Wintertainment 2019 - Day 2: Share Your Achievements for 2019

[TanyaYatskovska]

Hi All,

We continue the exciting Wintertainment event.

Todays’ participants have a great chance to get a free ticket to the SmartBear Connect conference, we are setting up next April. So, leave your comments here. Comments in the video format are appreciated, but not required.

Day 2 Topic

Let’s recollect 2019 and show off a bit. Don’t be shy. I’m sure you had great projects this year. Share some details with us. Why were they so special? How did you complete them? What new stuff did you learn? Are you going to use any ideas from these projects in the future?

A participant with the most outstanding story will be rewarded with the SmartBear Connect ticket.

The stage is yours 🙂 We are waiting for you to share your achievements.

[avidCoder]

Folks, 2019 has been a great year for me so far in technical learning growth. I moved to the new organization and experienced lot of new changes, updates, challenges and remedy for that. Of course, there are many stories to share here. But, I'd like to share one of the most prominent one here.

I was moved to a brand new project when I joined this new organization. A lot of documents and the assignments were provided to me to come up with some plan for testing the microservices. The client, I am working for is based out at USA and basically their aim is to compete with the trending retail supply chain management. I was given some tasks and so for developers also to develop that microservice, they wanted to. I am not going to share the business logic here but the idea I gave it to them regarding the services.

Idea was to build micorservices which can be dependent on each other. So with that the APIs wouldn't be too much tough to develop also. and testing will also go smoothly. So, they created APIs in chunks and later on via SOAPUI tool, I was able to test them manually.

Now, the real challenge was to test it using automation code. For that we require a dynamic and robust framework. So, I created a team of 3 resources. I being the lead with the team started designing the module for the framework and in 3.5 months of huge effort, we came up with the READYAPI framework to automate the complex and even more complex APIs.

Here, most of the solution for the READYAPI were solved by me and like 1/4th of the problem got resolved by the community members and the support team of SMARTBEAR. The new thing which I learnt was reporting for the APIs result, which I was not good at. The client is always impressed with the reporting and how well you articulate your test results. I didn't know how to write groovy code for the set up and the tear down scripts. I never used that actually. But, believe me, later on I realized, it was a great help to us.

I am going to implement the same in my new project and the organization to make the testing of APIs more interesting and easy to understand. 

There are lot many stories, I wanted to share with you community people. May be someday, I will create a video of all the challenges I faced so far and gonna upload it here.

Just for the community members, who are new here or recently joined this community. You won't regret joining this platform. If you face any challenges, you can always go through the community interview, There are lot of intellectual community memebers here, who has been using the SMARTBEAR tool for so long. I started from here only. 🙂

I'd like to hear story from the senior here - @AlexKaras, @tristaanogre @Marsha_R @nmrao 

[nmrao]

Not working on APIs, so not using SoapUI in this year..

Just trying to give it back to the community when possible.

[TanyaYatskovska]

@avidCoder, creating a powerful framework is awesome!

@nmrao, we appreciate your valuable participation in the SmartBear Community!

[AlexKaras]

Can't call this achievement as this is a kind of running result of positive practical verification of several my ideas.

I am even considering to apply with them for the SBC 2020...

In a nutshell, these are:

a) Integration of TestComplete with Visual Testing third-party platform for cross-platform layout and data validation (using Script Extensions functionality of TestComplete);

b) "Bottom-Up" test results reporting approach to improve the usefulness of end-to-end automated test results for project management, manual testing and subject experts; and

c) Runtime dynamic data exchange between end-to-end functional tests.

@nmrao : It's a pity... What is the replacement?

[tristaanogre]

I regret to say that I haven't really done anything "new" or "exciting" with a SmartBear tool this year.  It's been a rather odd year for me.  Let me enumerate:

1) September 2018, my wife passed away after 6 years on and off fighting cancer

2) Company has repurposed my team to split work between test automation and robotic process automation

3) Started dating a lovely woman in January

4) Transitioned to being a functional team lead for both TestComplete procedures and RPA procedures

5) Evaluated new RPA tools for use with my team

6) Applied automation techniques learned from 16 years of test automation to doing RPA.

7) Got engaged in July

😎 Started using a new RPA tool in November 2019

9) Getting married in 2 days.

So...  Not exactly the kinds of achievements that probably is being looked for in this topic, but I see the following:

1) I've overcome the adversity of the grief and loss of a spouse of 20+ years and have found new happiness in my life moving forward

2) I've taken the best practices learned from Test Automation and applied them to a different UI based automation vertical space

3) I've expanded my role into more of a leadership role instead of a producer role in all my automation work.

So... here's looking forward to 2020 for more exciting journeys and adventures.

[AlexKaras]

@tristaanogre :

Oh... My late but very sincere condolences... Let she rest in peace...

I remember your words early 2018 when you planned to visit SBC 2018 that the situation may change but you are positive. Really sorry to know that the worst has happen...

RPA sounds really interesting (well, with my initial educational background). Are you using some custom niche product or it can be found in the internet?

[tristaanogre]

@AlexKaras Thanks, Alex. There were complications towards the end that just weren't able to be resolved. It was a quiet passing.

We're using UIPath (https://www.uipath.com).  It's a really well done product and the Selector methodology for identifying onscreen objects reminds me a little bit of TestComplet's Object Browser and recognition.

[AlexKaras]

@tristaanogre :

I see...

I heard about UIPath from the colleague of mine, though he was not very happy with it. He posted several comments about the cases they have for their project, but his posts are in Russian.

[tristaanogre]

In comparison to the tool we were using before this one, it's MILES ahead.  I'm enjoying it and I kind of like the architecture.

[Marsha_R]

As I mentioned in my Day 1 comment, I just got back into using TestComplete this summer, after 2 years at this "new" employer without it!   I test for two different teams at the university, but the beginning tests are for the team that provides most of the work, which are various in-house accounting apps.  They all hook into PeopleSoft and I've started some front end testing with that as well.  

I tried doing API testing next.  We don't have SoapUI Pro and of course what I needed is not in the open source tool, so I dug into the TestComplete documentation for that and unfortunately didn't get very far.  @AlexKaras ended up helping me a lot and then OH NO we ran into a bug in TestComplete.   Alexander in Support was very helpful in getting a patch for that and now I'm moving forward again.

Next will be front end and API testing for the other team, which supports some web apps that are used by the whole campus, faculty, staff, and students, so they are highly visible and need more testing than I can possibly give them without having TestComplete!

Goals going forward are to leverage these tests into other areas, with me doing the new test development and my two interns doing the updates needed.  

[nmrao]

@AlexKaras , Nature of work is changed and it does involve APIs. Sorry for not being clear.

[varsha]

I been using Test Complete

I injured my shoulder in May and just came back to work after long, so i haven't really work on new project using automation tool Test Complet

Even i got surprise as soon came back to work, company has changed all PCs updated to Windows 10 this messed up my Test Complete and data -which scared me for while

Finally we reinstalled Test Complete after communicate with support service they are the Best

Started working on my Test Complete for newly updated feature on one of the window application

Goal is to cover as much test cases and complete my current project to make it easy for our coming up projects and updates

Test Com[plete and Smart Bear are life savers

[sonya_m]

Well, 2019 has been an interesting year for me, as I see it has been for many of you. I acquired a lot of skills, especially when it comes to the Adobe products!

I am also slowly but surely improving my knowledge of the SmartBear products to be able to provide better help here, in the Community.

@varsha, thank you for calling SmartBear and TestComplete life saver, this is very nice to hear

@avidCoder, what a great story. BTW, I think your idea of creating a video for fellow testers in the Community is awesome.