Significance Of Scriptless Test Automation In The World Of Automation Testing
Published: 2021-04-06 07:35:15

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title: Significance Of Scriptless Test Automation In The World Of Automation Testing
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description: In this evolution of technology, the level of test automation has significantly increased not only in terms of quantity but as well in quality.
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In this evolution of technology, the level of <a href="https://www.pcloudy.com/13-benefits-of-automation-testing/">test automation</a> has significantly increased not only in terms of quantity but as well in quality. A lot of companies are now switching to <a href="https://www.pcloudy.com/best-open-source-tool-for-mobile-automation-testing/">test automation using different tools</a> and technologies to achieve their business goals. Every organization dreams of increased productivity with faster development and quality delivery in a cost-effective manner and this is what they can achieve with <a href="https://www.pcloudy.com/mobile-automation-testing-on-real-devices/">automation testing</a>. The question that usually comes up is: after investing a lot of time in automating the testing process, will this maximize the organization’s ROI? This is a natural question that comes to mind before stepping towards test automation, reason behind this is:

<li>Test automation requires core technical knowledge</li>
<li>Every change introduced in the existing product feature may require test script maintenance efforts</li>
<li>As the product features grow, it may increase the test automation cost</li>
<li>Script failures have always been the reason for false positive or false negative results</li>

As test automation has appreciably increased, there are a lot of <a href="https://www.pcloudy.com/automation-testing-tools/">tools and technologies</a> introduced that can help companies to overcome the above dilemma and take full advantage of test automation.

According to current market standard, there are three levels of test automation:

<b>1. Scripting/Coding:</b>
<a href="https://www.pcloudy.com/blogs/best-unit-testing-frameworks-to-automate-your-desktop-web-testing-using-selenium/">Automating your unit</a> test case definitely requires coding. It is just like creating test programs to test dev code. Writing code to develop an <a href="https://www.pcloudy.com/top-10-test-automation-frameworks-in-2020/">automation framework</a>, running the suite against multiple test data, and developing an authentic report is what scripting/coding test automation defines.

<b>2. Scriptless:</b>
This level answers the commonly raised questions, “what is scriptless testing?” and “how exactly does it work?”

At this level, you don’t need to write code to develop your automation test suite. However, to develop a robust scriptless testing framework, it is important to maintain scripts against different capabilities. Scriptless test automation is more like recording your test using a specific tool which would further automatically create a customized script for you.

It is a revolutionary approach that offers a powerful interface for developing automation suites. As per your need, it may require <a href="https://www.pcloudy.com/blogs/test-orchestration/">test suite customization</a>, hence, at some point, you may need to create new functions or alter or modify the existing ones. Therefore, it may not be right to say that scriptless testing is 100% “no-code” but it has its own advantages that we would be covering later in this article. 

<b>3. Advance test automation using Artificial Intelligence (AI):</b>

Nowadays, there are various <a href="https://www.pcloudy.com/5-ways-ai-is-changing-test-automation/">AI-Powered test automation</a> platforms introduced that save a lot of time in the entire testing process. These platforms are majorly used for monitoring web and mobile applications. These AI-Powered platforms have adopted a mechanism where it scans the application under test and analyzes it like a human eye and brain and shares the consolidated test report. Based on machine learning, it can also auto validate the test cases against different test data passed.

<b>Benefits Of Scriptless Automation Testing</b>

<b>1. Automation time gets reduced: </b>

With the adoption of scriptless test automation, the time to automate the new feature and maintaining the scripts of existing features gets reduced. Furthermore, the deployment velocity gets increased which leads to a positive impact on the market. With scriptless automation testing, the large test suite can be developed within a short span of time and the saved time can be invested in increasing the test coverage and uncovering maximum bugs in the early stage of SDLC.

<b>2. Reduces automation cost:</b>

To develop a script/code-based automation framework it is important to have in-house resources who have a handle on test automation skills. While with scriptless test automation, the opportunities for manual testers get open, leveraging them to experience and learn scriptless testing which further reduces the cost of bulk training sessions. Additionally, the automation engineers can contribute towards white box testing, unit testing, and maintaining quality infrastructure with DevOps.

<b>3. Easy maintenance of automation scripts:</>

The maintenance phase is said to be the most critical phase of the development life cycle. Script maintenance becomes mandatory even when there is a minor change in existing product features. Even in the case of false positive or false negative results, a lot of maintenance efforts are required. However, scriptless test automation is a hassle-free process that requires a minimal amount of maintenance even in large automation test suites. Hence, the test suite becomes more reliable and in-turn improves the product delivery time.


