Tag: Automation Testing

Avinash Tiwari | Posted on | 2 min Read

13 Advantages of Automation Testing

Automation Testing Advantages

With an incessant advancement in technology and mobile eco-space, it is becoming extremely challenging for companies to maintain the quality and efficiency of mobile app development. Testing being one of the major business critical activities is often neglected because of the time and cost limitations. This ultimately leads to a compromised product quality, dissatisfied customer, delayed delivery and an increase in the overall quality costs. The major reasons for an increase in costs can be an ineffective test strategy, underestimated effort of generating a test case, delay in testing or keeping pace with the device fragmentation. Test automation helps to better the development process of a mobile app in multiple ways. Test automation is generally associated with increased effort and the results pay off quickly in return.

 

Benefits of Automation Testing

 

1. Faster feedback: Automation of testing actually comes as a relief for development and testing engineers during different phases of an app development life-cycle. It helps to better the communication among coders, designers, product owners and rectifies the potential glitches with no delay. It also increases the efficiency of the development team.

 

2. Saves time: Writing codes in manual testing is a tedious process especially when the testers have to write long scripts while doing regression testing. The requirement of fast bug free delivery of apps is not fulfilled and companies have to suffer business losses.

 

3. Early Bug Detection: Unlike manual testing, bugs can be detected early during the development phase in an automated testing which saves a lot of time during Mobile app development life-cycle for both developers and testers.

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4. Re-usability of Scripts: Testing automation makes the lives of the testers easy. The scripts can be reused with no or minimal changes in the script. These scripts can be used multiple times no matter if there are changes in the OS version of the device. The scripts and steps are stored and it helps to repeat the test without skipping or forgetting any step.

 

5. Running tests anytime, anywhere: Automated testing help test engineers to run their tests 24/7. If the test engineer has to leave early for the day, he can easily schedule the tests and leave the office. The test results will be ready by the time he logs in again next morning.

 

6. Distributed Test Execution: Automation testing cuts down complexities with its distributed test execution feature. It helps the testers to run a test script on more than one computer or shared network or servers simultaneously. So, only an automation testing tool is the requirement rather than multiple tools.

 

7. Robust and simpler reporting: Automation testing gives us the benefit of tracking each test script. All the test scripts executed will be visible in visual logs. The reports generated can evidently show the number of test scripts already executed, scheduled, their reported bugs or issues and the ways in which they have been fixed.

 

8. Testing Capabilities: Automated testing offers an unmatched and huge testing capability. The mobile app needs to be tested on multiple devices, OS versions, screen sizes etc. which can be efficiently done through automated testing and not by manual testing. In fact, it is almost impossible to get perfect results through manual testing.

 

9. Better Test Coverage: Test automation can easily execute thousands of different complex test cases during every test run providing coverage that is impossible with manual tests. It can only be possible through automated testing as it can run test scripts on multiple computers with varied configurations. It can look inside an application and see memory contents, data tables, file contents, and internal program states to determine if the app is functioning as expected.

 

10. Less Manual Effort: If an enterprise has implemented automation tools for testing, then it can accelerate the process and reduce the manual effort multi-fold. Less number of people will be required for a project and they can be utilized for different projects.

 

11. Improves Accuracy: We have been saying this time and again that automation testing overcomes the shortcomings of manual testing. It has improved the accuracy to a great deal by giving error-free results unlike manual testing where testing is error-prone, delays the delivery and increases the cost. It is especially a boon in stress testing where getting error free results in manual testing is almost impossible.

 

12. Return on Investment: One of the most important advantages of automation testing is the return on investment to the organization. Every enterprise analyses the return it would get out of its investment and then would go for creating a test automation framework. Automated testing offers immense returns in terms of faster testing, error-free results, less manual effort. If the enterprise has automated testing tool, then the testing would be more efficient and accurate and easy.

 

13. Volume: You can run your tests on more than 500 devices in automation testing which is impossible in manual testing.

 

One of the most important business advantages of automation testing is the return on investment to the organization. There are many advantages of automation testing tools as they are a crucial component in the DevOps toolchain. The importance of automation testing comes into picture when you have to run the test cases with different data and conditions several times.

 

Conclusion

 

Automation testing not only helps in saving time and improving accuracy, it does value addition to all the stakeholders involved in the app development lifecycle. Although testing automation offers such huge benefits, but many organizations have not adopted it in its entirety because of its initial cost associated with its configuration. With Agile testing and DevOps methodologies being widely followed in the IT industry, it is advisable to automate your testing processes completely with renowned automated testing tools to get the best results.

Want to test your Mobile App?

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For more information check out this video:

Avinash Tiwari | Posted on | 2 min Read

Certifaya – AI Powered App Testing

pCloudy’s Certifaya

 
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.

 

Try now, your first run is free.

Anshuman Chatterjee | Posted on | 2 min Read

Explore Full Power of pCloudy Platform – Improve Quality, Speed and Efficiency

Explore Full Power of pCloudy

 
pCloudy understands that businesses need their apps to be rolled out faster than before, without bugs, crashes, functionality issues, UI glitches, memory drainage and well, everything wrong with every app you uninstalled on your phone within minutes of using them.

 

We simplify testing. More importantly, this platform will equip, enable and guide you to provide single-click access solutions to the battling issues that can easily drive a developer nuts. This platform allows you to test real Android and IOS devices directly from your browser using real Mobile Devices to click-and-perform Manual and Automated Testing for maximum coverage.

 

Here are the most frequently used App Testing Use Cases you might be interested in.

Manual App Testing

Automated Testing

Responsive Testing of Mobile Web

Next Gen Mobile App Testing

Continuous Integration

Integrate your own Tools

Nilesh Tarale | Posted on | 2 min Read

Tips to Consider While Creating a World Class Mobile Testing Lab

How to create a world class Mobile Testing Lab?

 

It can be a big challenge to build a large scale Mobile Testing Lab from scratch. Look around you and you will see that with every single day, companies in adding mobile apps in their business strategy and with it the mobile app dev and testing market is becoming increasingly competitive, dynamic and fast paced. Older testing methods are becoming obsolete and the utter multiplicity of mobile platforms, devices and networks have made it important for any company to choose the right solution (Mobile Testing Lab) in order to strengthen themselves in the market.

While creating a testing program for these mobile applications can seem like a relentless chore and a massive undertaking, it doesn’t really have to be. Here are a few considerations to choose the right lab strategy for testing your mobile apps.

 

Key Considerations:

 

• Compatibility of Device OS, Screens and OEMs: The sheer number of different device variants, OS versions and screen resolutions form a large set of factors even though each of them are significant in their own rights. In 2012 there were about 4,000 Android device models on sale. 2015 saw about 24,093 distinct Android devices. Question is, can the lab I choose, cover maximum number of devices and come close to 100 percent of my end users’ device base?

 

mobile labs

 

• Device Control Infrastructure: After you select your target devices, it is also key to look at the other parts of a reliable architecture of your hardware. Regardless of the technology to be used in building the device lab, one needs servers to control and take care of managing devices and execute tests. Moreover, it is crucial for these servers to collect, process and store results of the tests seamlessly and without interruption.

 

mobile testing lab

 

A snapshot of Infrastructure needed to create a Mobile Device Lab

 

mobile testing lab

 

Facebook Device Lab Infrastructure

 

Click Here to know about pCloudy Device Cloud Infrastructure

 

• Wi-Fi Infrastructure: This is another very crucial area that is often ignored when creating large-scale test lab. As the number of device in a WiFi network adds up, so do problems when all these devices transferring data at the same time. Most WiFi access points are not designed for this kind of bandwidth and you are bound to see different types of timeouts on server responses.

 

• Importance of Automated Testing: The very obvious benefit of automation of testing of mobile devices on the cloud is that through this one can carry out tests on a wider range of OS and devices in a much shorter time and with lesser life-cycle management investment. This not only significantly reduce QA spending, it also expands coverage and speeds up the resolution of issues. You can use a single script and apply the same on different devices and operating systems.

 

Integration with CI/CD pipeline:

 

Today, almost all organizations have mobile apps and for some, the mobile app is their only way of interacting with customers. With this increasing emphasis on mobile, the pressure to routinely update mobile apps means embracing Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) methodologies. Any Mobile Labs has to support the CI/CD process.

 

5 Tips to build a successful lab:

 

1. Using Real Devices
2. Tackling Multiple Devices
3. Using a Secure Mobile Device Testing Cloud
4. Automation Strategy
5. Increase Lab efficiency by integrating with your existing tool ecosystem

 

1. Using Real Devices: Some Devs/testers are using emulation technology for compatibility testing. However, it has been proven beyond doubt that testing on emulators is often not reliable. Real devices help you and your team to find real bugs in your App before customers do. It is only way to have a confident App release and increase the chances of success of your test lab.

 

2. Tackling Multiple Devices: With thousands of different devices, it can be a bit overwhelming when building a mobile testing lab that encompasses the coverage of testing in all of them. Luckily, the major mobile operating systems use logical screen sizes which are mapped to physical screen, hence, the representative devices will get the necessary coverage. The test strategy is not to test absolutely everything, but to test the crucial elements that are most represented in the popular devices in the market, and add or subtract devices as they come in and out.

 

3. Using a Secure Mobile Device Testing Cloud: Using a secure cloud is vital to enterprises, especially if they aren’t located under the same roof. Testing real devices for everything can become really costly and time consuming. Using a testing cloud keeps your budget in check, reduced project cost and thus helps achieve high return on investment. Be it public cloud for small businesses, or large enterprise projects that demand a private cloud infrastructure, high performance and security are essentials to have complete control over the cloud.

 

4. Automation Strategy: Creating Regression Automation suites once Application is ready is a passé. Agile methodology and CI/CD process demands automation creation in parallel to development. Automation strategy should be built keeping above aspect in mind.

 

Here is a depiction of what the automation process should look like.

 

Mobile Labs

 

As part of Automation Strategy, Mobile Testing Lab should provide the capability to allow automation run on multiple devices in parallel.

 

5. Increase Lab efficiency by integrating with your existing tool ecosystem: A lab is as good as how well can it be integrated within existing ecosystem. Can it integrate with your Test Management system or can it log bugs automatically after a failure? Can it integrate with your build management tool for CI process? Here is a depiction of how “Test Tools” fit in the larger ecosystem.

 

Mobile Testing Lab

 

Conclusion: A well thought strategy for setting up of Mobile Testing Lab is a necessity for every organization undertaking Mobility projects. In current times, organizations have plethora of choice related to setting up of Mobile Testing Lab. They can choose to setup an In-house lab or use a private-hosted service or use a cost effective Public Cloud lab.

 

Would you like to know more about Lab options with pCloudy? Click Here

Anshuman Chatterjee | Posted on | 2 min Read

Automation Testing – Best Open Source Tools For Mobile Apps

Why Mobile App Automation Testing?

Testing of Mobile Apps in quite cumbersome because of sheer magnitude of testing required on variety of devices. Moreover, Mobile Apps require changes faster than other kind of Applications (Web or Desktop). That’s the reason, more and more organizations have started realizing the need of using automation testing over manual testing as much as possible.

 

Mobile App Automation Testing can be a massive undertaking, and if unaware, one can end up complicating the process by selecting a bad tool. With a major trending shift to open-source mobile test automation tools, there have been a plethora of tools available in most open-source software markets.

 

So how do you know which are the best software testing tool available in the market? Which tools will give you the most efficient solution to fulfill your enterprise’s need for speed and integration? Will manual testing suffice your app testing needs?

 

This blog post is to help you quickly choose which open-source test automation tool will be right for your automation testing

 

Benchmarks for selecting the right tool

You would need a set of criteria to fulfil when assessing your selection of the right open-source automation tool. Here are a crucial few questions to ask:

 

  • Do you have the required skilled resource for automation tasks?
  • Is there ease of script development to support agile processes and shorter iteration cycles?
  • Does the tool support cross team collaboration for seamless use by QA and Dev?
  • Can it match app platform with test development language?
  • Will it have performance capabilities gaps while testing?
  • Will it support both real devices and emulators?
  • Does the app support multiple platforms — Mobile and Web?
  • Does it have multi device execution capability
  • How easily can it integrated with external Device cloud platforms?

 

Best Open-Source Mobile Testing Frameworks to use:

To take the final call, testers must have a strong awareness of the tool’s strong and weak aspects, what it can do and what it cannot, and find a balance between cost and benefit.

 

These are top highly adopted open source test automation frameworks available in the market. Each of these frameworks are backed by different communities due to their unique offerings to the target audiences and relevant platforms. The overall benefits are that they cover a wide range of devices. However, for technical clarity it’s important to know the pros and cons of the framework based on your mobile and web testing needs:

 

1. Appium: Widely adopted, it is the leading open-source test framework for mobile app (Android, iOS) test automation.

 

Pros:

  • Best suited for QA teams to test the functionality of mobile web, native and mobile hybrid apps across iOS and Android.
  • Its reports are limited from debugging and fast feedback loop.
  • Supports development tools using any WebDriver compatible language including Java, C#, Ruby etc.
  • Cross Browser Support and cross platform capabilities

 

Con: It is less suitable for performing and developing unit testing.

 

2. Calabash: It is a Behavior-driven development (BDD) test framework based on Ruby development language.

 

Pros:

  • Has a large community support
  • Cross platform development support (Android and iOS)
  • Provides solid reports and insights to QA and Dev teams
  • Easy path to both develop and test features in parallel
  • Simple and easy-to-read test statements

Con: It is not friendly to languages other than Ruby.

3. Espresso & XCTest UI: Both are very similar tools as they were designed for the target users. Espresso for Android and XCTest for iOS are fully maintained by Google and Apple, assuring the latest features for respective platforms.

Pros:

  • Latest feature integrations assure lead in market curve for developers and testers
  • Easy to develop techniques including test recorders
  • Support both types of unit testing and functional UI

Con: Both are app context only, which means limited ability to test for user condition scenarios

4. Selendroid: An open source automation framework which drives off the UI of android native, hybrid and mobile web application. A powerful testing tool that can be used on emulators and real devices. And because it still reuses the existing infrastructure for web, you can write tests using the Selenium 2 client APIs.

 

Pros:

  • Can interact with multiple Android devices and simulators simultaneously
  • Can simulate human actions like touch, swipe, drag etc. on devices
  • Supports development tools using any WebDriver compatible language including Java, C#, Ruby etc.

 

5. Robotium: Widely adopted open source Android test Automation framework.

 

Pros:

  • Easy to write powerful test scenarios
  • Full support for native and hybrid Android Apps
  • Easy to use recorder
  • Handles multiple Android routines automatically

 

6. EarlGrey: EarlGrey is a native iOS UI automation test framework that enables you to write clear, concise tests. It integrates with Xcode’s Test Navigator so you can run tests directly from Xcode or the command line.

 

Pros:

  • Works directly from XCode
  • Full support for native and hybrid Android Apps
  • Synchronization features which automatically synchronizes with the UI and network requests.

 

mobile app automation testing

 

Would you like to know how to use Automation Testing on Real Devices with pCloudy? Click Here

Avinash Tiwari | Posted on | 2 min Read

Automation Testing on Real Devices

Mobile Automation Testing

 

pCloudy provides you the cloud platform to perform Automated Testing on Real Mobile Devices. To schedule automated testing over pCloudy, go to the Automator page. Here, you can use filter your devices based on mobile OS (android/iOS) and test automation framework (Calabash/Robotium). Further, you need to choose application file (.apk/.ipa), zip file of test script, enter time duration (default – 15 minutes), test cycle name (default – Test cycle). Now, browse, select and add desired device(s) to schedule test automation.  When test automation gets completed, you will get an email reminder for the test completion.

 

Mobile Automation Testing

Avinash Tiwari | Posted on | 2 min Read

Automation Execution on Multiple Devices in Parallel

By using pCloudy Test Automation, you can execute your test automation Parallel Runs on Multiple Devices as well.

 

  • Navigate to Test Automator page of pCloudy.
  • Select the filter to choose if execution needs to be done Android or iOS.
  • Select the devices from the given list. User can select minimum one & maximum all the devices for the parallel run.
  • Choose the test framework for test automation execution.
  • Choose the application to be tested and test suite for the same.
  • If the test suite takes 25 minutes to execute completely on one device locally, then you need to add some buffer say for another 10 minutes and change the time to 35 minutes.
  • Finally set the test cycle name of your choice and click on the Schedule button.
  • Upon confirmation the same the platform will schedule the automation execution selected devices.
  • When test automation process gets completed on all devices, you will be informed through a mail with the link to see the test report.

Test Automation

Avinash Tiwari | Posted on | 2 min Read

Automated Testing Using Espresso

Automation Testing With Espresso

 

Now you can run your Espresso Scripts on hundreds of Mobile devices over pCloudy.com.

Espresso is a testing framework for Android apps. The platform allows you to write concise and reliable Android UI tests. pCloudy.com provides you the platform to run these scripts on multiple mobile devices of your choice.

Here are the steps for running your Test Scripts on multiple Android Devices:

  • Login over www.pcloudy.com with your registered Email ID & Password.
  • Choose Instrumentation Type based on your Test Scripts you’ve written. pCloudy provides support for Instrumentation Type
  • (InstrumentationTestRunner, AndroidJUnitRunner) for Android. For more information, see Instrumentation in the Testing Fundamentals section of the Android Developer Tools documentation.
  • Go to the Automator Page
  • Select Android OS version & Manufacturer
  • Choose Espresso (to run Espresso Scripts)
  • Select Instrumentation Type (TestInstrumentationRunner/AndroidJUnitRunner).
  • Select Application .apk file (the App to be tested)
  • Select Test Script .apk file (the Test Script developed for testing)
  • Enter Single Device execution Time (Time required for the entire script to be executed on single device)
  • Enter Name of your Test Cycle (this name will represent your Test Cycle)
  • Click on Schedule Test Cycle

test-automator

In the next step, you need to confirm schedule of test automation. Here, you can see your selected application, test script, device etc.

confirm-test-cycle

Further, you get a pop up message of test automation schedule confirmation.

