave that to a latter post.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.
  

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!

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.
  
• 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.

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!

Tests Management enhancements and more

Date: 2009-12-01

Greetings!!

This weekend (November 6th) we performed an additional update to PractiTest incorporating some useful and important features into the system.

Some of the most important additions are:

• Batch edit in Tests – where users can either select individual tests or whole views and perform batch modifications to the fields in the entities. (We are experimenting with this editing mechanism in the Tests module before deciding whether to implement it in the Issues module too, feel free to tell us what you think).
• Navigation Mechanism in Issues and Tests – allowing users to navigate from entity to entity in their views without needing to go back to the grid. A small improvement that we think will save a lot of “clicks” to our users.
  
• Enhancements to the test cloning mechanism – allowing users to choose tests one by one before cloning a new Test Suit.
• Improvements to the folder management mechanism in Tests – allowing to edit and move folders more easily. Starting from this update, you can also clone tests from folders too.
• Additions to the Jira integration plug-in – based on the initial feedback we received from our users.
• And many smaller features and fixes throughout the system.

Many of the features above came from the feedback provided by our users in PractiTest’s Feedback Forum. We encourage you all to keep telling us what you want and need, and we will do our best to fill out your wishes…

Our Test Management Tool integrates with Jira

Date: 2009-12-01

We know of a number of reasons people like using PractiTest.
For example the idea of running tests and reporting issues automatically when a step fails, without needing to manually add all the steps to reproduce the bug.
The fact that all the testware (Requirements, Tests & Issues) is located in the same system.
The easy of use and simplicity of the User Interface.
And these are only a few…

Still we also see companies who are interested in using PractiTest as their Test Management Tool, but don’t want (or can’t) move their whole R&D team to work with PractiTest as their single Issue tracking system. After receiving a number of requests from companies like these, that are also using Jira, we developed an Integration between Jira and PractiTest.

One of the main difference in our approach is that, unlike many of the other tools integrating with Jira with a 1-side only integration (where bugs submitted in their tool are only copied to Jira and then the link is cut), we implemented a 2-way synchronization that allows our users to still take advantage of our Bug Management as well as our Test Management functionality:

• If you create an Issue on PractiTest you will see it on Jira
• If you create an Issue on Jira you will see it on PractiTest
• When you edit or update an issue, either on Jira or on PractiTest, you will see the changes on the other tool
• So if there’s a bug that originated from a test in PractiTest, you will see all the steps also in Jira, and you will be able to go to the Test in PractiTest directly from the Jira window.

The integrations requires some configuration and mapping (for the fields and their values in both tools) before it starts, but this configuration makes it very flexible and a lot more intelligent than simply copying the default system fields as they are.

The bottom line is that it took us more time than we originally thought it would take to develop this integration, but we think we are on to something good. So I’d like to thank all the users who keep working with us on this project and giving us feedback on the plugin, and to our R&D guys for developing it around the clock.

PractiTest-Jira Integration Help

PractiTest Update

Date: 2009-11-08

Hello all!

This weekend we updated PractiTest with some new and useful features, many of which originated from your comments on PractiTest’s Feedback Forum.

This upgrade comes with some exciting stuff such as:

• Jira Integration with a 2-way synchronization between PractiTest and Jira for Seamless Jira test management. (We will post a separate article with more information on this integration as well as the configuration instructions).
• In the Custom Fields settings you have the ability to Reuse the values of existing lists on new lists. For cases where you have one list that you want to use in multiple fields (e.g. Product Versions, Customers, Products, etc).
• Option to edit system fields (like Issue Type, Priority, etc). Modify their values, add default values, and decide whether to show them or hide them as part of your project.
  
• A new requirement traceability report, showing the end-to-end traceability from requirements, to tests, and to issues. You can access this report from the Requirements module, under the views and reports drop-down list.
• Global search in custom fields. Now each time you search for a word or phrase the system also searches in the custom fields you added to your project.
  
• Display of Step Number as part of the Test Editing and Execution windows.
• Ability to import requirements into PractiTest from csv files.
• PractiTest now remembers the status of the Requirements tree, so you don’t need to collapse it each time you re-enter the Requirements module.
• And additional small fixes.

As we already said, many of the features listed above came from your inputs, and so we invite you to continue telling us what’s you need so that we can continue developing the stuff that’s important to YOU.

Updated PractiTest help

Date: 2009-10-01

Today we posted a new version of PractiTest’s product help.

This new version includes most of the changes and improvements we did mainly to the Settings module. There is also a Getting Started section with explanations on how to perform some of PractiTest most common operations.

