1. Product Workshop
Series
Challenges faced in UI Automation
Srinivas Kantipudi
Progress Software
Hysea Workshop on
Software Products’ Testing
Sep 27, 2008 @ Microsoft

2. What is QuickTest Professional
• Automation testing tool
• Scripting language built on top of VBScript
• Fairly intuitive for technical user
Common misconceptions about GUI automation
tools
• Record and playback tools
• Can automate any UI with GUI automation tools
• UI Automation tools cannot find bugs

3. Challenges faced in UI Automation
• Lack of awareness of tools
• Limitations of UI Automation tools
• Constant UI changes
• Increase in complexity of Products
• Error handling/Synchronization issues
• Other challenges

4. Lack of awareness of Tools
• Can not effectively use the features
=>Increase in maintenance
• Tend to automate the easiest way
=>Scripts break often
=>Increase in maintenance
• No consideration to create reusable Actions
=>Hundreds of scripts with many duplicates
=>Increase in maintenance

5. Limitations of UI Automation tools
• Every Window/Object needs to be unique
• Problems with Images and Colors
• Limitations with drag and drop functionality
• Limitation with complex UI controls
Common problems with QTP object recognition
– Problems In Recognizing Tabs, Toolbars
– Problems In Recognizing the Intellisense
– Problems with recognizing child objects within
embedded frames

6. Constant UI changes
• Changes in each version
• Changes in third party tools used within the
product
To overcome challenges faced by constant UI
changes
• Use shared object repository effectively
• Make your code modular, use reusable actions
• Code efficiently
• Avoid recording

7. Error handling/Synchronization issues
• Object synchronization timeout
• Timing issues with using VBScript objects
Error Handling
• Recovery scenarios
• On Error conditions
• When error occurs during run session

8. Increase in complexity of Products
• Embedded frames
• Embedding other products within our products
• Complex UIs – Flow diagrams, Business process
diagrams, Mapping tools

9. Other Challenges
• Maintenance of scripts
• Time taken to develop effective automation
• Time taken for ROI
• Maintaining the coding standards
• Choosing the right framework
• Designing the right infrastructure

10. Why is Automation not finding bugs
Analyze Product -
Manual
Design Test –
Manual
Run Test 1st
time –
Manual
Evaluate Results –
Manual
Report 1st bug –
Manual
Document test –
Manual
Re-run the test –
MACHINE
Evaluate result -- Machine plus
manual if there’s any
mismatch

11. Conclusion
• Choose the right framework
• Start with designing
• Maintain coding standards
• Code efficiently
• Improve reusability
• Parameterize hard coded values
• Avoid recording
• Document the code
• Learn from past experience

12. Questions
Questions?