Our new office is situated in the Adur Business Centre which is a located in the iconic Ropetackle building in Shoreham-by-Sea.

With direct train line access to London and the West we have great lines of transportation to our customers.

Google Maps Link….

The opportunities in this space right now are tremendous and with the plethora of tools and services being provided at the moment, it is an exciting industry to be part of.
With this sentiment in mind it is my belief that we will continue to see an increased collaboration and communication between different companies, and therefore technologies, when testing projects are being carried out for customers. We have heard for some time now about grey box testing (essentially a combination of black box and white box testing), and it is my belief that we shall see an explosion of these sort of testing practices, being more and more deployed in test environments. For some this will be a use of a combination of different toolsets, whereas for others we will see developers and testers alike working to get a coherent test structure, utilising a combination of different techniques, data sets and of course tools.
For example: take the case of a company that is having to produce a product that now has to function in not just a windows environment, but in a mobile and Linux one also. Users expect a unique but consistent experience across the different technologies, but above all the present day consumer expects quality and security. We have become failure intolerant when using technologies that are no longer emerging, and have become intertwined with everyday life.
What this means for the software testing industry is a procurement of a selection of tools to test systems across a wide range of different environments. Historically we have been able to control the testing into fairly neat packages, as the tests conducted on the different environments, all used similar hardware and networks etc. E.g. tests carried out against different operating systems of Windows XP, Vista, and 7 etc. However in the mobile and tablet world, not only does the hardware, and networks need to change, but also the nature of the tests being deployed, as you are now in a world of widely different operating systems etc. Last but not least, you add Linux, Android and Chrome into the mix alongside the traditional desktop testing, and you have a whole range of tools that have to act in harmony.

Automating the Future

Coming back to the grey box testing ethos it means that in the future we can expect testing automation tools to have a firm footfall into the development of the systems under test, and the data deployed end to end within them. Test automation tools in this rapidly changing landscape need to be positioned at the black box or user level, as after all we need to make sure that the end user is getting the same unique and consistent experience, whatever the system or device they are running. What I mean by unique is that an Apple user still expects a Mac look and feel to their application, as does a Windows user also expects a windows look and feel to their application. I.e. a unique experience, but consistent functionality across the different platforms.
The positioning of these tools at the black box level is also important as the traditional object oriented automation tools, offered by the large providers, cannot keep pace with the wide range technologies. The rapid development interaction required to make sure that objects are embedded at the correct code level, to ensure workable automating solutions, is no longer the intelligent solution in a world now of many different devices and platforms.
Of course, in these situations, environment agnostic tools built on platforms like Java, which therefore function across multiple different systems, are ideally placed to drive the test automation. Indeed our test automation tool T-Plan Robot with its open architecture, can readily achieve this level of synergy by controlling multiple toolsets and interacting with data feeds. Indeed one can truly say that image based testing tools as a whole, have become more and more integrated into the full test process and the system development life cycle.
In order to satisfy the number and diversity of systems under test, the traditional demarcation lines between toolsets, have become blurred. It is my belief that a company can no longer consider just one suite of tools from a traditional vendor, but more a variety of tools from different vendors to achieve blanket coverage for their testing activities.

Read the full article in Test Magazine….

For other T-Plan Videos visit the Forums.

For other T-Plan Videos visit the Forums.

T-Plan Specialist Tools Partners – Asaro Systems Ltd.

Asaro now provide the T-Plan Integrator software product and all services relating to this toolset.

Asaro provide PLM and requirements integration and traceability.

For more information please view this page.

Loads to see on all of our products in the videos forum.

For more information please view our pdf’s: Mobile Testing using T-Plan Robot, & Desktop Testing using T-Plan Robot, or email sales@t-plan.com.

• See the video by David about the new Screenshot tool & Attribute Cascade

Any queries, please contact the Support team. Email support@t-plan.com or telephone +44 (0) 1209 614 714.

Key Features:

Execution Window integration with Incident Manager
New for this release is the integration of incident management functionality into the available features of the Execution Window.
Unlike our competitors the Execution Window is a standalone product, and therefore licensed & priced separately. This tool represents a great solution for UAT teams that e.g. want to include their business in the execution of tests, or teams that execute their tests ‘offshore’ by disparate teams.
For more information please read the Execution Window pdf.

