Test Run

Welcome the new version of Test Run: 1.1. Behind the scenes the product has undergone a great deal of change in the last twelve months and I am finally pleased enough with what has accumulated to release the first public beta.

More Information about this release:

• Detailed change log

Finding Help and Reporting Bugs

• Report a bug
• Find help from the community in our forums

Frequently Asked Questions

I am not sure what I found is a bug, should I still report it?

We want to hear any thoughts you may have about the application. Perhaps what you have found is not a bug, but if it doesn't work the way you want it to then something could be improved. So please, be sure to inform us if:

• an error occurs
• if the application appears slow
• you receive a javascript error
• you have a feature request

Do you have special support for Jira and other bug tracking systems?

Support for Bugzilla is almost complete. However before it is released, we wanted to finalize the developer interfaces between Test Run and the bug system driver with more thorough and public testing.

Next on the list to support is Jira because of the overwhelming number of requests we have received for it.

How long will the beta last?

Our hope is to wrap up the beta as soon as possible.

Can I subscribe to Test Run during the beta?

Absolutely!

Test Run 1.1 has been in development for a very, very long time. I admit. But the pay off will be worth it as there is a lot in this release to look forward to, and virtually all of it is the result of direct feedback from you - my users.

So, some time next week or two I hope to launch a beta of the next version of Test Run. I would like to first extend the opportunity to users of the downloadable version of Test Run to try it out and after an initial round of feedback and testing, roll it out to everyone using the online version.

If you would like to get a preview of this upcoming version of Test Run, drop me a line, and I will happily provide you with a copy.

For a complete list of enhancements that have been made in Test Run 1.1 to date, keep reading.

Continue reading "Preparing for the Test Run 1.1 Beta" »

I wanted to give a quick development update as we near a release of Test Run 1.1 Beta. I have nearly completed Bugzilla integration with FogBugz, but there are still a lot of kinks to work out in regards to allowing users of our hosted product to access their private instance of Bugzilla.

I have also been working on a number of UI tweaks to make Test Run easier to navigate and use. Without going into too much detail yet, here are a few screenshots to whet your appetite:

Summer is over, the traditional slow time of the year in the software industry, and I have been getting a lot of renewed interest in Test Run. Customers have been submitting bug reports and a lot of feature requests, and many of them have in all honesty gone relatively unanswered in the last several months.

Well, that is about to change. I feel there is a critical mass of feature requests to begin working on Test Run 1.1. So last night work officially began. I have started to assess a lot of different things about the product in an effort to improve customer support and the experience around finding help. I upgraded the Test Run Blog and Knowledge Base to use Movable Type 4.0, and I have migrated Test Run's forums off of my personal web server onto the production Test Run machines. This has the added benefit of dedicating Test Run's forums exclusively to Test Run. Users will no longer find content related to my other software projects. This is a good thing.

As for what features I am planning for this release:

* At the top of the list is the need to integrate with popular bug tracking systems. This feature will allow users to submit bug reports directly into Bugzilla and FogBugz from within Test Run.
* An import feature for Test Link which will allow people to easily migrate to Test Run from that case tracking tool.
* Test Plan printing - many users asked for the ability to print a test plan to make it easy to review plans offline.
* Rich Text Editing - several users have asked for me to integrate a WYSIWYG editor into Test Run, and I will see what I can do to accommodate.
* Naturally there will be lots of bug fixes as well.

I encourage users to submit feature requests to me (as a comment to this post if you wish) and let me know what you would like to see out of the next version of Test Run.

Development on Test Run continues at a fast and furious pace as we rush to keep up with all the wonderful feedback we get from customers. Most of the feedback is about a feature or two that people would really like to see. Sometimes the feedback is in regards to a bug that a user finds. And then occasionally a user will tell me something like this:

"I have worked at a lot of companies and have been responsible for reviewing and recommending countless test management tools. Test Run is far and away the best and simplest tool I have ever encountered."

God, I can't tell you how wonderful it is to get feedback like that. When it sometimes becomes really hard to create awesome software while continuing to work full time at another job you also love, feedback like that picks you up and keeps you going.

And what better way to reward a growing and increasingly involved and engaged user base then with a new release of Test Run?

Tonight I am happy to announce the latest version of Test Run which contains features implemented exclusively from customer feedback. Most notably, Test Run 1.09 has the the following new features.

Continue reading "New features: Tag Management and Time Estimates" »

So I have been working on a number of features requested by potential customers - oh the lengths I will go to to try and get someone to actually pay for the services! (It really is worth paying for honest!) One customer I have been corresponding with really admired the use of tags within Test Run and how they facilitated their filtering cases. However, they still found tags inadequate for searching test cases and asked if there was a way to offer a full-text search allowing users to find test cases by text found in the summary, detailed description, the notes and more.

A quick search on Google revealed that thanks to Lucene the feature is relatively easy to implement. So, a quick download of the PHP Zend Framework and presto: full text search is done.

I would have released the feature a while ago, but thanks to some issues with executing PHP from the command line it took a little longer than I anticipated to index all of the thousands and thousands of cases stored in Test Run. But I was finally able to get 100% of the test cases indexed and so search is now available online.

It may take a while for me to document the process to enable full text search, so users of the downloadable version will need to be patient while I wrap a few things up. In the meantime, users of the hosted version of Test Run can begin using full text search right away.

We have been hard at work this week making a number of small improvements to Test Run, and one big one. A number of customers have been expressing the desire to have more control over the order in which they execute their test cases. Until now Test Run always ordered test cases in reverse chronological order. What made this challenging for many users was the fact that some testing requires test cases to be executing in a very specific sequence. So to address their concern we implemented the feature to allow test planners the ability to order test cases however they see fit.

When we designed and developed this feature we wanted to make the process as intuitive and as simple as possible, allowing test planners to drag and drop test cases in what ever order they choose. We could tell you more about this feature, but I think it much better to see it in action.

Last night I released Test Run 1.04, a version that contained a minor feature enhancement enabling greater interoperability with popular bug tracking systems. Tonight I started work on Test Run 1.05 which contains a single feature: the ability to re-order test cases within a test plan. This feature request comes after a number of customers expressed concern that their process required tests to be run in a specific sequence. However Test Run's default sort order (the created on date) was insufficient. They wanted more control then that.

So in the next version of Test Run, customers will be allowed to specify the order of their test cases within a test plan using a simple drag-and-drop interface. Stay tuned...

A number of Test Run users, and wannabe users, use Jira, a bug tracking tool created by Atlassian. Jira is unique among other bug tracking systems in that the bug IDs it produces are not exclusively numeric. This made it difficult, if not impossible for those using Jira to integrate with Test Run's bug tracking capabilities.

So last night we released a few changes to enabled Test Run users to enter bugs into the system that can be any arbitrary string. So Jira users: rejoice. Test Run now works even better for you.

Continue reading "New feature: Non-numeric bug ids" »

Tagged.com is one of Test Run's earliest adopters. Their team has been using the hosted version of Test Run for over a year now. They provide us with invaluable feedback to make the application better and we sincerely appreciate their business.

"Test Run was the only viable On Demand Test Case Management solution that provides a usable, flexible, comprehensive and reliable framework to manage tests. If you want everyone in your team to get up and running quickly, Test Run is the ideal solution."

Continue reading ""The only viable on demand solution"" »