TestRail 2.5 now available

By Dennis Gurock | Published: April 9, 2012

We are pleased to announce the release of TestRail 2.5, a new version of our web-based test management tool. The new version comes with many new features such as customizable columns for the test suite and run grids, sorting and grouping options for tables, a powerful test case selection filter for test plans and runs and various other enhancements and new integration options. Please see below for a detailed description of the new features and improvements.

Customizable Columns

TestRail 2.5 comes with a new customizable column feature that allows you to add new columns to the grids (such as the test run, suite and to-do pages), so you can show any additional details directly on the overview pages. This allows you to show a list of found defects, test case custom fields or any other detail you and your team wants to highlight. It’s also possible to configure different columns for different projects and views as needed.

Sorting and Grouping

The new version also makes it easy to sort and group test cases and tests directly in the grids. Want to see the tests that took the most time to execute? Or do you want to group your test cases by test type or test status? All this and more is now possible directly in the grids and tables of TestRail.

Case Selection Filter

If you have larger test suites or test plans, but don’t have enough time to execute all tests against a new software build, or if you just want to make sure that no regressions exist in a new version of your software, then executing just a subset of your test case collection is a useful feature. TestRail 2.5 makes this easier by enabling you to select test cases for a new test run or plan via filters. You can just include test cases of a certain type or priority, or filter any other test case attributes (including custom fields) or combination of fields with the new handy test case selection filter.

Redmine, Pivotal Tracker & Lighthouse

We’ve also worked on improved defect tracker integration for the popular Redmine, Pivotal Tracker and Lighthouse project management tools. We now ship defect plugins for those tools with TestRail and you can enable the defect tracker integration either under Administration > Site Settings > Integration (for all projects), or under Administration > Projects (for individual projects).

Rerunning Plans and Test Runs

Many teams have more test cases for a project than they can possibly execute during a single iteration, so concentrating on failed or not-yet-executed tests for new iterations is a good way to ensure that all test cases have been covered at least once for a new software release. TestRail’s new version allows you to select just your failed or untested cases for a new test run or plan, making it easy to ensure that all your cases and failed tests get verified.

Other improvements

TestRail 2.5 also comes with many other enhancements such as an improved administration area, more flexible defect plugin customizations and broader support for image uploading for text fields. The new version also comes with redesigned test run and test plan edit forms, making it easier to select test cases for your runs and listing your plan’s suites in a more compact form. We also improved the way texts wrap in TestRail to make it easier to work with long project, case or suite titles. You can view a full list of enhancements and changes in the changelog.

Getting the new version

Existing customers can download the new version from our customer portal. All TestRail Hosted accounts (paid or trial subscriptions) have already been updated to the new version. New users can download our QA management software or create a hosted trial from our website. If you want to update your existing TestRail download trial, please contact us and we will provide you with the necessary details. Please refer to TestRail’s Admin Manual on how to upgrade an existing installation.

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We are hiring!

By Dennis Gurock | Published: February 21, 2012

As our TestRail test management and SmartInspect logging products become more and more popular, we are looking for more talented people to join our team here at Gurock Software. For now we are mainly looking for local hires (working at our office in Soest, Germany), but we will also consider adding additional remote positions in the future. Please see below for our job postings (on our German website):

We would also appreciate forwarding and sharing the job postings if you know anyone who might be interested in this. Thanks!

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Happy Holidays and New Year 2012

By Dennis Gurock | Published: December 24, 2011

This has been a very exciting year for us here at Gurock Software and we are truly grateful to have worked with such great customers and partners from all over the world this year. We wish everyone happy holidays and a happy and successful new year 2012 and we look forward to working with you again next year.

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SmartInspect for Delphi XE2

By Dennis Gurock | Published: November 2, 2011

If you are a Delphi developer you likely already know that Embarcadero recently released this year’s Delphi update called Delphi XE2. Delphi XE2 comes with support for 64-bit systems and with multi-platform capabilities. We just released an updated version of our logging tool SmartInspect that supports Delphi XE2 for Windows and Windows 64-bit systems.

Please note that we don’t currently have plans to support SmartInspect for Delphi for Mac OS X and other cross platform targets. As the SmartInspect logging library for Delphi makes heavy use of the Windows APIs for performance reasons, we first want to wait on how popular the Delphi cross platform capabilities will become. If Delphi for Mac OS X becomes more popular we will certainly consider supporting this environment as well.

If you are a registered customer you can download the new version from our customer portal. You can also download the updated trial version to try SmartInspect for free. Just let us know in case you have any questions or feedback about the new version.

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Announcing TestRail Hosted

By Dennis Gurock | Published: October 19, 2011

One of the unique features of our test management software TestRail is that, while it’s a web-based tool, it can actually be downloaded and installed on your own server. Most modern web-based tools are only available as a SaaS/cloud based option, and many of our customers really appreciate that they can install TestRail on their own server.

We expect that the download option will continue to be a popular choice for TestRail, but we also want to reach customers who prefer a hosted edition. That’s why we are really happy to announce TestRail Hosted today, a SaaS edition of TestRail hosted on our servers.

