Perhaps. I'm new to ZS, and am not familiar with what you're saying. Allow me to restate, and perhaps we are in agreement.
I have a list of tags representing the features within a product. It is over 40 items long. I have already typed them in under the Primary Custom Field for people creating test cases to select from. I want the exact same list to appear under the Secondary and Tertiary Custom Fields, but would prefer not to have to type it all by hand, as I will be following the same patten for several other projects.
From the Test Case perspective, when writing it, the author selects the single feature that the test is focusing on from the list in Primary Custom Field. If there are any other features tested in conjunction with the feature selected in Primary, they would go into Secondary Custom Field. And if a third feature was also tested interacting with the Primary, it would go in the Tertiary Custom Field. If there are no others tested in conjunction with the Primary, then the Secondary and Tertiary Custom Fields are left blank.
The Primary/Secondary/Tertiary Custom Fields exist so we can pull all the test cases that test a specific feature in either the Primary, Secondary or Tertiary Custom Fields. This allows us to ensure when the DevTeam modifies a feature, we can run every single test that involves that feature, whether it be directly or tangentially (Primary vs Secondary/Tertiary).
I have the Primary list for the first Project completely entered, I just don't want to type the same list twice more if it is simple to replicate the list using some kind of internal ZS mechanism. Especially since I have additional projects to enter, each of which has a unique set of features. Type once, copy twice seems better than type thrice on several different projects (recalling that each project has a unique set of features, typed once in Primary and (hopefully) cloned/copied into Secondary and Tertiary Custom Fields).
Hopefully that will help you understand how we are using it, and what I'm trying to accomplish.
Hi,
Thanks for the extra info. What I suggested, although a useful function you might want to check out, won't help with your scenario of copy/paste those 40 tags from one custom field into another - that's not possible. There might be another way to achieve this without custom fields but I'd need to give it some further thought - if you're interested in a different approach that is?
I am interested in not having to type long lists over again, as "I type, therefore I typo" is kind of my mantra. Any ideas would be welcome. I figured since this was a program, and had programmable aspects, that there probably should be a way to accomplish the cloning of the data within the Custom Field (presumed: a table within a database).
Custom Fields were only chosen because we didn't know of any better (or other) way to track the different tests back to the specific feature being tested, whether directly (Primary), with interactions with a different feature (Secondary) or tangentially (Tertiary).
I think it's possible to achieve what you want in a slightly different way.
I find that asking my testers to complete their tests in Excel an easier/quicker way to get tests into ZS. You could then have an Excel template that has 40 columns for your features to test, and ask the testers to select which are primary, secondary and tertiary, adding, say, P, S, T into the relevant column but ideally P[ ], S[ ], T[ ] where [ ] = the feature number, so P1, S12, T39 (or whatever works for you of course, it could be text like P_Browser, S_Login, T_Permissions).
Using Excel you can concatenate a string to then populate into a custom field in your test case, e.g. "Features to test" which is a single line text field, and then you'd be importing something like "P1, S12, T39" or "P_Browser, S_Login, T_Permissions".
With that data now in your test case in 1 custom field, you have the 3 priorities listed, and you can create a filter in the Test Case library to view all tests that relate to P1 or P_Browser, etc.
Does that make sense?
Yes MisterB, it makes sense from a logical point. However the idea of using a mixed set of tools like that will be problematic for training a cross-continental team.
It sounds like I will have to type the same info into each of the three fields to populate them, not cloning or copy/paste. And do the same (but with a different data set) in triplicate for each of the other projects. I feared that was going to be the case, but was hoping for another way. Oh well, such is life.
