cameronh's avatar
cameronh
New Contributor
9 months ago
Status:
New Idea

Add support for testing in multiple instances of the same desktop app

According to the support team there is currently no way to test in multiple instances of the same application.

For example, consider a test where you launch multiple instances of Visual Studio and start debugging an application in each instance. If you try to record this test, it records all the operations as if there is once instance of Visual Studio - there is no way to differentiate between them. So when you play the test back, it chooses one instance and tries to execute all operations in that one instance, which fails.

In order to automate this test case you would need to be able to specify "In instance 0, do this" and "In instance 1, do that".

Desktop Testing
  • rraghvani's avatar
    rraghvani
    Champion Level 3
    9 months ago

    Visual Studio is a development tool, not sure why you would want to automate this? 

    Launching two instances of Notepad, TC can distinguish between the two via it's Index property value.

    Two instances of Notepad

    Same applies to VS,

    Two instances of VS

     

    • cameronh's avatar
      cameronh
      New Contributor
      9 months ago

      Our software has two parts - a Runtime part but also an SDK part for development. It integrates with Visual Studio to build and debug applications for our Runtime, so part of our testing cycle is using Visual Studio to debug applications in various ways, which we're trying now to automate.

      So how would you use the index property to distinguish between instances in a Keyword test? Or is this only applicable to scripts?

      • rraghvani's avatar
        rraghvani
        Champion Level 3
        9 months ago

        Create a name mapping for the two instances, and include the Index property value. If there's a unique property vale between the two instances, that can be used too. You can then access this object via scripts or keyword tests.