<b>4. Involves engagement of product managers and other subject matter experts:</b>

In the development of an automation framework with coding, the product managers and other non-technical people may hesitate to provide their suggestions. However, in a scriptless test automation suite, they can freely engage in different automation approaches and strategies. Expert suggestions play a very important role in the entire process of development. With continuous process monitoring and tracking by domain experts, the scriptless testing framework can become more robust and reliable.

<b>5. Easy to use interface:</b>

Scriptless automation testing tool has now been stepped up with a very easy interface comprising a lot of features to develop a robust and reliable automation suite. This includes modularity, data-driven testing, keyword-driven testing, functions, assertions, customized actions, data repositories, etc. These tools have significantly enlarged the market of automation testing where even a non-technical person can develop an automation script with dynamic data and can execute on multiple browsers within a minimum time frame.

Adopting Scriptless Test Automation In Testing Workflow
With the continuation of wrestling with script-based approach and high maintenance scripts, most developers have decided to opt for a way of low code/no-code approach where the framework can be designed in a faster and painless manner.

A low/no-code approach can help organizations deliver high-quality products efficiently by getting freed from the low-level implementation and focusing on high-level strategic work that increases creativity and collaboration.

While looking for a scriptless test automation tool, below are few significant points that one should keep in mind to analyze the ability of the tool:

<li>Easily generate test steps for each test case</li>
<li>Creates repository for reusable elements and objects</li>
<li>Records test cases</li>
<li>Executes recorded tests on multiple browsers and versions</li>
<li>Executes test cases on a cloud platform and on-premise setup</li>
<li>Handles multiple test data variation</li>
<li>Generates reports for test outcomes</li>
<li>Supports third-party tool integration</li>



Adopting a tool that can help with the above features can easily transform the automated testing process into a modern low/no-code automation process which can further streamline the software development cycle. With such adoption of tools, scriptless automation testing can help the team by rapidly building modular tests that require minimal maintenance efforts, allows reuse of core components, and allows engagement of business domain experts in the testing workflow.

<b>OpKey – The Next Level Scriptless Test Automation Tool</b>

<a href="https://www.opkey.com/">OpKey</a> is a Test Automation Platform powered by an Artificial-Test-Intelligence engine that helps in accelerating the process of test creation and minimizing the maintenance efforts with its Self-Heal technology. OpKey is a super reliable keyword-driven test automation tool for building an automation framework for any web, mobile, and desktop-based application. With OpKey, we can:

Create our functional automation test with just points and clicks over an application
Reorganize test scripts with drag and drop functionality
Schedule and execute tests across the different environments
Supports multiple machines to execute multiple test cases in parallel and thus reducing the time spent on large test suite execution

Generate a consolidated test report after test execution
Sharing the bug reports with the team with OpKey out of the box integration – bug tracking tool

OpKey supports an object management system that helps us to maintain the objects of application on which automation actions are to be performed. It provides the flexibility to modify the object properties whenever required.

Along with this, OpKey supports a data management system to ease the process of managing the test data. For bulk data management, the data can be imported from external sources like Excel, CSV files, etc with as many rows and columns as required.

In OpKey, the test result interface is very intuitive which reduces the script debugging time and shares the comprehensive test report to be shared with higher management.

To kick off your testing with OpKey, the first mandatory step is to create your own project where you can create your test cases. Once the project is created, with multiple clicks and actions, you can record your application test with either Opkey Smart Recorder or Chrome Plugin. The recorded test would get transcripted to an automated test.

As an example below, here is the recorded script of launching Google and searching for the keyword “Selenium”. 

<img src="https://www.pcloudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Automated-Test-cases-1024x279.png">
The same recorded test can then be executed sequentially or parallelly on multiple browsers like Chrome, Mozilla, and Internet Explorer, etc. Once the execution is initiated, the actions performed to record the tests get automatically performed.

Note: Before starting execution on your local machine, make sure that OpKey Execution Agent is configured & running properly on your machine. In case of execution on the cloud, there is no need for an OpKey Execution Agent.

Once the test case gets executed, you can check out the input and output data for each test step and export the execution report in different formats like Integrated Data Report and Gherkin Report. Here is an example of the test results image visualizing each test step with its execution status and overall execution time along with input and output data.

<img src="https://www.pcloudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/input-and-output-data-1024x467.jpg">
To create and run your first scriptless automated tests on OpKey, you can also have a look at OpKey’s quick <a href="https://www.opkey.com/Help/docs/opkey-help/a-quick-opkey-walkthrough/automate-your-first-test-just-within-10-minutes/">documentation</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crgIMdWsmUk&t=3s">video</a>.