Automated UI testing using BrowserStack - achievements

This third article goes further with the framework presentation started in the previous 2 articles about framework development as well as implementing/running tests and reveals the achievements of this technical implementation, how it plays a key role for faster releases and the main advantages of using BrowserStack .

Let’s start the journey!

Article series roadmap

• Part 1: Automated UI testing using BrowserStack: framework development and integration
• Part 2: Automated UI testing using BrowserStack: implementing and running tests
• Part 3: Automated UI testing using BrowserStack: achievements

Reaching the main goals

This technical solution fulfils the main purpose related to automated testing, which is, of course, to as early as possible discover mal-functioning code. This increases the productivity of the development team, which leads to faster release cycles.?

BrowserStack brings a big advantage because we can run UI tests for both Windows and mac OS. And from the browsers perspective, we are able to test all web browsers. In other words, BrowserStack enables the framework to be a cross-platform solution, which means that the main goal for this technical solution is achieved.

Choosing BrowserStack as a 3rd party software / tool brings a lot of functionality for less effort and money because it offers all features for running, reporting and debugging tests as well as integrations with other tools like TeamCity, Slack, GitHub etc. All these are already built in, so I don’t have to spend time and effort to develop or maintain such items. Basically, there is no person involved in creating / maintaining these elements of the framework. These items had a major role in achieving another goal for this framework: to be a fully CI/CD integrated solution.

Being a Microservices team, we are free to launch a new release whenever we like. A well working, daily, automated testing is key to be able to launch a new release at any time of our liking. And from the process perspective, this is also a major achievement since the UI automation provides feedback immediately and plays an important role in the build and release process.

Technical and process achievements

The UI automated testing framework has, during these last 2 years, continuously developed with more and more advanced technical features.?

• The framework/solution is an integrated part of the Continuous Integration (CI) / Continuous Delivery (CD) process.
• Thanks to the BrowserStack integration, the framework/solution runs on both mac OS (any web browser) and Windows (any web browser).?
• The framework/solution is used for test implementations, executions, debugging and reporting.
• The UI automation framework is validating both in the build process as well as the release process.
• Because of the daily testing:?

- It looks for, and sometimes finds, issues or bugs at each frontend version.

- It gives us in the microservices development team confidence to deploy our next release whenever we like.

The automated UI testing framework is truly acting as a daily safety net.