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Author: Shivani Sinha

She is a Product Marketer with over 9 years of diversified experience across content, branding, and product marketing. Her experience ranges from global brands to nimble startups. She is a custodian of Brand & Content, telling stories about the brand that delights customers and provides compelling business value.

Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

17 Best Tips To Write Effective Test Cases

Test cases are the first step in any testing cycle and are very important for any project. If anything goes wrong at this step, the impact gets proliferated in the entire software testing process. This can be avoided if the testers use proper procedure and guidelines while creating the test case template.

In this blog, I am going to share some simple yet effective tips which you could use for writing effective test cases. These tips will save you time and effort while optimizing the use of resources.

How to write test cases in a better way

Let’s have a look a the tips to write better test case template.

1. Detailed Domain Knowledge

Domain knowledge in information technology means deep knowledge of business and operational dynamics, the risks involved and the opportunities in that particular project. It is required to follow the best practices in the domain.

2. Break long test cases into many smaller ones

It is better to break the test case into a group of smaller ones if it has too many steps. It would be easier for the developer to backtrack and repeat the test steps if an error occurs somewhere in the test script. If not done than there are high chances that the developer will miss the bug.

3. Preconditions

Before starting on the test case it is suggested confirm all the assumptions that apply to the test and the preconditions that must be met before execution. There can be data dependency or the dependencies on the test environment or any other test cases.

4. Attach Artifacts

Relevant artifacts should be attached to the test cases. This can be done using a test management tool. At the time of product delivery, It will help to track the changes in the application. I will be easy to understand the flow of the function when there is a change at any step which will not be easy to relate otherwise.

5. Test data input

While writing a new test case a tester can share test data wherever applicable to be used for the Test Case within the test case description or add with the specific test case step. This will save time as there is no need to look for the test data anywhere else.

If the values are to be verified then testers can specify the value range or describe what values are to be tested for a particular field. Choose a few values from each class which will give good coverage for your test.
It’s better not to mention the real test data value but the type of data which is required to run the test. In projects where multiple teams use the test data and it keeps changing, mentioning only the type of data will be a wise choice.

6. Organize your work

Use a test management tool to manages your test cases instead of using a spreadsheet. There are many test management tools that can be used to organize the test cases in one place which will increase the productivity of the team.

7. Stop Assuming

It is better to refer to the specification document. Assumptions about the features or functionalities can lead to disagreements between the client and the developers. This gap between the client’s requirement and the application under development will impact the business.

8. Test Case Naming Conventions

To write tests which are easy to understand, we have to stop coding on autopilot and pay attention to the naming conventions. It is required to name our test classes, fields of our test classes, test methods and the local variables while writing automated tests for our application.

It does not matter which team member wrote the test, others will know what feature is tested under what scenario without even looking at the test code.

9. Meet Customer’s Requirements

If the testers miss a bug or write test cases that do not relate to the real world scenarios then it’s just a waste of resources and time. The goal is to meet the customer’s expectations and that can be attained only if the testers think from the users perspective.

10. Cover All Verification Points

It is important to write well-defined test case verification steps covering all the verification points for the feature under test. To make sure that the test Case covers all the verification points match your test case steps with the artifacts given for your project.

11. Avoid Repetitions

Do test automation when needed as it will reduce the manual effort and save a lot of time. The test scripts should be written in such a way that they can be used afterward for some other project.

12. Make it Reusable

Create test case template which could be re-used in the future by other teams. Also, before writing a new test case for your module, find out if there are similar test cases written already for some other project. Doing this you will avoid any redundancies in your test management tools. Call the existing test case in pre-conditions or at a specific design step if there is a need for a particular test case to execute some other test case.

13. All-Inclusive Test Coverage

Test cases should include all the features and functionalities mentioned in the software requirement. Requirement traceability matrix will help in finding the untested functions of the application.

14. Group Similar Test Cases

A test run is a collection of test cases that testers should execute in a particular order. Test cases are often grouped in test runs. It’s preferred to put preconditions at the beginning of a test run rather than inserting them into each test case.

Actually, only a few of the test cases need preconditions, so the field is often left empty. A test management tool will help to customize your forms and create a test case template which will save your time and effort when writing test cases. Another thing to keep in mind is to avoid writing the same instructions several times by moving repeated preconditions to a test run.

15. Easy to Understand

The test cases should be well defined with comments where ever needed so that any other software tester can work on it in the future. Whatever project you work on, when designing test cases, you should always consider that the test cases will not always be executed by the one who designs them. Therefore, the tests should be easily understandable and to-the-point.

