There are a lot of ways someone or something on the internet can mislead us. Information can be exaggerated, it can be conflated, it can be blurred, it can be misinterpreted, it can be omitted – there’s maybe even a dozen more ways we can be misled or confused. So, at the risk of stating the obvious, we’re wise to be careful about what we accept from unknown sources. 

Recently I came across a document that seemed to intentionally blur fact and fiction about OpenText UFT One, so let’s clarify some myths:

Myth 1: UFT One lacks innovations in AI and cutting-edge technologies.

Reality: This is objectively false. Contrary to this piece of “make-believe”, UFT One incorporates advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and cutting-edge technologies to enhance testing efficiency and effectiveness. Its intelligent capabilities enable smarter test creation, execution, and analysis, keeping pace with evolving industry trends.

You can use a local AI model or AI-object detection service through the cloud. AI-object detection intelligently identifies and interacts with UI elements within your application. This means that even if your application’s structure changes or new elements are introduced, UFT One can adapt on the fly, significantly reducing maintenance efforts.

Myth 2: There’s no support for DevOps, CI/CD, or continuous testing.

Reality: UFT One provides a DevOps-enabled toolchain for continuous testing and integrations with CI/CD and version control. UFT One can seamlessly integrate DevOps practices, supporting continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD) pipelines. Its robust automation capabilities facilitate continuous testing, ensuring rapid feedback loops and quality assurance throughout the software delivery lifecycle.

UFT One also seamlessly integrates with OpenText ALM/ Quality Center and OpenText ALM Octane, enabling DevOps teams to increase traceability, visibility, and compliance across the lifecycle.

Myth 3: It cannot be deployed in the cloud.

Reality: UFT One offers flexible cloud deployments. You can easily deploy UFT One in private, public, or managed clouds. Organizations can leverage cloud infrastructure to scale their testing efforts, optimizing resource utilization and enhancing collaboration among distributed teams.

 Myth 4: Tests run slowly.

Reality: With optimizations for performance and execution speed, UFT One enables fast and efficient test execution. Its cross-browser testing and parallel testing capabilities ensure timely feedback without compromising on test coverage or accuracy.

A UFT One customer has recently noted, “With UFT One we have tripled the number of test environments each month. Human error is eliminated with standardized test scripts. We are completely ready to deploy new features of into any environment.”

Myth 5: There’s little support for testing enterprise applications.

Reality: This myth is easy to quash. Anyone who has used UFT One will know that UFT One goes hand-in-hand with the most popular, trusted, and cutting-edge enterprise applications.

Rarely does UFT One lack support for any open source, third-party, or custom controls that your applications use. Even when it doesn’t, you can use add extensibility to create custom objects—and avoid unexpected professional services fees.

Whether it’s SAP® or Salesforce® or Citrix® and more, UFT One provides test automation that ensures your most vital enterprise-grade applications are tested properly.

Myth 6: It’s only good for GUI testing.

Reality: Myths like this often originate from customers who have a license that only supports GUI testing. It's false, though. UFT One supports GUI and API tests from end to end, across all application layers. API and web services testing provides an extensible framework for creating and executing tests on headless applications. For example, you can test at the headless layer with a collection of built-in standard activities, such as

• File and string manipulation.
• Data conversion.
• Messaging.

For time-bound projects, import existing resources (SoapUI, WSDL, WADL, Swagger, OData) and let UFT One automatically generate API tests.

UFT One also supports enterprises testing for cutting-edge technologies, such as REST service models, a JSON request for REST API services, and the internet of things (IoT)—including MQTT and CoAP.

Additionally, UFT One can test an API together and a GUI test, providing the ability to run API tests that call GUI tests in parallel or call API tests in GUI test parallel runs.

Myth 7: Tests cannot be reused and are hard to maintain.

Reality: This is a common, yet unjustifiable, myth. The truth here is you can easily reuse UFT One's tests and assets to increase coverage across different platforms.

You can start reusing test assets and improve collaboration across your teams with shared object repositories, function libraries, and data tables. As a best practice, you should consider leveraging these options if you face at least one of the following challenges:

• An application under test is dynamic, and object descriptions change frequently.
• Segments of code need to run several times in your tests.
• You conduct data-driven tests that need to run an “action” multiple times.

AI-based tests also give you the added benefit of using a single script to run on multiple platforms and browsers automatically. The benefits of AI-based reusable tests include

• Increased automation efficiency via simplified and improved test creation, execution, and maintenance.
• Reduced test creation time.
• Increased test coverage and resiliency of testing assets.
• Reduced overall test maintenance.

Myth 8: Developers and Agile testers find it hard to use.

Reality: UFT One offers a user-friendly interface and flexible scripting options, catering to users with varying levels of technical expertise. Its support for agile methodologies and collaboration features facilitates seamless integration into agile development workflows, empowering teams to deliver high-quality software iteratively.

Don’t take my word for it. See what a real-world customer says:

"Having a solution that works inside a standard integrated development environment (IDE) using modern scripting languages was also a deciding factor...The UFT Developer integration capabilities facilitate greater collaboration between testing and development teams. It allows for robust software testing that easily accommodates changes to the application." 

— Leading Financial Market Institution, Australia

Don’t be fooled by myths.

It’s possible some myths come from customers who just haven’t upgraded their version for a long time, so assumptions are made based on the capabilities of older versions.

Another reason could possible be due to the type of license they have. Some customers may still be using licenses that only support GUI testing – this would mean they don’t have the access to API and Web Services testing.