How to Use TestRail for Managing Automation Test Results
Test automation helps your team save time checking your software performance while still delivering quality results. In this post, we overview why you should manage automation testing results and explore the benefits of using test automation tools.
Head over to the full article to learn more details and discover a practical example of integrating autotest results with TestRail.
Why should you manage automation testing results?
To ensure effective automation testing, you need to devise a test management strategy. Otherwise, you’ll likely face the following situations and suffer from their negative consequences:
1.If you run tests locally in the AQA environment and don’t integrate them into the CI/CD pipeline, you have no control over either the regular running of autotests or their results.
2. If your automation testing team works independently from the manual testing team, manual tests and their results are monitored separately from autotests. Thus, you’ll need to put effort into managing test results in more than one place and risk responding to failed autotests too late.
3. If manual and automated QA specialists have blurred responsibilities for monitoring the results of autotests, some test results might not be processed or even become lost.
What can you achieve with test automation tools like TestRail
There are many things you can oversee by integrating autotest management tools into your QA department’s work:
Automation test scenarios. Autotest management tools provide you with a convenient way of storing autotest scenarios for future use.
Test execution process. Autotest management tools offer many options for combining tests: sequential execution, prioritization, parallel execution, and others. Based on the requirements, resources, and objectives of the testing project, you can select the best option and integrate it into your autotest management tool.
Test execution results. Many test management tools allow you to generate reports after a test run. These reports have a lot of visual components, including execution outcomes, failed tests and reasons for their failure, and total execution time.
Test execution history. All of your test run results are stored and can be retrieved at any moment. You can also generate statistics on all executions with different parameters depending on the functionality of the selected tool.
What is TestRail and why should you use it?
There are several popular tools for autotest result management, including TestRail, Zephyr, QMetry, and Testmo. Based on our experience, we prefer using TestRail, as it provides the following benefits:
Jira testing integration. We use Jira as our main progress-tracking software, so using TestRail for test automation together with Jira is very convenient for our team.
Ability to manage both manual and automated tests. This improves the productivity of our QA team, allowing them to respond to failed tests in a timely manner.
Test cases unification. This allows us to use test cases in one single format that suits us and automatically export test cases from TestRail in the same format. After we import existing test cases or create new ones, TestRail will apply the selected template to all available test cases.
User-friendly UI. TestRail is not only visually appealing but also intuitive to use.
How to process automation testing results in TestRail
At Apriorit, we have developed our own effective QA strategy based on the shift-left approach.
Benefits of this strategy include:
- Time and cost savings on QA activities
- Faster time to market
- Improved user experience
- Satisfactory product performance
Final thoughts
You can take our example described in the full article as the basis for your QA process and adapt it according to your needs. Automation testing results management using TestRail allows you to significantly improve your quality assurance efforts. With the help of TestRail, your QA team can reduce the time and resources spent on test runs. You can also track your results in TestRail, thus managing your test runs and handling failed tests and bugs more effectively.
Apriorit QA experts have extensive expertise in software testing. We know how to choose the most relevant QA strategies and toolsets for a specific project and ensure the best software quality within set deadlines.
