pCloudy is a unified mobile app testing platform which is trusted by its users for its excellent performance. We have more than 30,000 users across the globe, and we have received an overwhelming response for our platform. From bot testing to crowd testing, pCloudy has always been a front runner in the market. And with the launch of pCloudy 5.0, we are up for the challenge once again. It is a re-imagined and re-worked upon platform created in-line with intelligence to meet the market demands and accelerate delivery.
a) iOS Connect: One of the very powerful features that we added is the iOS Connect. The major challenge iOS developers had been facing was the debugging of their iOS apps because of the difficult Apple guidelines regarding building any utility . We are proud to say that we have been successful in cracking that.
With iOS Connect, you can connect to an iOS Device which is present remotely and access the device as if the device is connected to your computer. With iOS Connect we are bridging the gap for the iOS development life cycle.
b) Automation Studio: It is another promising feature that can revolutionize mobile app automation. We now have an in-built automation studio in pCloudy platform where you can access the devices to record your test scripts and execute it in parallel on multiple devices without writing any code.
There’s something more to it! If you already have your projects on Appium you can record your new workflows and export it to Appium Java format. This new integration would not only enable every user to start creating Automation scripts but it will also help Appium users to speed up their Automation. This makes pCloudy truly a Unified app testing platform.
c) Follow me: It is again one of the ‘wow’ features of pCloudy 5.0. This feature can speed up your App Testing exponentially. Follow me allows you to test your apps on 3 unique device while performing your test on only 1 device, thus saving your testing time multi-folds.
Re-Imagined UI
It has been designed to give a leaner, simpler and faster user experience. The look and feel of the pCloudy platform has been transformed keeping in mind the requirements, usability and ease of our users. All the pages have been made more intuitive. To simplify, we have grouped the actions together to save your time in figuring out the next step.
a) True Collaboration: We have introduced a powerful feature on our revamped Device Interaction page. Now, you can take the screenshot of the action you are performing and see the screenshot next to the device. But, the icing on the cake is that you can edit the screenshot, save it and log a bug directly to the JIRA enabling true collaboration between the developers and testers.
b) Global File Storage: Heeding to the demands of our users we have reduced the clicks to perform any action on the File browsing /storage page. The file uploaded once will be available across all the different locations we have. It will also allow sharing of files across teams.
c) Comprehensive reports at a single stop: Now, to make the user experience simpler and faster, we have placed all your reports at single stop be it manual or automation across all locations. Not just that, you can see all reports in the same format with much detailed information. Raising bugs after analyzing reports is also possible from here.
d) Test Scheduler: We have re-designed this page based on a Guided interface where the interactions are more thoughtful, straightforward, and guide you to the next step. It needs zero learning to run automation scripts on multiple devices.
pCloudy 5.0 is another breakthrough for us. After launching pCloudy 5.0, it is time to get feedback on a larger scale. We’re going to continue improving the UI, the navigation, and add some futuristic features to make your app testing simpler and faster. While we do that, we’d love to continue getting feedback.
We have always believed that product enhancements need to reach the customer as quickly as possible. Their feedback is the most important part of the product evolution journey.
So, we can’t wait to unveil what we have created in the last few months. We have upgraded it with 11 new features which makes this as one of the biggest product update ever for us.
Some of the features will have a significant impact on the way you currently test your Apps.
We bring to you the guide that will help you to get the most out of the Biggest Update Ever!…Here is what you can find new in the product.
1. Check the Device matrix to be used before you start Testing
Are you always puzzled about what all devices should be a part of your test scope? We have made that decision easy for you by introducing Planner. Planner will help you to calculate your test coverage on an optimal set of devices.
This feature will help you get the latest stats of the market penetration of devices from across the globe. Choose your market coverage and geography to get the list of devices you should be ideally opting for your test.
2. Log Bugs to JIRA directly from pCloudy Report page
We understand the pains a tester goes through and that’s why we have introduced this feature to bring an end to all your woes! Now you can log bugs directly to JIRA while you are testing your application on pCloudy. You can attach relevant data in one single click.
Let’s see how this feature can help you log bugs in JIRA:
Provide your credentials once and we store the authentication cookie provided by JIRA.
(Note : we don’t store your credentials)
After logging in you will come across a JIRA Task pop up where you can easily log a Bug or Task to JIRA along with relevant attachments (screenshots, logs or video links). No need to download a file and then upload it separately to JIRA.
3. “Certifaya” –Our AI powered App Testing engine is smarter now
Our motto is to make your life easy and we always work towards making the testing quick and simple for our clients. Not only this, we provide more and more data about the App under test to improve the quality rapidly.
We released a new version of Certifaya with the following changes-
a) Certifaya coverage across devices has been increased.
b) Moreover, you can provide App credentials or other sets of Test data.
Now you can use Certifaya every time you make a change to your App. In less than 15 mins!!