We have been offering hosted trial installations of TestRail on our own servers for quite some time now and it has been a great way to easily try TestRail. We’ve now built our own private cloud service to offer production-ready TestRail instances in a professional data center, and offer TestRail for a monthly (or alternatively yearly) subscription fee. This includes usage of the software, hosting, automated updates and support. No upfront licensing fee or IT required! You can learn more about the TestRail Hosted pricing and other details on our website.

Going forward all new hosted trials will automatically be created on the new infrastructure and you can either subscribe to continue using the hosted edition when the trial expires, or you can export your data for a local installation. If you are already using a hosted trial or a local TestRail installation and want to migrate to our new infrastructure, please contact us. Please also let us know if you have any questions about the new offering.

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TestRail 2.4 released

By Dennis Gurock | Published: September 12, 2011

We are happy to announce the release of TestRail 2.4, an updated version of our web-based test management tool. The new version introduces support for UI scripts (a way to customize TestRail’s user interface), time zones, a new defect plugin for Mantis, as well as many smaller improvements and bug fixes. This release is also the base for a new TestRail Hosted offering we have been working on and which we will announce in a separate posting soon. Please see below for a detailed description of the new features and other improvements.

UI Scripts

TestRail 2.4 comes with a new powerful feature called UI Scripts that allows you to customize various aspects of TestRail’s user interface by using standard JavaScript code and style sheets. If you are familiar with the popular Greasemonkey set of browser plugins that inspired us to build this feature, you will feel right at home.

UI Scripts basically allow you to apply custom JavaScript code or style sheets to pages in TestRail. This can be used to customize smaller aspects of TestRail’s user interface such as changing the color of elements or hiding some settings or feature you don’t use. But you could also use UI Scripts to integrate custom applications with TestRail and implement similar larger customizations such as querying and highlighting data from external systems in TestRail.

As JavaScript can be used to manipulate all parts of TestRail’s user interface, the possible uses and customizations this feature enables are endless. UI Scripts can also be limited to just specific areas in TestRail and you can build project and user specific customizations as needed. You can learn more about UI Scripts by reading the documentation and taking a look at some examples.

Time zone support

As more and more distributed teams use TestRail, having the option to use server-independent time zones became more and more important. That’s why we are happy to introduce full support for time zones in TestRail.

TestRail allows you to configure a server-independent global time zone for your whole TestRail installation, or you can use different time zones for different users. Users can also change their time zones themselves under My Settings and immediately see all test times and other time information based on the configured time zone.

Defect plugin for Mantis

TestRail integrates with most (usually web-based) bug tracking tools. TestRail offers various integration options for different tools, and the advanced integration mechanisms to push bug reports from TestRail and look up the status of defects are implemented via customizable defect plugins. We are happy to introduce such a defect plugin for Mantis with TestRail 2.4, making it easier and more efficient to work with TestRail and Mantis. After upgrading to TestRail 2.4, you can find the new plugin under Administration > Site Settings > Integration tab for Mantis test management.

Other improvements

TestRail 2.4 comes with dozens of additional improvements, user interface enhancements and bug fixes. For example, it’s now possible to use different views on the project overview page to make it easier to work with many projects. You can now also use additional placeholders in defect URLs to build custom URL integrations with external tools. Additional improvements include options to override TestRail’s web address, adjust the intervals of background tasks and to use file:// links in Markdown fields. You can view a full list of enhancements and changes in the changelog.

Getting the new version

Existing customers can download the new version from our customer portal. New users can download our QA management software or create a hosted trial on our website. If you want to update your existing TestRail trial (download or hosted), please contact us and we will provide you with the necessary details. Please refer to TestRail’s Admin Manual on how to upgrade an existing installation.

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SmartInspect 3.3.2 released

By Dennis Gurock | Published: May 27, 2011

We just released SmartInspect 3.3.2, a new maintenance release of our Java, Delphi and .NET logging tool. This release comes with various bug fixes and smaller features, including:

  • Ability to connect to the Router’s and Console’s named-pipe server from unprivileged user accounts (e.g. ASP.NET under IIS)
  • Support for regular expressions in filters (by prepending strings with “re:”)
  • Option to find previous log entries for entered search terms
  • Support for resizing the Add/Edit Watches Graph dialog (this is especially useful if you are working with larger names)

Please read the announcement in our forum for the full list of enhancements and bug fixes. To download the new version, please either access your customer portal account or download the new trial version.

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TestRail 2.3 now available

By Dennis Gurock | Published: March 17, 2011

We are happy to announce the availability of TestRail 2.3, a new version of our web-based test management software TestRail. With more than 60+ changes, improvements and bug fixes, this is the biggest update of TestRail since we released version 2.0 last summer. The new version comes with major scalability and performance improvements, new alternative views for test suites, runs and plans, and introduces an updated Todo page that makes it easier to track assigned tests for different test runs, besides many other changes. Please see below for a detailed description of the new features and other improvements.