Click on OK to proceed.

test-cycle-scheduling-successful

Go to your mailbox and open pCloudy Automation Alert mail.
Click on the given link “Click to view Report”.

simplest-online-device-cloud

Finally, you get result of your scheduled test automation.

cloud-automator-report

Avinash Tiwari | Posted on | 2 min Read

pCloudy Plugin for Android Studio

Plugin for Android Studio

 

An Overview

pCloudy has released a plugin for Android Studio which provides you access to the platform for performing manual and automation testing of mobile apps from within Android Studio IDE.

For Manual Testing

Now you can build and upload your Android Apps to pCloudy devices directly from your Android Studio project workspace.

For Automation Testing

If you are using Appium as automation tool and have created your Automation scripts as a project in Android Studio, you can run the scripts directly on pCloudy devices.

Prerequisites

1. An account in pCloudy with enough credits.
2. An API Access key for authentication with pCloudy.com
3. Chrome Browser on local machine
4. Android Studio IDE
5. Android Studio pCloudy plugin

Preparation

Reference the JAR files to Eclipse
Make a note the API Username and API Access Key

How to Install the Plugin

1. Download the Android Studio plugin for pCloudy
2. Open your Android Studio > go to Setting icon of Android Studio > Select Plugins > All available plugins are shown which can be filtered with the help of Show feature as per requirement.
3. Click on Install plugin from disk > Browse and select location of your downloaded Android Studio plugin of pCloudy
4. Click on OK
5. Now, you can see that pCloudy plugin has been successfully integrated to Android Studio.

Select pcloudy plugin and click on OK to proceed. Here, we are going to install pCloudy plugin for Android Studio from local disk. Click on Install plugin from disk
install-plugin-from-disk

pCloudy plugin for Android Studio has been integrated successfully.

pcloudy-plugin-over-android-studio

Click on pCloudy plugin icon shown on Android Studio. pCloudy Login page opens. Enter your Username and Access Key and click on Login. Your login credentials are verified. Click on OK to proceed.
pcloudy-plugin-over-android-studio

Note: This is one-time task. Credentials will be valid until you logout.
Now, you are ready to use the Android Studio Plugin for pCloudy.
Manual Functional Testing of App

After successful login, upload your app screen appears. Workspace page helps you to select application path of your local machine.
successfully-authenticated

Cloud Drive page lets you to select app from the list and click on Next to proceed.
upload-your-app

Local Drive lets you to upload your app from your local machine to perform testing.
upload-a-project-file

Mobile Browser enables you to use mobile browser for testing.
use-mobile-browser-for-testing

After selecting app, the next step is choosing a device. Select and Connect to devices page provides you list of devices which can be filtered by using filter parameters (Android/iOS, Manufacturer, and OS version). Select duration of your testing. The device will get booked for selected time duration.

When you click on Next, you get a message “Please wait while we open the pCloudy Platform on your default browser for Manual Testing. Please advised that…”
select-and-connect-to-devices

Just after few seconds, you will be redirected to the connected device page over pCloudy to perform manual functional testing of your app on selected device.
briefing

Automation Testing of App

Similarly, the first step towards performing automation testing is selecting an app from workspace/cloud drive/local drive or use mobile browser.
my-application

Select your desired device; select duration of automation testing. You can filter devices displaying devices by using filter options (Android/iOS, Manufacturer, and OS version). Click onNext to proceed.
choose-devices

Note: Here, you can select multiple devices as well.

Finally, you get corresponding pseudo code for performing Automation testing of app. You can copy this pseudo code to clipboard and use it within your Automation script…
paste-the-code-and-proceed

You will need the pCloudy java connector jar file for the above code to work. The pCloudy-java-conector.jar contains the API wrappers, classes & methods to use the pCloudy RestfulAPIs (without knowing how to call rest webservices from java). The gson.jar is a well known, opensource google library. You should add the pCloudy-java-connector.jar in its build path as a reference within your java project containing appium scripts.