Executing Manual Tests

Applies to TestComplete 15.62, last modified on March 14, 2024
The manual testing functionality is deprecated. Do not use it for creating new tests. It will be removed in a future TestComplete release.

This topic holds information on how you can start a manual test, what actions you need to perform during the test run as well as information on extended possibilities of test controlling using the ManualTesting program object’s events.

Two notes:

  • A manual test cannot be executed if it is empty, that is, it does not have test steps.
  • Due to specifics of the TestComplete engine, manual tests cannot be executed if TestComplete or TestExecute was started in the Silent mode (for example, when you run the test from the command line using the /SilentMode parameter or from Microsoft Visual Studio).

Starting the test

A manual test can be started as a test item. This way of test executing is described in the Running Tests topic. In brief, you need to expand the ManualTests project item in the Project Explorer panel, right-click the desired manual test and select Run from the context menu.

The other way to start the test is to initiate the Start method of the ManualTesting object in script or in a keyword test using the Call Object Method or Run Code Snippet operation.

ManualTesting.Start

Working with a running test

  • After you have started a manual test, the Test Description dialog appears on the screen, and describes the entire manual test. This dialog allows you to confirm the start of a test or cancel the test.
  • Press Begin Test to start the test. TestComplete will display the Step Description dialog. This dialog holds a description of and instructions for the current step. Perform the actions described in the dialog and indicate whether the tested application has worked correctly or failed. If the step is accomplished successfully, click Success to go to the next step. If the step was not accomplished successfully, click Fail. To skip the step, click on the dialog’s toolbar (if you skip a step, TestComplete posts a warning message to the test log).
  • Clicking Fail calls the Step Failure dialog, in which you can specify detailed information on the failure. The dialog also allows you to decide what to do next in case of a step failure. There are three choices: skip the current step and go to the next one, try to perform the current step again, or stop testing. Use the Continue, Try Again and Stop buttons accordingly to make your choice. Information on each step failure is posted to the manual testing log.
    If the project’s On error property is set to a value other than Continue running, or the On error property of a test item that runs the manual test is set to a value other than Continue running, clicking Continue will stop the test run anyway.
  • By clicking Stop in the Step Description dialog, you can terminate the test execution. In this case, TestComplete posts an appropriate warning message to the log.
    Note: However, you can also stop the testing programmatically from a manual testing event handler (see below). In this case, TestComplete posts information indicating that the step was terminated to the log as an ordinary message, not as a warning message like when clicking the Stop button.

Suspending and resuming manual tests

While executing a manual test you can store data about the current step in order to resume testing from that step later. In other words, you can create return points for the manual testing process. You can terminate or continue manual testing when the return point data is stored.

To suspend a test being executed do any of the following:
  • Press the Suspend button in the Step Description dialog.
  • Switch from Test Description or Step Description dialogs to the TestComplete main window. In the Project Explorer panel expand the ManualTests project item and find the element that corresponds to the launched test. Call the context menu for the element and select Suspend menu item. After that you will be asked whether you want to terminate or continue manual testing.
  • Call the ManualTesting.Suspend method from the script or from the keyword test.

The information on the step where the manual test execution was suspended, is stored in the ResumeInfo file that resides in the folder that contains the Manual Testing project item files.

To resume a suspended manual test do any of the following:
  • Locate the desired manual testing element in the Project Explorer panel under the ManualTests category. Call the context menu for the element and select Resume. Note that the Resume menu item is enabled only when there is a return point for the test.
  • Call the ManualTesting.Resume method from the script or from the keyword test. To check whether the current test has a return point use the ManualTesting.CanResume method.
Note: When a manual test is resumed its results are posted to a newly created log entry. That is, the results of the resumed test are not appended to the log of suspended test.

Using events to control manual tests

Extended test controlling possibilities are provided by the OnBeforeStep, OnGetNextStep, OnResume, OnStartTest, OnStepFail, OnStepSuccess, OnSuspend and OnTestStop events. Using these events you can perform specific actions in response to the testers’ actions over the test.

All these events have the StepParams parameter of the ManualTestingStepEventParams type. By assigning an appropriate value to the StepActions property of this object passed to a manual testing event handler, you can specify the action to be performed as a result of the event. For example, if you assign the ManualTesting.mtsaStop value to the StepParams.StepActions property in an event handler, you programmatically command TestComplete to stop the test execution. For more information, see ManualTestingStepEventParams.StepActions.

See Also

Manual Testing
Running Tests
Handling Events
ManualTesting Object

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