SMTP Email Extension
New for this release is a new SMTP email extension. Emailing of attachments are also supported for this release.

IS Active Extension
Included in this release is the IS Active html library. This gives information relating to ISTQB for certain sections of T-Plan Professional.
Included as part of this extension is a simple BVA (Boundary Value Analysis) wizard, in the Design module.

Extension Installation
All Incident Manager & T-Plan Professional extensions are now pre-installed as part of the main setup.
Tool extensions for this release include: (For more information, visit the T-Plan Extensions web page.)

• Microsoft Office
• JIRA – Issue and Project Tracking from Atlassian
• TFS – Team Foundation Server from Microsoft
• DOORS – IBM (Telelogic) Requirements Management Tool
• Axe from Odin
• Forecast from Facilita

Lastly please read the T-Plan Robot Integration Reference for Test Automation linkage with T-Plan Robot.

For more information, please email sales@t-plan.com.

T-Plan is delighted to announce the release of T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.3.

Key Features:

• Performance Testing Support
• Mac OS X Application Format
• Online Update & Upgrade
• Advanced RFB Features
• Result Manager

For more information, please view the T-Plan Robot Downloads page. For what’s new please read the Release Notes.
For more information please email sales@t-plan.com.

T-Plan Ltd, today, announced that it has appointed Northstar Market Solutions as the   exclusive distributor for its line of test management and automation products in the United States. T-Plan, who counts the Bank of England, NSYE Euronext, Thomson Reuters and Xerox amongst its customers, is seeking to continue its presence outside of Europe and identified Northstar Market Solutions as the right firm to work with given their expertise in software testing tools, related products and corporate relationships.

“Northstar Market Solutions has a wealth of experience in working with tools covering every facet of the software development lifecycle. The fact that they knew how T-Plan could simplify test management practices and help bring order to complex environments told us we were on to a winner” said Charlie Wheeler, T-Plan Sales and Marketing Manager. “Combined with the fact that they had existing relationships with large institutions we wanted to add to our customer portfolio made the decision easy.”

“T-Plan has always produced an extremely solid product. It does exactly what people need it to do.  No more and no less which makes it 100% fit for purpose for the challenging   environments customers work in today” said Philip Bice, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Northstar Market Solutions.

Northstar Market Solutions is begining distribution of T-Plan’s product set with immediate effect through direct and indirect sales channels. Interested parties can learn more about T-Plan’s products that are being offered by nSyte by clicking here. Parties interested in reselling T-Plan products should contact Northstar Market Solutions to discuss possible partnership opportunities.

For more information please visit the Northstar Market Solutions.

Tool Integrations
Supported tool integrations for this release include: (For more information, visit the T-Plan Extensions web page.)

• JIRA – Issue and Project Tracking from Atlassian
• TFS – Team Foundation Server from Microsoft
• Added Support for the Agile Testing Templates
• DOORS – IBM (Telelogic) Requirements Management Tool
• QTP from HP
• Axe from Odin
• Forecast from Facilita
• Microsoft Office

Lastly do not forget our Test Automation tool ‘T-Plan Robot‘…please read the T-Plan Robot Integration Reference.

SQL Reporting Services (SSRS)
The T-Plan SSRS Reporting Extension now supports multiple T-Plan databases on a single Report Server.

Script Edit in Manage Module
New for this release is the functionality to edit a script in place, within the Manage module, whilst in the execution phase of your testing.

Incident Management Attribute Cascade for Client IMS
Attribute values (both user defined and built-in) can now be set to filter values from other attributes.

Incident Management Screenshot Grab
For the client version of the Incident Management System there is now the added functionality to capture screenshots and screen area grabs with a new utility included in the software.

New in this release is the ability to support Citrix environments, with also the additional functionality of running this tool independently from the main application (i.e. in a standalone operation).
For more information please email sales@t-plan.com.

T-Plan is delighted to announce the release of T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.2.

• Optimization for testing of Flash applications
• Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
• GIS Map & Radar Detection Testing Algorithms via Object search
• Support of Java Test Libraries
• Text file, CSV and MS Excel Integration
• Static Image Testing

For more information, please view the T-Plan Robot Downloads page. For what’s new please read the Release Notes.
For more information please email sales@t-plan.com.