In a scenario where the person who wrote all those test cases leaves for some reason and you have a completely new testing team to work with, the entire effort spent during the design phase could go down the drain.

16. Test Case Description

In the description, the testers need to mention all the details about what is going to be tested, what needs to be verified, the test environment and test data.

The information mentioned below should be there in a well-written test case description:

  • Test to be carried out
  • Testing tools
  • Test Environment Details
  • Behavior being verified
  • Any dependencies like preconditions and assumptions
  • Test Data to be used

 

17. Maintenance and Update

All the test cases should be updated with the new requirements so it’s easier to execute them in the future if there is a need. Even if some other tester wants to use the test case he/she wouldn’t have to go through the details of the script.

Conclusion

The tester needs to have good domain knowledge and should write presentable test cases from the users perspective. A good test case template will make it easier for testers to write good test cases. If there are only a few test steps, consider making a checklist instead and have a look at some relevant test case examples before working on your test case. A test case example will be helpful in creating test case templates too. A test management tool will definitely help in improving the way test cases are created and managed.

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Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

Android Q: All You Need To Know

Good news for Android users!!! The wait for the new version of the Android is over as it is likely to be released in the first week of September. Yes, you read it right.

 

Finally, Google has ditched its sweet flavours that started with Android 1.5 naming as “Cupcake”. After that, the trend followed as — Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream, Jellybean, KitKat, Lollipop, Marshmallow, Nougat, Oreo, and Pie. 

 

For the first time in its history, Android released its OS without a dessert name. It has discontinued the tradition permanently. It is simply called Android Q or Android 10. 

 

However, the previous version Android 9 or Pie was most focused to introduce the best of intelligence, simplicity, digital wellbeing and ultimate navigation.

 
The new version Android Q is filled with functions like Android Q desktop mode offering more control to apps and features to its users. Fans and tech junkies had lots of expectations from Android 10 as it comes with lots of interesting and innovative features. 

 

Android Q Features

Let us look at major changes in the Android 10.

 

Fully Gesture-based Navigation

 

Putting forward the gesture-based navigation added to the Android Pie, the new version will have fully-gesture based navigation. The traditional back button of the Android OS will not be available. It’s one of the remarkable changes that users will find in the Android OS navigation. 

 

Some of the gestures are:  

  • Swipe up to access home;
  • Swipe up and hold to show the multitasking menu, 
  • Swipe from the left or right edge of your screen to go back.
  • First, swipe to open a side menu and a double swipe to go back. 

 

However, user can anytime switch between various system navigation options that include: Gesture navigation, 2-button navigation, and the traditional 3-button navigation. 

 

System-Wide Dark Mode

 
The feature which every Android user was waiting for- the Dark mode. Google’s Android 10 will have a system-wide dark theme that can be turned on and off at any time via a Quick Settings toggle. 

 

Adding to that, Google has also created APIs that third-party app developers can use to activate the dark theme mode within their apps. 

 

Live caption transcription

 

Live Caption will provide real-time captions for just about anything on your phone where someone is talking or reading. The best part is that it happens locally on-device. In other words, no internet connection of any kind is required. Anyone can turn Live Caption on through Android 10’s accessibility settings. 

 

This will be a godsent gift for users who have difficulty in hearing or partially deaf. They generally face difficulty to understand the media contents like video, games, podcasts and so on, they can turn on the “Live caption” feature to better understand the media being displayed. 

 
Privacy

 

Privacy is the biggest concern for our generation. New steps have been taken by the Android 10 developers to give us a better understanding and more control over what exactly apps on your phone have access to like calendar, location, camera, contacts, and microphone.

 

Now the apps that ask for your location will now show a new pop-up asking you if you want to grant location access all the time, only when the app’s being used, or not at all. This is a major step where the user has more command over third-party apps.

 

Permission Usage

 
The Permissions Usage page in settings has been completely modified to show which permissions are being used by how many of your apps, the ability to filter by permissions to see which apps are using certain ones, and a new User Interface for the App info page.

 
Sharing Shortcut

 

The direct share is replaced by sharing shortcut. It allows apps to return lists of direct targets for sharing for use within share menus. Unlike its previous versions, apps publish their targets in advance and do not have to be polled at runtime, improving performance. 

 

Wi-Fi QR Code

 

Using a password to connect to a Wi-Fi will no longer be required. Android 10 has a built-in feature called “Easy connect”, where the system lets us make a QR code that others can access to use your Wi-Fi.

