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kirk_bottomley's avatar
kirk_bottomley
Contributor
9 years ago
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Manual Step Needed

In order to run certain tests, I need to have a user log into our software. I don't have access to their identification or password at design time. 

My initial thought was to have the tester start the tests, let them run to the login portion, then pause with a manual step for the tester to do that, then continue on with the rest of the automation.

However, manual testing has been deprecated. Is there a better alternative to this scenario? Gaining access to the test environment, user information and passwords is strictly not possible at design time. I'm working on logic to collect whatever information is necessary at run time, such as the application path and location of the configuration files, etc. But there is no way to get the user login.

  • Marsha_R's avatar
    Marsha_R
    9 years ago

    I have some manual steps in mine right now and what I did is just put a pause in, and right before the pause I have a log entry that explains what to do.  When the test runs and the pause comes up, you can check the pause log for info, then follow the instructions and just start it up again.

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  • NisHera's avatar
    NisHera
    Valued Contributor
    9 years ago

    Why don’t you have mock system to test? What we have is a sanitized customer database to play with. Which means sensitive data being replace with some characters something like “***” Is system being designing from scratch? Best methodology for test newly developed feature /systems is manual exploratory testing.

    • kirk_bottomley's avatar
      kirk_bottomley
      Contributor
      9 years ago

      "Why don’t you have mock system to test?"

       

      We have several here in house, and run extensive tests before distributing. However, we've had issues crop up in the past when our software hits a client's environment. What I'm developing now is a suite of tests that will run in a "live" sandbox in the site's environment as a final step when our tech support team installs upgrades. Since it's for medical environments, actual user information is restricted to me here at design time. 

      • Marsha_R's avatar
        Marsha_R
        Champion Level 3
        9 years ago

        If you aren't actually testing the login, how about having the test start at the step after the login?  Let the user login and then they can walk away and the test can be run once or a hundred times and you don't need them to log in again.

  • dmiscannon's avatar
    dmiscannon
    Frequent Contributor
    9 years ago

    Create a UserForm with 2 fields (UserID and Password). Create two variables tied to the two fields. Display the UserForm when the test starts. The tester enters their UserID and Password and clicks OK on the UserForm. The entered values populate the variables and are passed to the test at the appropriate point to the login page of the tested application. At the end of the test, be sure to clear the UserID and Password variables. Also be sure that the Password variable's type is Password to mask what is entered in the test's log.

     

    If you need this sort of functionality frequently, you can create a script extension to handle this.

    • kirk_bottomley's avatar
      kirk_bottomley
      Contributor
      9 years ago

       "Display the UserForm when the test starts. The tester enters their UserID and Password and clicks OK on the UserForm."

       

      This sounds like a manual step. If I can have a user enter information during the test, I will just have them enter it into the login screen and keep going from there. That's the only reason I would need their login information anyway.