Test cases tree icons in SQA Mate
TL;DR
- clean icon means: “empty inside”
- icon with dot means: “something inside, but not steps”
- icon with lines means: “steps inside”
Details
When we work with test cases design we often:
- leave test cases without steps;
- leave test cases without anything inside but the titles;
- put information in test suites description;
- etc.
This is a part of test cases design process. That’s normal! But what’s not normal to me — is that test cases management tools do not assist us in these situations. They don’t let us know what’s inside an item (test case or test suite) until we open that item.
Look at screenshots below and try to answer these 3 simple questions:
- are there any test cases without steps inside?
- are there any test cases without anything inside, but with only titles?
- are there any test cases with something inside, but not test steps?
- are there any test suites that have some description inside?
See? You can’t! Tools don’t give you that info. But this simple info is very useful for acceleration of work!
Only on the last screenshot we can see that different types of icons have been used to differentiate a “Type” of test case (whatever that means). But they are small, have even smaller details to distinguish them and remember.
Anyway: modern and popular test cases management systems just haven’t that “speak what’s inside” icons approach yet. But I wanted that feature in SQA Mate. So, I made it.
Take a look:
- clean folder / sheet icon (WEB-45 for example) means: “empty inside”
- dot in folder / sheet icon (WEB-17 for example) means: “there is something inside, but not steps”
- lines in sheet icon (WEB-16 for example) means: “there are steps inside”
You do not need to open items (WEB-3 for example) just to know if anything is written inside! Now you know (for WEB-3 you know that it has only title, no steps, nothin else)! More than that: now you’ll not miss description written in test suite for the whole group of test cases — because there is an indicator to remember you about this fact: a dot on a suite folder!
What’s next?
I plan to support search of these items in test cases search filter:
- is empty
- has no steps
- has steps
Because when I need for example to count how many test cases without steps, I need such kind of filter. And now I think about implementation details. To use for example “description.is_empty”, “description is empty” filter notation or other forms of notations.
I develop SQA Mate — test cases management tool made for pro. SQA Mate is available both in self-hosted and in cloud-based versions. And cloud-based version has 1 month of free trial. If you interested, give it a try!