 

Bubbles

 

Bubbles are just like you see chat heads in facebook messenger. It will be a circular floating head that shows the latest notification on the screen. The new notification bubbles will now pop up on your screens while using other applications. The bubble is created for multitasking purposes; however, the user has an option to disable it. 

 

Audio Features

 
Android 10 lets us record or listen to audio on two different apps. Previously, if an app started to capture audio, all other apps had no way to access the audio input until the capturing app was stopped. But now, you will be able to get two applications to listen to audio input at the same time. 

 

Settings Panel

 

User need not jump through multiple pages to get to the phone settings you want. Settings Panel on the screen let you access phone settings that are contextual and correlated to the app that users currently have open.

 

Foldable Devices

 

There is a high possibility that foldable smartphones will be introduced in the market by the end of the year. Android 10 will offer support for application developers to develop apps specifically for such devices, even with different folding patterns. The support addresses the app’s resizing, screen ratios, multi-window functions and aspect ratios.

 
Undo App Removal
 

This feature can be saviour for users, as it happens to most of us, we accidentally remove any app and then we realize, we shouldn’t do that. 

 

Google has understand this issue and has given to undo the removal. After you have removed any app, you have a few seconds to undo it by pressing the “undo” button that you can find within the bottom of the screen. 

 

Smart Battery Indicator

 
The new indicator will reveal the remaining battery capacity. Currently, we see a certain percentage showing on the screen. Now the OS will show a text like “Until 10 PM” instead of a percentage. This text will only appear when the battery decreases to a certain level. 

 

Android 10 will give extra privacy to the smartphone users and with the help of innovative technologies, the Android OS users will be able to function more efficiently. All these features will surely make things easier and navigable. 

 
When to Expect the Release
 

Google had released the first Android Q Beta version in early March this year for the Pixel phones and multiple Beta versions were released including Android Q Beta 6 which appeared on August 7. As of now the announcement of the Q3 has been made on August 22, so we can expect the final release of the Android 10 at any point of time when Q3 is over. 

 

These Android Q features of the Beta versions are live on 20 different phones across multiple manufacturers. People can sign up and enroll to get the new updates on Android 10. 

 

The current compatible Phone after launch with Android 10 is – Pixel 3, Pixel 3XL, Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel, Pixel XL, OnePlus 6T, Sony Xperia Z3, and LG G8, Nokia 7.1, Nokia 8.1.

 
Related Articles:

  • Android Q Beta Devices Available On pCloudy
  • Migrating to AndroidX
  • Testing The Battery Drain For Android App
  • What’s in Store For Dev and Testers With Android O Release?
  • pCloudy Plugin for Android Studio

    • Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

    Opkey is Now pCloudy Automation Studio

    Opkey is Now pCloudy

     
    We are thriving in a 'Digital First' world. In this digital era, quality assurance remains the major gear behind a digital success and for that it has to work in tandem with the other. As per Gartner majority of organizations have taken up digital transformation projects. These are in the areas of Mobility, Cloud or Data analytics.
     
    Today digital transformation is at its peak because after decades of development it has become incredibly useful. Still, if you look closely, trough is what is waiting after a crest. And it's true for digital transformation as well as you can already see the contours of its inevitable descent into the mundane. 
     
    So what's next?
     
    It's Continuous Next.
     
    We have seen that digital transformation projects taken up by organizations are siloed in nature. To take the next leap which Gartner has termed as Continuous Next there is a need to unify the siloed tech effort by connecting the major touchpoints like mobility, cloud, data etc.
     
    Continuous Next
    With a mission to propel success of largest digital transformation projects through the power of Futuristic Testing, pCloudy saw this trend early.
     
    This led us to unify our 2 different products – Opkey and pCloudy and go ahead with this product enhancement merger. Opkey is now officially pCloudy Automation Studio.
     
    This product enhancement merger gives way to a complete Digital Assurance platform which enables Quality @ Speed for apps while you connect touch points to achieve Continuous Next.
     
    We do it through portfolio of tools which connect seamlessly in one single platform.
     
    Platform is comprised of three suites of tools:
    1) Autonomous Mobile Device Cloud – reliable Test infrastructure for Mobile App Testing
    2) Zero code factory Automation Studio allowing rapid Automation for Mobile, Web, and APIs
    3) Pre-built Test Accelerators for Enterprise Apps like Salesforce, Oracle Fusion, Workday etc..
     
    Our Product-pCloudy
    This is yet another step to ensure to help you propel success and take a big leap in your digital transformation journey.
     
    We assure the smooth merger of these 2 products which will make organizations take leap in their digital transformation journey. If you have any questions regarding this merger feel free to write back to us.

     
    Related Articles:

  • Selenium Testing For Effective Test Automation
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  • Mobile App Testing Tools to Improve App Quality – pCloudy Tutorial
  • Integration of TestNG Project with pCloudy Platform

    • Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

    Why Mobile App Performance is Critical for Successful Mobile Testing

    ‘Metrics’. This term has become one of the widely used terms today in enterprise mobility especially for measuring mobile app performance.

    Let us first understand why are the metrics are so important to analyze the performance of an app.

    Generally, app developers consider mobile app performance testing as an afterthought. Mobility teams have to meet stringent deadlines and for them, testing the performance of an app has the least priority. To them, passing the functional tests meet all critical criteria for launching an app. Well, let us find out why is performance such an important criterion for mobile app testing.

    Reasons why measuring Mobile App performance is such an important criterion:

    1. Speed wins: As per the Compuware report, users expect their apps to load in about two seconds. This can even be proven right by the SEO reports from Google, which considers the site speed as an important parameter for Page ranking.

    It is important for mobility teams to understand that your users want their apps to respond in about two seconds or less. Anything beyond two seconds, and you might lose your business.

    Once the app starts taking anywhere close to five or 10 seconds, users start shifting to your competitors.

    2. Mobile App Error Rates are probably much higher than it seems: You must have struggled with issues like images not loading, network errors, content feeds leaving blank holes in the app, timeouts, crashes, freezing, upload failure etc. Most of these issues are not errors of apps but caused by unreliable networks.
    The error rates are highly variable and depend on network conditions. In the United States, we’ll typically see 3% error rates, whereas in India, China, and on challenging networks in Europe and Asia, we see error rates up to a frustrating 12%. Not measuring and then getting a handle on mobile app errors will quickly result in frustrated customers, uninstalls and 1-star reviews in the app stores. And no one wants that.

    3. 5 star app rating: Reviews and ratings have become important aspects of judgment for any user before downloading your app. And the app should be perfect in all the ways to ensure a 5 star rating.

    If you focus on functional tests and miss out on the mobile app performance not knowing, if too much battery is drained on a particular device, or is consuming too much data, then your Playstore might be full of negative reviews even before you market it well.

    In this post, you’ll know how app monitoring performance works so that you can get the best out of your Smartphone software.

    What is application performance management? 10 APM features that we can tick right off our fingers are:

    • Troubleshooting of disruption of frequent speed and uptime
    • Monitoring of the speed at which transactions are performed by end-users and systems
    • Use of a single integrated suite of software tools
    • Load-testing
    • Synthetic monitoring
    • Real-use monitoring
    • Root-cause analysis
    • Web-performance monitoring, to gauge app speed and uptime
    • An end-to-end overview of bottlenecks
    • Review of service interruptions

    APM is integrated through the lifecycle of an application including the pre-deployment and post-deployment stages. It is therefore important for developers, testers, and business teams. A slow load can be prevalent due to a host of issues related to APIs, servers, or browsers. APM techniques are what help pinpoint the actual problem.

    Basic availability monitoring involves testing IP protocols and network services, but a user needs to establish some optimal performance thresholds and real-time alerts to monitor and manage both speed and reliability.

    Tips for monitoring app performance

    Performance monitoring must take into account certain things in order to optimize user experience. These include measuring from the user’s point of view, i.e. performance, stability, and resource utilization in real time the way the user perceives them.

    The context is crucial too. It’s important to determine how many users were affected by a slowdown, and what action on a specific operating device prompted the disruption. To truly experience a ‘mobile moment,’ you should follow these tips for monitoring your app performance:

    a) Measure Frame rendering time
    Only measuring network time doesn’t cut it out for users, who are interested in when the network resumes as well as when it responds.

    Measuring response time by the device or operating system allows the product manager to focus on one platform at a time, respond to performance issues, and deploy resources accordingly.

    b) Measure battery usage
    It’s crucial to measure the battery consumption of your mobile app, along with data plan impact and memory usage. If the app is responsible for draining your battery, you should bring it in line with best practices.

    Frequent updates can also be minimized so that user satisfaction can be increased.

    c) Measure cell data consumption
    Recent studies by Dimensional Research have shown that 20% of respondents stopped using apps that were heavy on data usage. This indicates that you should measure the consumption by app version, the total number of users, KBs of data consumed per minute, the amount of data being transferred per hit, and the percentage of data being consumed per hit.

    d) Measure errors
    HTTP errors from certain URLs need to be captured. This will help track the number of users who received an error, the actions that resulted in it, number of users with errors on app launch, the percentage of actions that led to at least one error, and the app version.

    pCloudy helps you with performance profiling of your mobile apps. You can view the CPU usage, Memory usage, Data usage and Battery consumption while performing a series of actions on the app. The Real time mobile app performance monitoring feature helps you to keep track of the app’s performance while conducting manual tests. You can even check the performance consistency of the app by running automation test suites in parallel on multiple devices and by also simulating different network environments.

    App Performance while conducting Manual Tests

    The performance of an app can be viewed real-time while conducting functional tests. You can simply select the application installed on the device from the Tools section to view a graph of Memory and CPU usage, with the packets/bytes consumed in the Data Usage.

    All information captured during a testing session is gathered by the platform and stored in a secure location to be used later. When a tester completes his testing session using a device, the performance related information can be found in the Cloud Drive.

    Mobile App Metrics_pCloudy_2201_2

    Battery Consumption
    The Battery Consumption graph indicates Battery consumption by Device, Battery consumption by Application and Battery consumption in %.

    CPU Consumption
    The CPU consumption of an App is plotted as CPU consumption in percentage against Time Duration in seconds.

    Memory Consumption
    The CPU consumption of an App is plotted as Memory consumption in ‘Mb’ against Time Duration in seconds.

    Mobile App Performance

    You can listen to this webinar on Performance testing to find out how a cloud based solution can help your app perform well in all situations.

    Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

    Year 2018 at a Glance!

    pCloudy in 2018

    2019 is around the corner and it’s just the time to recap on the major events and milestones of pCloudy in 2018. We thank each one of you for your immense support and trust you bestow on us that keeps us working towards improving pCloudy to meet all your testing needs.

     

    Let’s recap:

     

    1. User base: With an incessant growth in the app testing market, pCloudy made a remarkable progress outpacing the market growth and making more than a 100% jump in its user base. We crossed the 50,000 user milestone this year and have more than 65,000 users registered on pCloudy platform till date.

     

    pCloudy Growth

    2. Immense growth in clientele and partners: This year has been a breakthrough for us in terms of setting up a one-of its kind cloud device infrastructure for one of the biggest telecom players in India. We have set up a cloud of 200 mobile devices that can scale upto 500 devices.

     

    200 Mobile Devices

    We have also succeeded in adding some big names in our clientele to gaining confidence among the Software industry and partnering with notable ones in the industry.

    We partnered with stalwarts like UST Global, Capgemini, Marlabs, Emids, Mphasis this year while enterprises like Philips, Decathalon, Aon Hewitt, On Mobile, Kony Services, LPL got added in our clientele. We are proud to say that we have replaced our competitors in most of these accounts.

     
    Clients and Partners

    3. Major breakthroughs and Product Enhancement: In our incessant effort to make mobile app testing disruptive, faster and effective, we got some major breakthroughs this year.

     

    Feature icons

    Let’s have a look at them:

     

    a) iOSConnect: Bridging the gap for iOS development lifecycle

    One of the very powerful features that we added is the iOSConnect. With iOSConnect, you can connect to an iOS Device which is present remotely and access the device as if the device is connected to your computer. With iOSConnect we are bridging the gap for the iOS development lifecycle.

     

    b) Automation Studio: Codeless Automation Tool to scale your app tests

    We have added an in-built automation studio in pCloudy platform where you can access the devices to record your test scripts and execute it in parallel on multiple devices without writing any code.

     

    c) Simpler Appium Integration Architecture

    We have released a newer and simpler Appium integration architecture to simplify your Appium test execution on Android and iOS devices with pCloudy. The newer architecture make developers’ life simpler with lesser changes in the code. And wonder what! it makes you save 50% of your app testing time.

     

    d) TouchID and FaceID for iOS devices no more a blocker

    To ease out the process of authenticating TouchID or FaceID manually every time, you can now bypass the verification in your apps using our utility.

     

    e) Test local or Staged sites with Local site emulation

    It’s a path breaking feature for enterprise mobility. Local Site emulation Testing provides a platform to test private or internal servers on any Android device present on pCloudy.

     

    4. Bringing intelligence to mobile app testing: Our AI powered bot Certifaya has been extremely successful this year in running deep exploratory tests and crash tests for our users. Certifaya has completed more than 1000 sessions in a short span of time.

    Follow Me: It is again one- of -its- kind feature of pCloudy. This feature can speed up your app testing exponentially. It lets you perform tests in synchronous mode on one device that gets replicated on multiple other devices which means we have added brains in our tools to speed up your app tests.

    We have also started working on the prototype for Predictive analytics and we hope to launch it with a bang by next year.

     

    5. Year of super successful events: 2018 has been a year for super successful events. We organized our annual event ‘TEKConnect’18‘ to bring together the best of minds and solutions in order to accelerate app testing and business outcomes. We also launched our re-imagined UI with pCloudy 5.0.
     
    pCloudy TEKConnect Event

    We also organized our first user conference, pCloudy Engage in Mumbai this year to engage with some of the best testing practitioners among our customers.

     

    pCloudy Engage

    We also participated in Techwell StarWest 2018, the biggest software testing conference in the US, and received a great response at our booth.
     
    STC Event 2018

     
    We were the title sponsors of Software Testing Conference in India this year and pCloudy became the talk of the town after this event. The insightful keynote by Avinash Tiwari, our co-founder on “Will AI be another Tesla for software testing” became a huge hit and we received responses like never before.

     

    STC Event 2018

    6) Recognition: pCloudy has been felicitated with the “The Smart CEO Startup50 Award: under the enterprise technology category at the prestigious “SmartCEO Startup50 Awards 2018 presented by Facebook”. It was an honor to receive the award from the renowned investor Mr. Mohandas Pai himself. He was also the chief guest at the award ceremony that day.

     

    Smart CEO Certificate of Achievement

    7) A Blend Of Work And Fun: pCloudy is not just committed to its customers but also to its employees. Bringing a smile on every pCloudian is a reward and acts as a catalyst in improving our performance. Every pCloudian believes in working hard and partying even harder.

    We are thankful to each one of you for your trust and support throughout. Embarking on such a journey would have been impossible without you. We are proud of our achievements even this year but will strive to have more exciting starts and remarkable successes in 2019. We will continue to improve our products and make your experience with pCloudy a remarkable one.

     

    pCloudians 2018

     

    Appy Holidays and have a great year ahead!!

     
    Happy new year 2019

    Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

    pCloudy Felicitated With The Smart CEO Startup50 Award

    The Smart CEO Startup50 Award

    Success is not a destination but a journey and this is one of many upcoming!!

     

    After a successful event at Software Testing Conference, India this year, we have added yet another feather in our cap.

     

    pCloudy has been felicitated with the  “The Smart CEO Startup50 Award: under the enterprise technology category at the prestigious “SmartCEO Startup50 Awards 2018 presented by Facebook”. It was an honor to receive the award from the renowned investor Mr. Mohandas Pai himself. He was also the chief guest at the award ceremony that day.

     

    The 50 awarded startups were picked up and shortlisted by a set of some renowned entrepreneurs & investors like: Amit Patni, Founder, Nirvana Venture Advisors, Krishnan Ganesh, Chairman, Portea Medical, Ganapathy Venugopal, Founder-CEO, Axilor Ventures, Naganand Doraswami, Founder-MD, Ideaspring Capital, and Parag Dhol of Inventus Capital.

     

    The Smart CEO Startup50 Award

     

    The Smart CEO Startup50

    The Startup50 Conference and Awards was conceptualized to recognize and reward entrepreneurs who’ve scaled up their businesses in the most strategic way and at a dynamic pace. It is indeed a pleasure to know pCloudy has been selected from a long list of 250 ventures that were given to us by 45+ Venture Capital Investors across India.

     

    Enterprise tech

     

    Thanks a ton again for believing in us and we will try our best to be a trendsetter in mobile app testing today and always.

    Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

    4 Emerging Trends We Witnessed at Software Testing Conference 2018

    Trends We Witnessed at STC 2018

    The biggest Software testing Conference in India, QAI STC 2018 came to an end on 7th December with the most insightful and pragmatic discussion that can disrupt the software testing eco-space. The focus of the event this year was on the theme – Quality by Design: Convergence of Testing, Lean, Intelligence and Automation.

     

    We were the title sponsors this year and so got a bigger platform to showcase the NEXT we are bringing in mobile app testing world.

     

    software_STC2018
    There was an array ideas displayed, experiments and experiences to explore challenges and suggestive techniques and best practices to successfully to overcome the common challenges.

     

    With the top minds in software testing coming together to share the latest trends, tips on stage and through conference networking opportunities, STC this year too has succeeded in bringing forth excellent insights about future of testing in rapidly changing times. More than 30 top companies participated in this one-of its kind Expo where we have witnessed some of the monumental key developments that would shape testing landscape in the coming years.

     

    Over 500 software testers gathered and more than 12 empanelled speakers graced the expo for 2 days. Attendees heard from experts like: Avinash Tiwari, co-founder, pCloudy, David Parker, Director, Smart Bear, Rajini Padmanabhan, V.P, QA Infotech, Anand Vaishampayan, Director – Cloud Application Migration Services, IBM, Dr. Shankar Ramamoorthy, Customer Success Officer, Harman Intl., Anupama Jayakumar, Director, Schneider Electric to name a few.

     

    Avinash’s keynote session on “Will AI be another Tesla for software testing?” became a huge hit as he set the tone correct talking about trends like AI and Predictive Analytics that can disrupt the mobile app testing industry.


    In between the sessions, the pCloudy booth was flooded with people. Our team of five did their best to answer questions and get feedback from those who are already using pCloudy as well as folks who were new to pCloudy.

    pCloudy boothpCloudy booth

    Q&A Session at pCloudy booth
    Here are the biggest lessons that we learnt at the STC event this year:

     

    1) Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are setting up new standards in mobile app testing market:

    The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in testing, tools, processes and methods have shown a significant improvements in search results, recommendations, forecasts, and other predictions.

     

    Testing practitioners are recognizing the potential for advances in AI and ML to be leveraged for automated testing—an area that still requires significant manual effort.

     

    Last year we came up with something which was quite new to the market, our AI-based test bot for Mobile App – Certifaya. This year we see this trend catching up.

     

    There are quite a number of new tools focusing on NLP driven Automated Test case generation to AI driven self-healing automated tests. Good to see competition in this space! The race has just begun.

     

    AI and ML in Mobile App testing

     

    2) Predictive Analytics is going to disrupt the software testing ecosystem:

    Another major learning at STC event this year has been the growing importance of Predictive Analytics in Software Testing. We are in the age of Analytics where the test data captured are translated into actionable insights for future improvement. These solutions proactively identify problem areas in the testing processes and indicate the way forward to achieve a high-quality software product. Predictive analytics uses mathematical algorithms and machine learning technologies to forecast outcomes of software testing procedures. This technique uses current and past data to generate insights and locate potential points of failure in software testing outcomes. This enables the development and testing leaders to proactively address issues early in the lifecycle, and hence faster and easier. The combination of test automation and advanced analytics will enable software development and testing managers to spend more time on strategic activities that drive greater business value over a longer term.

     

    We succeeded in setting the tone right at STC this year.

     

    Predictive Analytics in Software Testing

     

    Our use cases on AI and Predictive analytics became the talk of the town.

    predictive analytics bot open
    Surely, AI and Predictive analytics are going to disrupt the mobile app testing space.

     

    3) Digital Transformation and its impact on testing:

    Most of the testing teams are already witnessing the impacts of digital transformation initiatives such as DevOps adoption and scaling Agile. From achieving quality@speed, to tooling, to team structure, to application architectures, almost everything has changed. Enterprises are already adopting shift left approach to keep pace with the growing demands from digital transformation. Shift left testing is an approach to software and system testing in which testing is performed earlier in the lifecycle (i.e., moved left on the project timeline).
    Here, at STC this year, another major trend we came across was the growing importance of omni-channel testing. With digital transformation, Customers today are exploited by choices that are never ending in the actual sense of the word. But the customer expects to receive the consistent user experience across all platforms. Omni-channel User Experience Testing helps tune your digital applications and customer experience across functional tests, compatibility, usability, and app security tests.

     

    4) No more Quality Assurance; it’s all about Quality Engineering:

    Another major trend seen at STC this year was the focus from Quality Assurance towards Quality Engineering. Today, the goal of Agile is to persistently test, dissect and enhance quality throughout the development lifecycle, as opposed to only towards the end of the cycle. In this environment, mere ‘assurance’ through process monitoring will not help achieve high quality standards. Engineering quality into the management, development, operation and maintenance of IT systems and enterprise architectures is the only way organizations can ensure end-to-end quality the current environments demand.

     

    The principles of “Shift Left” has heavily influenced the transition to Quality Engineering. Test and development teams work together in a continuous integration model and it is very important to design code which is testable and easy to integrate. This in turn allows for quick localisation of a problem and to assure individual parts are working before a significant amount of software is combined or integrated together. Dheeraj Sinha talked about how this digital transformation is changing the role of QA, the skills required, the methodology, processes involved and taking it to an all new different level. He aptly quoted- “The focus of QA shouldn’t be to find defects but to enable others to find defects.”

     

    Share the experiences and learning you had at QAI STC event this year in comment section. Don’t forget to like us on LinkedIn for more updates and the latest information about us.

    Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

    How to Perform Local Site Testing on pCloudy Real Mobile Devices

    Local Site Testing on pCloudy

     

    With no access to internal or private servers, complexity in the process of VPN connections, or the problems to test a software, website or service in a production-similar environment, testing your local or a private website or url on a cloud platform has always been a challenge for testing teams.

     

    For all the users who have been asking for a solution to test their private servers on pCloudy devices before deploying them on production, we have a good news for you.

     

    Now, you can access your site behind a firewall, on a staging server, or locally with pCloudy before it hits production.

     

    It’s a path breaking feature for enterprise mobility. You avoid the expense of setting up and maintaining a comprehensive and exhaustive testing setup.

     

    Since private servers are internal to your network, they have no public access which makes it difficult to test on a device on cloud. Local Site emulation Testing provides a platform to test private or internal servers on any Android device present on pCloudy.

     

    Let us see how to set up the connection for Local Site Testing:

    1. Login to your registered account on device.pcloudy.com

    2. Select desired device from the Device page and click on “Local Site Testing” icon present at top on right hand side as shown in below screenshot.

     

    Local Site Testing

     

    3. Download the Local Site Testing jar file as shown in snapshot below.

     

    Local Site Testing
    Note: Ignore if jar is already downloaded.

     

    4. Copy the command by clicking on icon as shown in the snapshot.

     

    Copy Command

     

    5. After the file download is complete, Open your command prompt or terminal

     

    Open command prompt

     

    Let us see how to open Command Prompt in different Operating system.

     

    You can follow any of them among three mentioned ways

     

    For Mac-OS users:

     

    a. Open “Launch pad”: It’s the silver icon in the Dock that looks like a rocket. Type “terminal” in search bar and hit enter.

    b. Hold command button and hit space bar. Pop will appear and type terminal and hit enter.

    c. Open Launch pad and click the “Other” folder: It’s a square icon containing several smaller icons. Then look for terminal.

     

    For Windows users:

     

    a. Open Start and type in command prompt or cmd then hit enter.

    b. Click the Windows logo in the bottom-left corner of the screen, or press the ⊞ Win key. You can search for Command Prompt on all supported versions of Windows.

    c. Open the Run program. Hold the Win key and press the R key to open the Run window. Then enter “cmd” or “Command prompt” and press enter.

     

    For Ubuntu users:

     

    a. Using Keyboard Shortcuts: Press Ctrl+Alt+T This will launch the Terminal.

    b. Press Alt+F2 and type gnome-terminal. This will also launch the Terminal.

    c. Press Win+T (Xubuntu only). This Xubuntu-specific shortcut will also launch Terminal.

     

    6. Execute the command on same location where the local site testing jar file was downloaded.

     

    Command executed successfully

     

    7. After the command is successfully executed you will able to see a success message appearing as “Local Site Testing is enabled in your system”. This confirms that now you are ready to test your private server on the device connected on pCloudy.

     

    Local site testing enabled in your system
    Note: Don’t close the command prompt until session ends.

     

    8. Go to the connected device and using the browser open any private URL to test. That’s all you are all set.

     

    connect to the device for local site testing

     

    You can now find more bugs and defects on your local sites before deploying it to production with this breakthrough feature.

     

    Here’s testimony to it by one of our customers from TagIT mobile.
    pCloudy Testimonials Linkedin

    Why don’t you try it yourself and let us know your feedback in comments about how this feature is useful to you!

    Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

    iPhone XS and XS Max Now Available on pCloudy For You to Test Your Apps

    iPhone XS and XS Max on pcloudy

     

    pCloudy announces the support for the brand new iPhone XS and XS Max our real device cloud. You can now test your apps on the latest iPhone devices without any wait. Committed to provide you with the latest, we provide you with fast support for latest devices and OS for mobile app test.

     

    iPhone XS

    Apple iPhone XS

     

    iPhone XSMAX

    Apple iPhone XSMAX

     

    With users becoming more conscious, it’s very important for companies to make sure that their apps run smoothly on a wide spectrum of devices including the latest released devices and OS. It becomes a mandate for enterprise mobility to test their apps on multiple real devices like the recently launched iPhone XS and XS Max to make sure that their apps don’t fail or have to face the brunt of getting bad reviews or ratings on App store. Get your app quality assured!

     

    To know more about what these phones are offering, you can read this blog. Why don’t you test your app on pCloudy, the unified digital app testing platform, to find out the difference in app quality?