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Feature Friday – The Power of Healer
Breathe easy, ladies and gentlemen, it’s Friday! As we, the collective workforce, slowly sign off into the aura of the weekend, it is important to note that Mondays are inevitable. Yes, we know, who dares dampen the Friday glow? We get it, Monday’s problems are for Monday. In today’s Feature Friday, we will be addressing a very Monday problem – test flakiness, brittleness, and fragmentation. Today’s feature we will be discussing revolves around Healer, an AI/ML-enabled Qyrus proprietary feature that may stand to save your Monday from ruin!
To take a deeper dive into the feature, we interviewed Tim and Suraj, part of our Client Development team based in Chicago, asking them a few questions about Healer and how it works.
Tell us about Healer, its use cases, and general impact on testing processes?
Tim:
Healer is Qyrus’ AI tool that is used to help prevent against test flakiness and brittleness. What’s really neat about it is it saves testers a lot of time when it comes to refactoring/modifying and maintaining scripts.
Suraj:
Imagine this scenario: I just put out a new version of my app but all of my regression tests fail during my login process. After checking the reports to see what the error was, I find out that the development team changed the ID value of the login button. Currently, I would have to manually update all of the locator values for that button in my scripts or go back and ask development to change the ID back. Healer takes care of it for you in that it will provide you the correct value to use.
Tim:
Exactly. From there you would be able to have Healer take charge by monitoring and making changes to the scripts when necessary. It impacts test maintenance and execution, automating another time-consuming and costly process.
Murphy’s Law and Mondays, two concepts that seem to go hand in hand, as everything that can go wrong seemingly does on a Monday. If Healer does seem to offer a solution to the Monday blues, we should begin by noting the problem and prior solutions.
Does the same or similar functionality exist without Qyrus, and how do competitors address similar problems?
Tim:
Simply put, competitors don’t have many features comparable to Healer. And for those that do, they operate differently in how they present the information back to the user. Most of the time, a few different locator values are given back and a confidence score is given for each. The system isn’t 100% sure on whether the value given would work.
Suraj:
Alternatively, Healer works on 100% certainty. It doesn’t provide a value unless it establishes functionality. Healer goes a step further than anything that’s out there. To make something remotely similar to Healer would take an enormous amount of effort.
Tim:
And without Healer, users have to manually deal with “object not found” errors. That means firstly identifying that it is an actual “object not found” error, then identifying which object it is on the page, and finally getting the correct locator value. After all that is done, tests need to be executed again and verifications need to take place.
Healer is a versatile feature that can bring value to multiple different types of users. Healer is not only helpful for traditional testers but can also expand across multiple roles.
How might Healer help testers, developers, and business technologists? What value can it bring?
Suraj:
Obviously, Healer is most helpful to testers. Like we’ve mentioned before, it cuts maintenance time and saves effort and resources. Developers won’t have to worry about the integrity of element attributes. Healer will account for these changes that take place without breaking automation. Just like that, the clock keeps on ticking.
Tim:
Furthermore, business technologists gain access to valuable reporting. A Healer report is given back to the user which will provide the locator information. In reality, BTs should be able to maintain test scripts on their own using Healer. Once it is set up, validating customizations to your SaaS applications becomes effortless.
Integrated into the testing space itself, it is important to note the major impact Healer has on the testing and QA (Quality Assurance) process.
What is Healer’s overall impact on the testing process?
Suraj:
Overall, Healer has a huge impact in terms of effort reduction. This can snowball into other bonuses such as further cost reduction and reusability, and often prevents the need to create a whole new test script.
Tim:
Healer also makes testing easier, faster, and smarter. Like Suraj said, it reduces effort and can help mitigate the need to modify and maintain test scripts. This automatically lends toward making testing easier and faster. Furthermore, by automatically taking care of errors for the user it makes testing smarter.
Suraj:
Not to mention Healer works on both web automation and mobility automation!
We know a lot about Healer now including its capabilities, use cases, and the value it can bring to different types of users. Like anything digital, improvements and changes never stop coming.
What can we expect to see in Healer’s future roadmap?
Suraj:
Healer is an ever-changing tool. We’re always looking for improvements and enhancements. One thing we hope to see in its future is an increase in speed.
Tim:
The quicker we can get responses and reports back to the end user, the better. But we also hope to make every aspect of it automated. Not only will you get a report giving the correct locator value, but also Healer will implement the changes for you into the script. That way, it is truly a hands-off tool.
That concludes our interview with Tim and Suraj about Healer, an AI/ML-enabled solution against test flakiness and brittleness. We’ve discussed use cases and specifics, life without Healer, and Healer’s overall impact on the QA process. That should leave you with one question to conclude this week’s Feature Friday. In light of the madness surrounding March, would you consider Healer in the starting lineup against Mondays?