Watch our latest video for Certifaya!
4. Speed up your Manual testing speed using Action Repeater
Android Action Repeater (AAR) can speed up your Manual App Testing exponentially. AAR observes your manual test steps on a device, records it, and repeats it on one or multiple devices, thus saving your time to perform sanity checks, prerequisite setup or a full fledged functional test.
Watch the intro video of Android Action Repeater (AAR)
5. Testing your Apps for Voice command
Now a days many apps can be operated by using voice commands like Google voice search, Evernote voice / audio note etc. pCloudy understands your requirement and gives you an option to send voice commands to pCloudy devices as well while testing such apps. Read More…
6. It is easier to search a device
Searching for a device is the most frequently used task in the platform. We have made searching simpler for you. Now you can use the free text search to find a device by the name of its OS version.
Moreover, we have added quick search filters for most common searches.
7. Plan your Testing based on the availability of Devices
When you are searching for the desired devices you may not see that device online if other user is using it at the same time. You may want to plan your test activity based on the next availability of the same device. We value your time and to make your testing efficient, we have made that information available and you can see the status of some devices as ‘Busy’ if it’s in use and the indicative time by when the device will be available next.
Moreover, you can even see which devices are ‘Offline’. You can now request for such devices to be made available.
8. IOS App Resigning made easy
We have built IOS App resigning as a separate utility, so that you can resign your iPAs once and upload it on all our cloud locations. Read More…
9. New App performance parameters
New App Performance Parameters have been introduced in pCloudy to let you have better insights about your app and also to know how it is performing on different devices.
We have added new parameters “Frame Rendering Time”.
10. Improved Performance Graphs with New parameters
Existing performance graphs have full break up of data for deeper analysis.
CPU Data
Memory Data
Network Traffic data
Battery Consumption Graph
11. pCloudy-Appium client for Nodejs
We have released pCloudy-Appium client for the users who want to use nodejs for their test automation to run on multiple devices on pCloudy.
The emergence of mobile applications for everything around us is mind boggling to say the least. All the things you would want- “There is an app for that”.
With consumers spoilt for choices, it’s a critical task to the people who are responsible for the quality of these mobile applications. Smallest of glitch and user’s are ready to click uninstall.
In order to ensure that your customers have the best of experience with your app, it needs to work on hundreds of mobile devices with various screen sizes, varying OS and different user conditions. Time consuming and exhaustive task.
Isn’t it critical to accelerate this process?
To churn out better apps faster, developers need deeper insights faster then ever.. This is where machine learning algorithms come in. They are analytics driven which makes it easier to look for patterns and monitor your app for issues, like crashes, memory spikes, high CPU, slow response time, battery drain and many other key parameters.
So, the question is, can Machines and intelligent technology become the newest buddy for you? Yes, we say. Let’s the new tech churn out data for you, and you focus on analyzing, fixing and delivering faster to the world.
Let’s see what’s up our sleeves.
A Single Click Automated App Certification with bots
pCloudy has developed a Single click App certification feature within its platform.
How pCloudy’s Certifaya makes a difference?
Simplicity is at the core of pCloudy’s Certifaya platform. All users need to do is to upload their app and ask the platform to run a test. Within minutes Certifaya spits out your report after monitoring, finding critical issues and presenting in the form of detailed blocks, screen grabs and videos of the sessions. The users also get recommendations to quickly fix the issues.
Developing apps quickly but with best of quality is mission critical. Bots make a huge difference here. Certifaya bots are designed for
Running Crash Test Scenarios: Bots run the crash test covering several installation/un-installation scenarios along with random events on the App, that too, on multiple devices. The best way to do a sanity check.
Swift and Deep Exploratory Tests: Smart bots crawl the App automatically and navigate through the App path like any human would do, collecting loads of relevant data for the App.
With above two tests, you get a comprehensive report on the App’s functionality and performance on multiple devices within few minutes. Have a look at a sample report. Gone are the days when you are churning out builds and waiting for hours to get a feedback.
Keep in mind that the best practices in the industry are evolving at a quick pace. Cloud adoption has accelerated quick testing practices.
Give your existing Testing practice power of Certifaya and accelerate your testing like never before.
Now a day’s many apps can be operated by using voice commands. For example Google voice search , Evernote voice / audio note etc.,
Now you can send voice command to pCloudy devices while testing such apps
Below are the steps to perform audio command testing.
1) Upload the audio file which is having audio command (like .mp3, .wav etc.,) in MyApp/Data by clicking upload button
Note: if you don’t have audio file you can use the below mentioned website to generate sample audio files.
2) Install any Android /iOS application in device which is enabled voice search feature. For this article we have taken Amazon app as an example.
