Starchive chose to implement AscentialTest based on the recommendation of Matt Osiecki, Head of Automation at LSTS as he saw the large benefits that Starchive would see by choosing this solution. Because of his recommendation, Starchive began utilizing AscentialTest. The initial automation build was focused on performance testing.

AscentialTest is now used to track performance times when uploading, downloading, as well as general page load times within Starchive’s application. The tests are run daily which document performance times in a client facing dashboard and the results are compared to daily, weekly, and monthly results. Any test results that are abnormal are automatically reported to the client within an “Automation” Slack channel. The performance tests are now able to run after any change in the application on both frontend and backend which allows Starchive to see the immediate performance impact of changes.

Another position in which AscentialTest is bolstering Starchive is in its ability to identify objects based on innumerable attributes such as color, position, webtext, parent objects, and others. Dynamic IDs which would normally break open sourced framework automation can be defensively defined within AscentialTest, giving it the definite advantage.

The ability for rapid development was another significant advantage of using AscentialTest. The test case creation and maintenance within AscentialTest proved to be much more efficient than when compared to manual or traditional automated frameworks.

Regarding maintenance, the tests built in AscentialTest are composed of steps and even sub-steps. These building blocks are then used across a variety of different tests. When a change occurs on the frontend, the step that is impacted can be updated, which updates all references and tests containing the step. Because Starchive consistently rolls out new features, a feature change that affects 1000+ test cases would take days to update within a manual suite, but can be done in minutes with AscentialTest’s prowess.

With reference to the creation side of things, Step, the building blocks of tests, can be reused within a test or across multiple tests. Once the steps are created within AscentialTest, it is a simple process to drag and drop them into a new test, instead of building an entire new test from scratch. This means that reusing previously created steps can  significantly reduce the hours spent on test creation.

Starchive also shows huge improvements in the verification process via AscentialTest. Before, verifying upload/download/management of thousands of files would be cost-prohibitive and nearly impossible, with the likelihood of  human error  if done manually. Now, a verification step can be created to verify a file’s image, title, created by date, along with 30+ other properties. This step can be rerun on every file uploaded/download/edited, verifying each file in seconds, while not consuming person hours.