Test suite & run views

TestRail’s test suite and test run pages were always one of the strong points of the application: users can easily add new test cases, group test cases in sections and rearrange items via drag&drop, all without having to leave the main page. With larger test suites, however, having hundreds of test cases and sections on a single page can make test suites difficult to manage. That’s why we are very happy to introduce a new, alternative view for test suites, runs and to-dos that allows you to view just a single section. The new view works like Windows Explorer and similar interfaces and provides a tree of the sections in the sidebar to select and view the associated test cases.

New section tree

The new section tree is also available on the test suite, run and todo pages regardless of the view mode. The new tree makes it a lot easier to rearrange and work with sections, as you can directly drag&drop sections in the tree.

The new tree also makes it easier to rearrange your test cases. While it’s still possible to drag&drop test cases within a section, moving test cases to another section can now also be accomplished by dragging one or multiple test cases to a section in the sidebar tree.

You can also copy and duplicate test sections by pressing the Shift key during the drag&drop operation. The same is true when you drag&drop test cases within a section or when you drag test cases to another section.

Improved performance & scalability

TestRail has always been a fast and lightweight application, but one of the major goals for this release was to make TestRail faster for larger installations and for larger teams. So we looked at every TestRail operation, every database query and the details of all database models to fine-tune and optimize every aspect of TestRail. The result of this effort includes more than 50+ performance improvements, database model optimizations and algorithm changes and we are very happy about the outcome.

Many other user interface changes and new features in this release also make it easier to work and manage more data with TestRail. Especially larger test suites, test plans and projects in general now scale better with larger amounts of data. For example, test plans have a new view that lists test runs in a more compact way. Other enhancements include the option to mark projects as completed and to display user names in different ways (which is useful for larger teams when many users have the same first name).

Updated Todo tab

The new TestRail release also introduces an updated Todo page. The new Todo page now shows a list of test runs that have tests assigned to the currently selected user. You can then select a test run to show the assignments for this particular run. The new interface makes it a lot easier to work with assigned tests if you work on different test runs in parallel.

The updated Todo page also provides the option to group test runs by milestone, test plan or date and also shows useful context information such as the description of the selected test run or test plan. The Todo page has also been updated with the new compact view and section tree in the sidebar.

Support for third-party tools

TestRail 2.3 also comes with improved support for third-party tools. Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9.0 earlier this week and the new TestRail version fully supports the new web browser release. We also added improved support for Axosoft OnTime. We now ship a defect plugin with TestRail that allows you to push defects to and look up bug reports stored in OnTime. The defect plugin only requires that you have the OnTime SDK installed for your OnTime system. You can learn more about the OnTime test management integration on our website. It’s now also possible to access all test case details from defect plugin scripts, allowing for more flexible customizations of the plugins and integration.

Other improvements

TestRail also comes with various other enhancements and bug fixes. For example, we have redesigned several parts of the user interface to make it cleaner and more consistent across the application. The Excel export file format has been updated to include the date and time of the last test results. We now also use the configured installation name for the email subjects and from names so it’s easier to customize the generated emails. And to make it easier to backup uploaded attachments, a new admin option has been added to the config.php file to specify the file permissions of uploaded files. To view the complete list of changes for TestRail 2.3, please see the change log.

Getting the new version

Please note: If you are using the extended TestRail API, please email us to receive an updated version of the API as it has changed for TestRail 2.3.

Existing customers can download the new version from our customer portal. New users can download our QA management software or create a hosted trial on our website. If you want to update your existing TestRail trial (download or hosted), please contact us and we will provide you with the necessary details. Please refer to TestRail’s Admin Manual on how to upgrade an existing installation. If you have any questions about the new version, please let us know.

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Optimizing and securing TestRail installations

By Dennis Gurock | Published: March 7, 2011

While our test management tool TestRail is already a very fast and secure web application out of the box, there are a few things you can do to optimize and secure a TestRail installation. Some things are easier to do (such as enabling SSL encryption), while others (such as moving TestRail to a dedicated server) are more difficult to implement.

Most teams install and use TestRail on a shared application server or in a virtual machine. This definitely makes sense and such a setup is usually sufficient for most teams and scenarios. It’s recommended to optimize such installations nonetheless as there are a few “low hanging fruits” that can make a big difference with relative small effort (such as enabling HTTP compression on your web server). Larger installations benefit from a dedicated server with optimized hardware specifications.

To have all performance and security related installation recommendations in one place, we decided to write and publish the following articles. Just let us know in case you have any questions or additional suggestions on how to optimize a web application server.

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Custom defect plugins for TestRail

By Dennis Gurock | Published: January 24, 2011

As you might remember, we recently released an improved defect tracker integration for our test management software TestRail. When we designed the integration, we anticipated that some teams would need to adapt the integration to work with customized installations of defect tracking tools. For example, some teams configure custom fields in their defect tracking tool such as Jira and need to add those fields to TestRail’s Push Defect dialog. Other teams might want to change the workflow of the default defect plugins we ship with TestRail.

To make it easier to customize TestRail’s default defect plugins and to build new ones, we have published a customization guide and some sample implementations:

Building a custom defect plugin
Examples: Custom fields & user mappings

Feel free to email us if you have any questions about customizing or building new plugins. We might also be able to help with this if you prefer this.

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