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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• Optimizing TestRail installations
• Securing TestRail installations

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.

We wish all customers, partners and vendors happy holidays and a good start into the New Year! It has been an amazing year for us here at Gurock Software and we’ve enjoyed working with all of you. We’ve quite a few things planned for 2011 and we are looking forward to working with you again next year.

Defect plugins

TestRail’s new defect plugins can be used to implement an improved integration with bug and issue tracking tools. Defect plugins can implement different capabilities such as pushing a defect from TestRail or looking up bug reports via the bug tracker’s API. Plugins can be configured globally or you can use project-specific settings, making it easy to use different bug or issue tracking tools for different projects.

Configuring a defect plugin in TestRail

It is possible to customize or build your own defect plugins for TestRail, allowing you to integrate the application with custom solutions or to modify our plugins for your needs.

Pushing defects

One task testers often have to perform during testing is creating bug reports for issues they found. So one of our goals with the new defect plugins was to make reporting bugs as easy as possible. This resulted in the new Push defect feature, a way to directly push bug reports to your bug tracking tool from TestRail.

Pushing a defect from TestRail to Jira

The Push Defect dialog automatically reuses the entered test comment and pre-fills all the defect details. It also automatically remembers the selected project and project area for you. The nice thing about this feature is that the dialog can be completely customized or extended by modifying the plugin script. So if you have heavily modified your bug tracker (with new fields, forms and work flows), TestRail’s defect plugins can be modified to seamlessly work with your customizations.

Looking up defects

Besides pushing bug reports from TestRail to your bug tracking tool, TestRail now also supports querying defect information via your bug tracker’s API. This allows testers to look up bug reports from TestRail without having to leave the application, resulting in a much improved workflow.

Looking up bug reports in TestRail

Built-in plugins

We already support most web-based bug and issue tracking tools with our existing URL-based integration. However, we wanted to make it as easy as possible to get started with TestRail’s new defect plugins and we built ready-to-use plugins for popular tools. TestRail 2.2 ships with plugins for:

• Jira test management
• FogBugz test management
• Bugzilla test management
• YouTrack test management
• Trac test management
• Gemini test management

TestRail also ships with a general-purpose email defect plugin that allows you to integrate TestRail with tools that support the creation of bug reports via emails. We are also considering adding additional plugins to future TestRail versions and it’s also possible to build your own plugins. If you would like us to add a plugin for your favorite bug tracker, please let us know.

Other changes

While the focus of this release has been the improved bug tracker integration, we also added a list of smaller improvements, changes and bug fixes. For example, TestRail now automatically sets a test to failed if you mark one of the test steps as failed. It’s now also easier to register custom translations and locales if you want to localize TestRail. Other changes include opening defect links in new browser tabs, using the default values of test case fields when adding cases from the suite pages and improving our stylesheets to work with more web browsers. To view the complete list of changes for TestRail 2.2, please see our announcement forum.

Getting the new version

Existing customers can download the new version from our customer portal. New users can download TestRail or request 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.

The new website is part of an effort to make the documentation easier to access and will help us publish new articles more easily in the future. We are also looking into ways to bring the SmartInspect documentation online to make it easier to link and search SmartInspect’s reference documentation.

Gurock Software Documentation

Improved Time Tracking

TestRail already comes with functionality to enter time estimates for test cases and to record actual execution times for tests. TestRail even has a handy test timer that automatically tracks execution times for you. To make it easier to enter time estimates and test times, TestRail supports new formats for entering times and introduces an option to highlight test cases that don’t have an estimate yet. To highlight all cases without estimates, simply click the Show link in the Estimates section of a suite’s sidebar.

Scheduling & Time Forecasting

TestRail 2.1 comes with new reports and statistics to highlight estimates and test times. However, TestRail goes beyond simply listing the recorded times and estimates: as tests are usually executed multiple times over the lifespan of a project, TestRail can use the historical execution times to generate forecasts for upcoming test runs, plans and milestones.

We’ve developed a sophisticated algorithm to generate those forecasts based on entered estimates, historical execution data and averages. Our tests show that the forecasts get very accurate over time as you enter more and more data. TestRail’s new scheduling and forecasting system is a unique feature not found in any other tool we know of.

Progress Reports

To highlight the progress of test runs, plans and milestones, TestRail’s new release introduces Progress reports with detailed statistics about estimates and forecasts. To visualize the progress and projected completion dates, a burn down chart shows the remaining tests, effort and the ideal progress. The burn down chart and metrics included in the progress reports make use of the sophisticated forecasting algorithm explained above.

Requirement & User Story Integration

We often get asked about the best way to link test cases stored in TestRail to requirements or user stories managed in external systems. You could already define a custom field for this, but we’ve found that having a general built-in field to link test cases to requirements, user stories or specifications would be so useful, that we decided to add the new References field to test cases.

The References field can be used to link test cases to almost any web-based system (you can also use it with desktop-based tools). This includes dedicated requirement management tools, agile project management software (user stories) or even Wiki systems. As the new References field is also compatible with the existing Defects field, you can also use the existing Defect Urls to link test cases to your defect or issue tracking tool. A coverage report for references is also planned for a future release.

Reporting Enhancements

Besides introducing the new Progress reports, the new TestRail release also makes the availability of printing, exporting and the activity reports more consistent. A new Activity report has been added to test plans and a print and export feature was added to milestones.

Other Improvements

As with every new TestRail release, many smaller enhancements, changes and bug fixes are included in the new version. For example, new Next/Previous links were added to test cases after we received very positive feedback about the links we added to test pages in the previous release. The new version also comes with search improvements to allow you to search for entered defects and to specify search terms via GET arguments. Other enhancements include improvements for installations with many test suites (such as moving the test suite selection on test plan pages to a popup dialog), improved session handling and other changes.

Getting the new version

Existing customers can download the new version from our customer portal. New users can download TestRail or request 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.

To view the complete list of changes for TestRail 2.1, please see our announcement forum. 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.