3) Open the application and click on search field and then click on microphone symbol
4) Select Inject Audio option from Device settings options and select the audio clip
5)The audio file is played at the Audio-in of the device . This way app will identify command in audio clip
6) As you can see the above screenshot the search text has identified the voice command
Note: As of now audio command test can be done on limited set of device , You can search for those device by using the audio tag filter in the device page as shown in below screenshot.
We have always believed that personalized customer support is one of our key differentiators. Over last two years of our journey, we have taken several initiatives to make our customers happy such as 15 min first response, a dedicated customer success manager and 24×7 support team to mention a few.
But in the age of social media and continuous connectivity, we felt that days of ticketing systems are gone. We need to connect with the customer in real time. Why should a customer wait without certainty for an email response from support team? Moreover, if the email doesn’t solve the problem, the customer has to wait for another iteration of email-chain.
We are extremely happy to announce the launch of real-time chat feature from within our platform.
Customers can talk to our support team while they are using the platform. They can get their queries or problems resolved as soon as they face. All this with a single click.
Initial response has been extremely positive. We can’t wait to hear from you.
This article explains the options available on device page. These options will help you use the devices effectively on pCloudy platform. pCloudy is a feature rich platform and supports whole lot of features to ease your device interaction. There are many single click options to speed up your testing on devices. On connecting to a device, You will see many icons in the top pane.
Lets understand what each of these icons/features does for you.
1.
Capture high resolution screen shots with the skin of the device
2.
Change the orientation of the device to Landscape and portrait
3.
Open the browser from the list of preinstalled browsers
4.
Use the extended keyboard if you want to enter some text on the device. However, for Android ver 5.0 and above you can directly enter the text from your system keyboard
5.
Check the stack trace (crash logs) if the application is crashed
6.
Navigate the application with the buttons
7.
Zoom in/out the device shown on the screen
8.
Reset the zoom level to bring the device to default size
9.
Click to Re-connect if the device shows black screen
10.
Extend the session if the device is available
11.
Wake up the device from sleep mode or push the device to sleep mode
12.
Release the device back to the cloud
pCloudy’s Device Settings tab has lot of commonly used features and device interactions. Some of the key features to test are Network, Location and Audio.
Lets see those in details.
1.
Reboot the device remotely
2.
Switch ON/OFF wifi
3.
Adjust the device volume
4.
Manage your apps on the device
5.
Throttle network to simulate different network conditions
6.
Add Google account
7.
Teleport the device – Set any location of the earth on the device
8.
Open Device settings on the device
9.
Open play store on the device
10.
Open developer options on the device
11.
Send audio commands to the device for testing applications which supports audio commands
How many apps on your phone today has applications that need GPS as a tool to do the task that it needs to. Be it hailing a cab, ordering food, booking a movie or the indispensability of shopping online, more often than not, we use GPS based apps all available at our fingertips. Gone are the days when asking people around a few times used to connect you and the place of the product.
Precision is the name of the game now. The applications developed need to be tried and tested. Not just that its functional requirements are easy to read and track format seamlessly.
Geo-Location Testing of Apps by using mock locations on devices
Geolocation technology has given birth to new ideas for startups which didn’t exist before. New market strategies keep bringing to light that have transformed the relationship of a company and its consumers. The ability to integrate Geolocation into our mobile technology creates solution for any industry domain.
Why is testing necessary?
A few examples of Geolocation apps are the ones that also track weather alert systems, track lifestock and location based advertisement systems. Using Geo-Tag or GPS Location of a mobile device, location aware apps are created. Geo-location testing is performed on apps that are location-aware. Which means it has to display and collect information based on the real-time location of the device, to provide real-time services to its user’s proximity.
So how does a developer guarantee that the application will be functional worldwide? Not just that, for local areas, how does he guarantee that the app will work in specific streets with crowded services and neighborhood areas?
Presently the state of affairs are such that geolocation apps are restricted to field testing and iOS/Android based simulators. Developers can also manually draw up GPX/KML files that need talented coding skills. Test teams have always struggled to test location based feature due to lack of mock location tools.
set phone location on iOS device
set phone location on Android device
How does pCloudy allows testing of Geolocation apps?
pCloudy provides single click access to a tool to mock location on a IOS or Android device. Which is why testing geolocation functionalities is also pretty damn seamless and easy.
Similar to field-testing but only far easier. If your application under test is a location aware app and if it reads the geo-location from the device to provide the necessary results, “Set Phone Location” feature can be used to inject any location (mock location) on the earth to the device and the device will be teleported to the selected location. Simply choosing a location of choice on a virtual map, which internally feeds latitude and longitude information to the device.
This emulates the chosen location on the device as your real location. This helps you test if your application behaves properly at different locations.
Cloud-based testing for mobile applications is cost-effective. While looking for cloud-based mobile application testing tools you need to consider that it provides comprehensive coverage with more numbers of real devices. Users also download the mock location app to spoof your location to view any content that is blacked out in a particular region.
