Suyash Dubey | Posted on | 2 min Read

End to end testing is done to make sure that the application behaves as expected and the flow of actions from starting to end is complete without any issue. To explain with an example, suppose you are the end user and you are using the app to book a flight. So first you will launch the app and click on the flight’s icon on the home page. Then you will enter the destination, date and other required details. Now you will choose your preferred flight, book the seat, enter the passenger details and make the payment. Once this is done, you will get the ticket and a follow-up email on your registered email ID.
 
Now in this scenario, if the screen takes a lot of time to load the next page or if the book button does not work then this will be an unpleasant experience for the user. So we can figure out if there are any issues from starting to the end of the process. It’s not just about the UI functioning but also the data encryption and security, information flow between other internally used platforms integrated to the app, proper functioning of the firewall and more. This is where end to end testing comes into the picture to make sure that everything works well under any circumstances.
 

How to Perform End to End Testing

While performing end to end testing the first thing to do is to analyze the requirements and set up the test environment. Then you need to evaluate the main system with the connected subsystems and define the responsibilities of all systems involved. Make a list of the testing methods and the description of the standards to be followed. Once that is done you can create the test cases and track the requirement matrix. Finally, you need to save the output and input data before testing each system.
 

Measuring the success of the end to end testing

To perform end to end testing efficiently and save time and effort, a matrix should be created. Some parameters should be defined to gauge the success of the testing performed. These measurements will help you define the testing matrix:
 
Test case status: A proper visualization of the test cases prepared can be observed through graphs and compared with the number of tests that were initially planned.
Tracking Test progress: This measurement will help you to get the details of the tests completed on a weekly basis. It will be easy to keep a track of the test that failed and those that passed.
Defect details: Tracking of the bugs occurred and the issues surfaced should be done one a weekly basis and keeping a track of the defects that were opened and closed on the basis of priority.
Environment availability: Here we need to take a note of the amount of time allotted for running a test in an environment and the time actually spent on performing end to end testing.
 

Best Practices to Perform End to End Testing

End to end testing can be very time consuming and we can save some time and effort by following some steps. It is always better to plan in advance before initiating the testing process.
 
Prioritize: Chances of defect increases as the test cases become complex with more components and it becomes difficult to debug them. Therefore it is better to perform unit testing and integration testing to resolve issues that are easier to detect. After initiating the End to end testing you can also start doing smoke and sanity testing to keep an eye on the high-risk scenarios.
Manage the Environment: The requirements need to be documented and the system administrator needs to be informed about it to meet the requirements before starting the testing. The system setup should be proficient enough to run the test cases and keep your staging environment close to the production.
Optimize: After test completion, you need to clear the test data so that the environment is restored and can be used for testing again. This will make the environment ready to start at any moment.
Risk Analysis: Focus on the features that are crucial and on failure can cause a high risk. Prepare a risk assessment matrix which will come in handy in these situations.
Limit Exception testing: Use low-level unit testing and integration testing for exception scenarios and use end to end testing to deal with typical user scenarios.
 

Conclusion

With the rapid enhancements in the app technology and the increasing use of technologies like IOT, the development teams have to make sure that the app has a smooth functionality. The end users can be very choosy in this competitive market and so it’s necessary to perform end to end testing of applications to provide a good user experience.

 
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  • Priyanka Charak | Posted on | 2 min Read

    Cross-browser Tests

     
    There has been tremendous growth in the usage of the web in the past years. Internet users rose from 3.5 billion in 2017 to 4.1 billion in the year 2018 as per internet world stats. Also, according to internet live stats, there are around 1.5 billion websites in the World Wide Web network today. The development team puts in a lot of effort in building a website so it is important that the website should work hassle-free on all the browsers, equally. Moreover, almost everyone is dependent on the content that exists on the internet. On top of that, the content is available in more than 3000 different internet-enabled devices which is what is to be focused here. More devices, more ways to view the websites. So, here the real concern is-are all the users using different devices, able to view the website the way it is intended?

    What is Cross-Browser Testing?
    As the web grows, new technologies, tools to build the websites are also introduced simultaneously. But not all are browser compatible technologies. So, for browser compatibility testing, a developer needs to perform cross browser testing. It is nothing but to perform multiple browser testing for web applications and checking its compatibility with different operating systems, screen resolutions and devices to find out if it meets the developer’s expectations. When it is about web applications, it is an important task to ensure they are fully functional across multi-browser settings and it provides a good experience to the users, irrespective of the device and the browser they use. Browser test is a ‘must-have’ because there are chances that the users might not come back once they face any problem or do not get good site experience.

    5 reasons why testing is incomplete without cross-browser tests

    Let us understand more deeply as in why Cross Browser Testing is important and what purpose it serves.
    1. Every Browser interprets differently:
    Every browser is different and carries a unique ability to interpret things differently i.e not all the codes are understood by different browsers in the same way. So, a coder must ensure that all the browsers interpret the commands in a similar way to give the intended user experience through the website. Also, since there are multiple browsers with different versions, it becomes challenging to know if the website works well on all versions. Cross browser testing tools help in testing multiple browser and its different versions.

    2. Different Mobile Platforms:

    One of the main reasons why Cross browsing Test has become important is because of different mobile platforms available today. Multiple mobile devices are launched every year so it is imperative for a mobile website to open properly on each device correctly. There are different sets of browser combinations preferred by the users so the organizations can focus on those combinations of proper functioning on mobile devices. Testing teams need to test on different mobile browser versions because it becomes challenging to understand which version the user is using. Even the CSS runs differently on each version so cross-browser testing tools can check the same easily.

    3. Fewer Bugs:
    Cross-Browser testing is one of the rigorous tasks that the QA team has to perform but at the same time, it is a great move to introduce this practice because this would reduce time in testing across different browsers, simultaneously. To make every minute component and feature function properly and to avoid any last-minute complications and bugs, cross-browser testing should be performed to make sure all browsers and its versions are functioning correctly on all platforms. Web traffic data can be helpful to understand what browsers our users use frequently which can be used as information to focus only on important parts of testing.

    4.Re-usable tests :
    With Cross Browser testing, there’s no need for creating and maintain separate browser tests for each browser platform. The tests can be reused in different supported browsers with the help of different test automation technologies. The cross-browser tests can be created by custom scripts apart from the cases where the custom solution fails.

    5. Free tools available:
    There are many free tools available to perform web and mobile automation such as Selenium WebDriver and Appium. Most of the cross-browser test automation tools are based on open source automation tool i.e. Selenium which has a great User Interface making it easier to perform cross browser testing on multiple browsers.
    There are many widely used web browsers, but not all browsers, and versions of those browsers work the same. A website may not look or function identically on each one, which can lead to lost revenue for an enterprise. We at pCloudy addressed the issue of choosing from the fixed set of browsers previously available. Heeding to the growing demands of our users, we have introduced the Launch and Upload browser feature for our Android users which will give him the freedom to choose the version of the browser that he wants to use. This is going to save their testing time and efforts to a great extent and also give better results for their cross browser test. For more information, visit pCloudy