Presenting PractiTest’s product feedback forum

2009-10-01

During the last couple of months we’ve seen a steady increase in the number companies working with PractiTest. Together with new users come their ideas on how to improve the system, and so we literally got flooded with great features and enhancement requests.

Don’t get me wrong we are obviously thrilled! But if some time ago we managed to collect all this info manually (by talking directly to all our clients) and prioritize it based on the number of users who wanted each feature, today this task has become almost impossible without an automated system.

So, we found a system we really like: here’s the link to PractiTest’s Feedback Forum – http://practitest.uservoice.com.
Please don’t hesitate, just go and log all your requests there!

Before suggesting a new feature make a quick search and if it was already requested just vote for it. You have 10 votes and you can choose to give 1-3 votes to each request / idea.

Here’s how it looks like:

One last thing…
In parallel to the features we develop based on customer feedback, we have a defined product road-map and a clear idea of where we want PractiTest to head in the future. This means that we continue developing functionality based on this road-map even if sometimes these features have not been explicitly requested by customers yet.

Having said that, we always make sure that each new release includes functionality or improvements that were requested by users and we prioritize them using the feedback you provide.

Comming soon… Affiliates Program

Date: 2009-10-01

Are you a QA or Testing Consultant, Expert or Site?
We invite you to join forces with PractiTest.

We are about to launch PractiTest’s affiliates and distribution program for QA and Testing Firms, Consultants and Experts worldwide. Earn money by recommending users to work with PractiTest, the best Hosted QA Management Solution available today.

We’ll be providing additional incentives to the initial number of affiliates to join the program.
Send us your contact details to affiliates(at)practitest(dot)com, and we will keep you posted with all the information as it becomes available.

PractiTest Update

Date: 2009-09-06

Hi All!

This weekend we performed an update to the PractiTest System. There was no downtime.

Testing Seminar in Costa Rica

Date: 2009-08-01

This past August 15th, PractiTest took central stage in San Jose, Costa Rica providing a half day seminar about the latest advancements in Software Testing.

The event was attended by over 50 Managers, Engineers, and Analysts representing around 20 of Costa Rica’s most advanced Software Development & IT departments, and it covered interesting topics such as Testing Intelligence, Testing Methodologies and Tools.

In case you missed the event or if you attended and want to take a second look at the presentation you can download it from here.

System Update

Date: 2009-08-15

Hi All !

This weekend we performed an update of the PractiTest System. There was no downtime.

As always, we’re happy to hear your inputs and feedback; it helps us making PractiTest better.

Sigist Presentation

Date: 2009-08-01

Joel, again, taking a central role in the Israeli’s Sigist yearly conference (last week in the Sheraton Tel Aviv Hotel), talking about Testing Methodologies.

SIGiST this year was around the general theme of “Providing Value to the Organization”, and Testing Intelligence together with the new approach of PractiTest to test management were a central subject of many of the conference’s side track conversations.

An additional session where PractiTest was mentioned was the one talking about the AQA project, training people with Aspergers Autistic Syndrome. In that important project our platform is used as the tool where their students are trained in software testing and bug reporting methodologies. But we will talk about this subject more in a future post…

PractiTest on CAST ’09

Date: 2009-07-01

PractiTest was present on CAST ’09, were we gave a presentation about Testing Intelligence and the way in which this new approach can help testing organizations improve their productivity and the perceived value of their Testing Teams.

The CAST conference took place in Colorado Springs, USA, between the 13th and 16th of July and it brought together some of today’s most influential testing figures.

The atmosphere and the approach of CAST provided an ideal platform for some very intensive sessions and off-side discussions around many Testing Topics. We were able to share some of our ideas about PractiTest and its future development and get great feedback from the conference participant’s.

Introducing the new Requirement Module

Date: 2009-07-01

Welcome to PractiTest blog

Date: 2009-06-01

At last, we decided – PractiTest needs its own blog.

It wasn’t a no brainer, since we already have the QABlog that Joel posts almost weekly; so what’s the point in having another blog?

The main point is that in the QABlog, Joel mostly posts about QA Methodologies or his personal life & experience as a QA person; but PractiTest is growing fast and there’s much to tell!

So after struggling with the idea, we decided that the best way to go is to have two different blogs. Welcome!

PractiTest System Update

Date: 2009-06-01

PractiTest at the IGT Cloud Summit

Date: 2009-06-01

Last week we participated in the IGT Cloud Summit that took place in Exodia, Tel Aviv. It was pretty fun and we’ve got some pictures to share. We also met some interesting companies who presented their ideas and product.

Our logo (part of the 20 ‘cloud’ companies that were presenting that day):

Joel also gave a short presentation, explaining about the real need for PractiTest that came from, yes, our users: