The recent pandemic, economic crises, and market instability are all forcing enterprises to become more adaptive to the changes; evolving with innovation to stay ahead. Adaptive companies move fast and deliver software quickly and continuously to react to market-changing conditions while keeping a strong focus on customer experience. Automation is at the core of being adaptive. While test automation is not new, past automation approaches have not helped app development teams keep up with the increased demands of modern delivery. The test automation phase is expected to give faster results in the Agile industry. Agile methodology has multiple iterations with less time to perform test automation. It is described as the time being consumed in test automation development and maintenance, building tests and updating those based on scope changes and executing them.
Here Are Some Facts About Scriptless Automation
Scriptless Is Different from Record and Playback
With the scriptless test automation approach, any testing expert or business admin can use the promptly available keywords or reusable scripts and create new test scripts. These keywords are provided by the tool/custom framework, and in few cases, technical experts can write these keywords. Test data can be maintained separately, and locators can be provided in such a way that they are dynamic and relative, and can identify the objects with even minor changes to the UI. Codeless Test Automation is a concept/methodology supported by a test automation tool/custom framework. It has a user-friendly GUI with provisions that enable test engineers to create test cases by merely choosing objects and adding operations and data to them.
Though Scriptless We May Have to Write Script(s)
Scriptless automation is a capability provided by tools/custom frameworks using which we can write scripts with the help of scripted keywords that are reusable across applications, tools, technologies, platforms, etc. The aim is to have automation experts build a library of manageable yet exhaustive keywords that can be seamlessly used by functional experts, allowing them to quickly automate tests without any scripting. Whenever there is a situation where none of the keywords can perform an action, the automation expert would have to provide the custom keywords to achieve it.
Automation Experts Are Still Required
Even though scriptless test automation helps manual testers to automate test cases seamlessly, automation experts and testers are still required to prioritize tests, analyze what all can be automated, provide strategies for object identification, and extend the scriptless framework by writing custom keywords.
Features of Scriptless Framework
Ease of use: Scriptless framework should provide a set of reusable keywords that would enable any non-technical user to consume them and write an automated script. It should focus on being scalable and decrease maintenance strategies in a period of demanding business requirements, evolving demands, and changing technology interfaces and users.
Build and use reusable components: A scriptless user should be able to combine multiple keywords and develop a new reusable keyword that could be used in various test scenarios.
Effective and flexible reporting mechanisms: The execution reports should be simple to follow with complete details such as the steps that were performed, test data applied, the verifications points and most importantly, screenshots of failed steps.
Cross-browser testing: The scripts that are developed utilizing a scriptless framework must operate on all the prominent browsers. A user who has scripted with Chrome should be able to execute it on Firefox or Internet Explorer with minor changes in run settings.
Email notifications: Once the execution is completed, stakeholders should be informed with an email that can incorporate the complete details of each module, test scripts and run settings.
Provisioning of batch runs and scheduling: A user should be able to seamlessly build batches with multiple sets of run settings or modules or test scripts, and also schedule them to execute at a specific time.
Benefits of Scriptless Coding:
- The automated actions and data applied for every step will be in a more readable format as English-like keywords will be used to write the test steps.
- Automating test cases becomes easier and more comprehensive as code will not be written to automate the steps.
- Configurability is easy as it makes test automation assets easy to confirm for different requirements with minimal changes.
- With the support of pre-defined keywords that are to be administered on test objects, time for automating tests/scenarios is minimized considerably.
- Both automated and manual tests can reside in the same location and provide clearness about what is automated and what is not.
- Creating and managing complex tests is easier with the use of keywords and custom keywords.
- With scriptless test automation testers can decrease up to 50% of the test automation efforts work efficiency will be high
- Non-technical test engineers, business analysts or functional experts can now contribute to test automation or review automated test scripts without any knowledge of the code.
- Testers can now spend longer hours analyzing test results, detecting bugs, and concentrating on business areas/functional aspects. As they will not have to create test scripts as required in Akka Framework or Selenium.
Conclusion
We can conclude that scriptless automation is not only scalable for Agile projects but has many cost-saving benefits. One of the major one’s beings, it supports non-technical users and functional experts to automate using their expertise by giving them a platform that ensures efficient, reliable, and quality automation. With the recent advancements in technology, automation experts can create a well-designed, scriptless framework that can deliver higher levels of control. Such scriptless frameworks can permit users to efficiently change workflows and data while being in complete command of the influence on overall automation.