10 Features Every Scriptless Automation Testing Tool Must Have

With the introduction of the Agile approach where a software product is iteratively released, traditional testing becomes a challenge for the testers. The biggest challenges in Automation Testing is the initial time spent on test script development.

Testing has not evolved at the same pace as Development. Even today, testers use age-old testing methods and tools to test complex applications. This ushered in the idea of Scriptless Test Automation which also allows for better participation of functional testers and QA Analysts and, enterprises began to gradually move from traditional automation testing tools that depended heavily on written code to a more easy Scriptless testing approach.

The Scriptless Test Automation Approach

The biggest challenges in Automation Testing is the initial time spent on test script development. Scriptless Automation tools hide/abstract the underlying code making the test automation process real easy and effortless. This will be particularly beneficial to Manual testing teams to automate complex applications efficiently even without scripting skills.
With a huge part of the reusable tasks automated, they can also do a few rounds of Exploratory Testing.

This approach towards automation reduces time and effort required to test and ensure higher levels of maintainability and ease of updating changing requirements to fit into the Agile/DevOps process.

Benefits of going Scriptless

• A Unified approach to diverse application types on multiple browsers and platforms
• Less or no learning curve
• Easy updating of changes and updates
• Test scripts can be reviewed by domain experts and business analysts
• A reduced test authoring time and faster Return On Investment

The main challenges with legacy test automation are building a robust and maintainable automation framework and managing the objects and identifiers.

Automated tests need to be reusable and maintainable and should not be resistant to changes in the application UI and should ensure that the automated tests do not break.

Let us look at the 10 features every Scriptless Automation Testing tool must have!

1) Dynamic Element Locators

As the scope of the software changes, the software itself changes. This means that any automation scripts that testers once developed tend to break. A good Scriptless Automation Testing tool will allow you to bring in more than one element locator. Incase a particular element is missing, the automation testing tool should be able to automatically replace the failed locator with a better alternative. This is covered in Tests that do not require maintenance. This reduces the effort spent in maintaining huge scripts and results in more stable test scripts.

2) Conditional Checks

The traditional approach to testing is time-based. What this essentially means is that the script is paused for specific durations of time in between steps. This involves authors keying in pauses, making it tiresome and time-consuming. However, conditional waiting allows scripts to run based on specific criteria. For instance, if a condition is true in a particular step then the script will continue to the next step else it will pause until the condition becomes true. Scriptless automation testing tools should allow authors to insert conditional checks so that the tests become more efficient.

3) Control Structures

Control structures are basically programming blocks that analyze various conditions and determine the direction to take based on certain predefined parameters. Some of these control structures include loops and conditional clauses.

For example, if an action needs to be repeated ‘x’ number of times, it is required to write it ‘x’ times and maintain each of those repetitions individually. This isn’t the case with loops. Similarly, when there are multiple alternatives within a step where Action A needs to be taken when a condition is true and Action B when the condition is false, the script author can use conditional clauses to support such logic. Traditional tools were limited with the absence of such logic which restricted the scalability of the project.

4) Easy assertions

Once you have written the code, you need to know whether or not the test is successful. This is where an assertion is important. This feature makes sure the tests fail whenever the result does not match the expected outcome. Assertions are of two kinds — hard assertion and soft assertion. A hard assert throws an error immediately when an assertion fails. However, if you want the remaining steps to be executed even when the assertion fails, you can make it a soft assertion.

A good scriptless test automation tool needs to provide an assertion as one of its features. If you ever need custom assertions, it should be easy to create them using custom functions.

5) Easy modifications without redo

When an application changes, the script author is required to add, delete, or edit an existing action in a scenario. This essentially means having to re-record/rewrite the entire scenario and inserting new actions or editing existing actions wherever necessary. This might not play out in your favor because it affects your turnaround time and quality. A scriptless test automation tool should make this process easy for you without having to rewrite the entire test script.
This is also one important reason why Record and Playback is not suitable for enterprise-class Test Automation.

6) Reusable steps

There are many scenarios that have the same steps. However, imagine having to record these every time these scenarios are being tested? It would be a challenge to manage and maintain them because every time there is a change in a frequently used step, the script author will need to update every test that includes it.

Hence, it is necessary that a good scriptless test automation software allows the script authors to save a set of common steps and insert them into any test flow. And when something changes in the test step, the author does not have to update that step in every test that it occurs.

7) Cross-browser support

Most often, test automation tools come in the form of browser extensions. Browser extensions are usually tied to a specific browser. Unlike browser extensions, the software that companies build is not restricted to specific browsers. Tests need to be run across multiple browsers and devices. Testing the same scenario on multiple browsers can take a toll on script authors because there are multiple scenarios within an application that needs to be checked thoroughly. A good scriptless test automation tool should allow test authors to use the tests on multiple browsers available and not just the popular ones.

8) Reporting

Reporting is important for any function in an organization. The same applies to test automation as well. With multiple testers involved and plenty of tests being run simultaneously, you need to be up-to-date. You need reports that tell you how your tests are performing, which failed tests need not be re-run, what features do not require extensive debugging.

The Scriptless Test Automation tool should let you analyze the details of each step result with screenshots, videos, and text logs.

9) Ability to insert code

Scriptless tools provide solutions for incorporating all possible test scenarios. But, it is important that automation testing tools allow room for testers to fill those gaps in edge cases. To speed up the Test Case Executions, many development teams prefer certain actions as Web Service API calls over UI actions. Script authors should be able to use code within tests for complex and scenarios highly specific to the Application Under Test(AUT) customized for their needs.

10) Continuous integration

Continuous integration (CI) is one of the best practices for software development. One of the key benefits of continuous integration is that errors can be detected and located quickly. In the Agile frameworks where changes are small, it is easy to identify a change that caused a specific error easily. Additionally, it helps you keep your application in a deployable state at all times. This means that you can push new changes into production as and when they are made.

Sriptless Test Automation tools like Testsigma that uses NLP based grammar to automate complex tests would be a good choice if you are looking at a solution that is easy to use also flexible for enterprise-class test automation needs.
You may also check Why choose Testsigma as your Scriptless Test Automation tool? that covers these 10 must-haves in detail.