How to Manage Requirements, Execute Test Cases and Generate Reports Using TestLink – Tutorial #2

This is a Part-2 of the “Learning TestLink Test Management Tool” tutorial’s series. If you missed part-1 you can check it here: Getting started with the TestLink Test Management tool.

In the last tutorial, we learned TestLink installation, creating Test Plan and writing Test Cases.

Today, let’s learn important features of TestLink including requirements management, test case execution and generating test reports.

Let’s start.

Creating Users And Assigning Roles In TestLink

TestLink restricts some access rights depending upon user roles. A list of default roles defined in TestLink is discussed below.

• Guest: who has the right to only view test cases and metrics. They cannot edit or view anything apart from that.
• Tester: can execute test cases and view Test Metrics.
• Senior Tester: who can view, modify, create and delete test cases. And they can also execute test cases and view metrics. But they have no right to create a Test Plan.
• Leader & Admin: both Test Lead and Admin have the same rights such as view/modify/create/delete Test plan and Build, executing test cases, deleting a project, assigning user roles and permissions. In addition to that admin user has rights to modify product i.e. create, delete, and update project.

You can even create new custom roles with different permissions as shown in the below image: 

The below section clearly, explains how to create a user and assign user rights. Follow these steps to create a user and assign user roles:

Step #1) Click on Users/Roles link in the TestLink navigation bar. It will navigate to the Users/Roles page.

Step #2) Click on the “Create” button on that page.

Step #3) Enter the username, user details and role in the form displayed and click on the “Save” button.

Step #4) To assign a Test project role to a user, switch to the “Assign Test Project Roles” tab.

Step #5) Select Project name and Role for User in the drop-down, as shown in Fig.

Similarly, we can switch to the “Assign Test Plan Roles” tab and can assign roles for users to a particular Test Plan.

Writing Requirements

The requirement is a constraint/need that the software should satisfy/perform.

This section clearly explains how to write requirements in TestLink:

Step #1) Click on the Requirements link on the navigation bar. It will navigate to the Requirements page.

Step #2) Click on the “Create” button on that page.

Step #3) Enter Document ID, Title and Description about the requirement, as shown in the below figure and click on the “Save” button.

Step #4) Requirement specification should be created and displayed on the left side panel.

Step #5) Click on Requirements Operations “Create” button.

Step #6) Enter all the details as shown in the figure and click on the “Save” button.

Assigning Requirement To Test Case

Requirements can be linked to test cases in TestLink. This is a very important feature to track test coverage based on requirements. In test reports, you can check which requirements are not covered and work on them to add in test suites for maximum test coverage.

This section explains how to assign a requirement to a test case:

Step #1) Open any one Test case from the Test specification section.

Step #2) Click on “Requirements” icon on the test case as shown in above figure. It will open requirements dialogue.

Step #3) Select requirements specification from the drop-down box, and click on the requirement checkbox, as shown in the figure.

Step #4) Click on the “Assign” button. Now you can find the selected requirement in the assigned requirements section.

The requirement gets successfully added to the test case.

Executing A Test case

We can execute a test case and can change the execution status of a test case in TestLink. Status of a Test case can be changed to “passed”, “failed” or “blocked”. Initially, it will be in the “not run” state, but once you update it, it cannot be changed to “not run” status again.

Follow these steps to execute a Test case:

Step #1) Click on the “Test Execution” link in the navigation bar. It will navigate to the Test Execution panel.

Step #2) Select the Test case you want to Execute from the left side panel.

Step #3) Select the execution status (pass/fail/blocked), and then enter the test execution notes as shown in below figure.

Step #4) Click on the “Save execution” button. It will update the Test case execution status as selected.

Generating Test Reports

Test Reports are the evidence of Testing, TestLink provides a built-in feature to generate test reports in various formats such as HTML, MS Word, MS Excel, OpenOffice Writer, and OpenOffice Calc.

This section explains how to generate a Test report in TestLink. Follow these steps to generate a test report:

Step #1) Click on the “Test Reports” link on the navigation bar. It will navigate to the test reports page.

Step #2) Click on the “Test Report” link on the left side panel. As shown in Figure

Step #3) Select the contents to be added to the test report by checking the Checkboxes.

Step #4) You can change the report format by changing the highlighted dropdown value as shown in the above figure.

Step #5) Click on the Test project folder structure, appearing on the right-side panel. The test report will be generated successfully.

Same way, you can generate the Test plan report.

Export Test Case/Test Suite

Let’s assume you are using TestLink and you have already created some projects under it.

What if you want to install TestLink in some other server and you want to have all the Test projects in your TestLink on that server?

Export test cases or test suites feature comes handy in that case. You can simply export Test projects/ test suites in your TestLink and then you can import them into another TestLink project on a different system for instance.

Export/Import feature helps to avoid the overhead of writing all the test projects and test cases again.

Follow below-mentioned steps to export and import test cases:

Step #1) Select the Test case that you want to export in the Test specification page.

Step #2) Click on the settings icon on the right-side panel. It will display some test case operations.

Step #3) Click the “Export” button.

Step #4) Check all the four checkboxes, and click on the “Export” button. It will export the selected test case in XML format and save it on your local drive. The same way we can export a Test suite also.

Importing Test Case/Test Suite

Step #1) Select the Test suite folder inside which you want to import the Test case.

Step #2) Click on the settings icon in the right-side panel. It will display all operations that can be performed on a Test case / Test suite.

Step #3) Click on “Import” button in the test case operations list as shown in below figure:

Step #4) Browse and attach the XML test case file that you’ve exported from TestLink and click on the “Upload file” button.

Step #5) Test case will be uploaded and displayed on the left side panel.

The same way we can import a Test suite also.

Conclusion

In this part, we have seen the only manual execution of test cases. TestLink also supports an API, through which we can easily update the test case execution status.

In the next and last part, we will see some advanced concepts like – updating test case execution status in TestLink remotely i.e. through Selenium WebDriver code using TestLink API. After all, automating these small repetitive tasks can save us a lot of time in the end!

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