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Feature Friday – Use Document Verification to Improve Your Test Building, Execution, and the Reporting
In volleyball, if you see slow feet on the middle blocker, you push the set to the pins. In basketball, if the center is big and tall but slow to shift, you run the pick-and-roll. In football, if the safety and linebacker are crowding the line, you run a hard count and get rid of the football. These intricacies are visible only to those who deeply understand the systems and processes at work. Similar intricacies are found throughout the application development and the QA lifecycle, especially as applications begin to grow. One said example, after multiple client and industry requests, and also the topic of this week’s feature Friday is document verification. Containing a mass industry appeal, applications often utilize documents, PDFs, and Excel files, to maintain data and run business processes. In this week’s Feature Friday, we interviewed Steve and Parth who will discuss more about how automated testing can play a role in verifying and maintaining business-centric files and documents.
Tell us more about document verifications offered by Qyrus and their use cases.
Steve:
Document verifiers are action types that we have on Qyrus that allow users to verify data on documents and files, such as PDF documents and Excel files. You can do things like verify the downloaded file names and file types, and do verifications on tables in the Excel file, as examples.
Parth:
It’s something that we were specifically asked to bring to the platform from a client. They wanted to make these verifications on certain documents, and we were able to turn the feature around for them. Specifically, it targets use cases that require testers to verify the data on the documents and files and typically compares those values to those seen on the UI.
What is the overall impact that this feature has on the testing process?
Parth:
This feature affects the entire testing process in terms of test building, execution, and reporting. Obviously, it brings to the floor something that Qyrus was not able to do prior, as this was a feature request. This allows Qyrus to be more versatile in the kinds of testing and assertions it can make.
Steve:
Yes, specifically, it increases test coverage and allows for better testing using automation. Previously, these tasks were typically part of a manual process. By automating a lot of these processes, it helps with cost and effort reduction. That’s really the goal here at Qyrus, to make things easier for the user in an effort to cause a ripple that can grow into a wave.
How might document verifications help testers, developers, and business technologists? What value can this feature bring?
Parth:
For testers, performing verifications on documents can be a tricky and troublesome task. Honestly, it’s something that’s relegated to manual processes, as we’ve just mentioned. For testers and developers, they could use this to automate those processes. Testers might find more use out of this feature than developers, though.
Steve:
Yeah, it’s definitely a tester-focused feature. But the beauty of Qyrus is that we try to make testing as easy as possible. Making testing more accessible is beneficial in many ways. Not to stray away from the question, but essentially, developers and business technologists can be empowered to test. It also helps in terms of technical knowledge.
Does the same or similar functionality exist without Qyrus, and how do competitors address similar problems?
Steve:
Well, before this feature on Qyrus these documents could be verified through a manual process. The cost incurred due to this cannot be understated. If they wanted to automate it, a skilled automated tester would be required, and a testing framework written.
Parth:
Competitors have features for verifying PDF and Excel data, but it also requires coding knowledge, though to a lesser degree than what we just mentioned in terms of having to build your own testing framework. However, there is still a learning curve. With Qyrus these verifications are built-in action types, allowing you to build automated tests and verify documents as required, using Qyrus’ low-code no code interface.
Steve:
The cool thing with Qyrus compared to competitors is that everything is done on the Cloud. For some competitors that do these types of verifications, they require the tester to download the file to their local machines and designate a file path. Making everything seamless is one of our priorities.
How do you see this feature impacting day-to-day operations across organizations?
Parth
If there are existing testing processes for this type of testing, then there’s no doubt that day-to-day operations will see a large change. Firstly, manual processes are eliminated and turned into some weekly, biweekly, or monthly maintenance, depending on the requirements.
Steve:
Not only that, but these types of tests can be reused across many test scripts. Qyrus promotes reusability in that fashion, and we try to engrain our platform with a degree of simplicity that enables faster testing and more robust reporting. Essentially, everything speeds up, and quality is assured.
Are there any potential improvements we can expect out of this feature?
Steve:
Yeah, essentially, we would want to verify content on even more file types. Currently, we only do PDFs and Excel files. We plan on extending our coverage to rich text files and Word documents, with more to come.
Applications are becoming more functionality-dense. Requiring more integrations, file types, and sizes, alongside managing multiple different files for internal and data requirements. These processes are either intense manual efforts or left untested. This is because automation solutions that test code do not extend to other file types that are business-centric. Qyrus allows business-relevant application and document testing with the ability to automate document verification and testing. Automating a range of document verifications and requirements, which are part of essential business processes, increases efficiency, quality of development, and business process implementation. Join us next week to learn more about the Qyrus features that elevate testing and QA processes.
