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Automated Testing for Appian applications

JulieMc

Hi Everyone

I understand there have been questions asked in previously in the community/KB with regards to automated testing for appian applications. Most of the questions are over 1-2 years ago so I hope you don't mind of me refreshing this question.

I've been tasked to look at options to automate testing for our appian applications. Few high level details of our appian applications are:

1. hosted on-premise

2. based version is 18.2

3. have integrations with external softwares via WEB services and to network folder paths via Control M jobs

4. have lots of internally developed java plug-ins

5. ranged from development via quick-apps to highly complex customised applications

I understand having read all the resources in Appian community and playbook, Fitnesse for Appian is very  much endorsed. Can you please advise or share your knowledge/understanding with regards to the following clarification I'm seeking on?

Fitness for Appian vs Selenium vs Fitnesse vs Cucumber (https://community.appian.com/w/the-appian-playbook/102/automated-testing)

The above is what's been suggested in appian playbook. 

a) I assume Fitness for Appian is something that's been developed and community supported. How is this difference to Selenium vs Fitnesse on its own? (apology if this sounds like a silly Q)

b) have anyone has experience with automated testing for appian using BDD Cucumber?

c) and having exploring options for automated testing, these following questions are inevitable:

  • ease of implementation for each of the above options
  • level of skills required to build test scripts and execution
  • cost involves - (noted that Fitness for Appian is free for licenced product which apply to my case)
  • preferred option will be able to cover the testing automation required from SAIL interfaces, expression rules, to WEB services and plug-ins

Lastly, Is Jenkins purely for automating deployment? Can it be used for some level of automated testing?

Thank you and really appreciate any feedback/advice given.

Thanks

Julie

  Discussion posts and replies are publicly visible

  • +1
    A Score Level 1
    a) I assume Fitness for Appian is something that's been developed and community supported. How is this difference to Selenium vs Fitnesse on its own? (apology if this sounds like a silly Q)

    Answer- Selenium is more matured testing framework and fitnesse for Appian might have some scenario where it might not be able to automate. In that case we have to wait for solution from communiy. Where as while using Selenium we have had no such issues till date. Down side is, if Appian changes the way internal code of interface- Div ID and all, we need to revisit our Selenium scripts


    ) have anyone has experience with automated testing for appian using BDD Cucumber?
    Answer -We are using it in our Project, we have dedicated testing team who supports and developes testing scripts for project


    c) and having exploring options for automated testing, these following questions are inevitable:

    ease of implementation for each of the above options - Depends on Skill set you have in team, If Team has prior experience of Selenuim , they will find implementing automation testing using Selenuim more easy and vice versa
    level of skills required to build test scripts and execution- Basic to advance knwoldge of one of these frame work and Cucmber
    cost involves - (noted that Fitness for Appian is free for licenced product which apply to my case) - Not sure
    preferred option will be able to cover the testing automation required from SAIL interfaces, expression rules, to WEB services and plug-ins

    Also you can use Jenkins Job to trigger these scripts automatically as well as create reports as we do for any web based Applications
  • 0 in reply to Kumar Agniwesh
    Hi Kumar

    Thank you so much for your feedback. With regards to Cucumber, how easy it is to integrate Cucumber to Appian? Do you have any web references you can share to me that I can explore further?
    Thanks - Julie
  • 0
    A Score Level 1
     in reply to JulieMc
    Sorry, I dont have anything handy.
  • 0 in reply to Kumar Agniwesh
    No worries Kumar, thanks for your input, much appreciated
  • 0
    Certified Senior Developer
    One of the other things you'll need to consider is how to ensure a consistent environment when running automated test scripts. If you are running end-to-end tests where the outcome is dependent on data stored in the Appian database, external databases, service responses, etc., you'll need to work out how to ensure the tests always execute in the same way and return the same data. Typically this would be done with scripts run before the tests are executed to ensure any databases are in a known state and possibly mock/stub service endpoints (this isn't something we have implemented yet so this is based on experience with other technologies).
  • 0 in reply to Gavin Hume
    Thanks Gavin, will definitely keep that in mind. Cheers Julie
  • 0
    Appian Employee
     in reply to JulieMc

     Hi Julie. I work at Appian's Customer DevOps team and we are actually aiming to integrate Cucumber testing within Appian for our 19.1 release. I'm personally driving this effort myself and we are looking to make it very easy and simple to write Cucumber tests for your Appian applications.

    Let me know if you have any questions about this and I would be happy to answer them.

  • 0 in reply to Samrat Jha
    Hi Samrat
    This is great news. However we are currently only on v18.1 and will not have another version upgrade till next year. I'd been keen to see some prototype on this as our enterprise is already using Cucumber as automated testing tool.

    Regards
    Julie
  • 0
    Appian Employee
     in reply to JulieMc

    Ah I may have misspoke about the Appian release. We actually release our products on the same lifecycle as Appian but not necessarily just for that Appian release. So when we introduce Cucumber for Appian alongside the Appian 19.1 release next quarter, it will be backwards compatible for all supported Appian versions. So you can use the Cucumber for Appian tool on your v18.1 sites no problem. The release for the tool is simply scheduled for next quarter.

    If you want a preview for what methods Cucumber for Appian will support, I recommend trying out our FitNesse For Appian tool (community.appian.com/.../automated-testing-with-fitnesse-for-appian) as Cucumber For Appian will basically mirror all that functionality. The CheatSheet provided in the FitNesse For Appian tool will show all the methods we currently support. You can count on all those methods being supported in Cucumber For Appian as well

  • 0 in reply to Samrat Jha
    Great Samrat as we are already using FitNesse For Appian. Looking forward to this Cucumber product

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