Ability to plan manual runs via an Excel upload

[jenplourde]

We would like the ability to plan manual runs via an upload / import excel file. Many of our project teams have many udfs at the manual run level which need to be entered for each planned run, making the planning feature in version 15.0.60 of Octane within the UI cumbersome. Examples of the manual run level udfs are: planned execution date, executing team, security role, business unit, module, etc. along with the standard manual run fields like run by, sprint, etc.

Planning a run in Octane and then copy and pasting all of these field details from excel into the plan run dialog box can take several minutes per run and requires many clicks/drill-downs & back, so for larger projects who have for example 1200 runs to plan per cycle (typically 4 cycles), this could take 60+ hours just to plan all of the manual runs in the tool prior to test execution. Since the bulk of our projects are larger, many times ERP projects, this is a standard example for many of our project teams. The ability to plan manual runs w/field level population (including UDFs) via an Excel upload would greatly reduce the time it takes to plan an entire testing cycle and make Octane extremely more user friendly when it comes to testing.

[yael]

Hi @jenplourde 

In Octane 15.1.20 this area was improved - you can now edit all of the run UDFs within the suite Planning tab, before planning the suite run. Once the suite run is planned, all the values are copied to the respective runs.
Please check it out and let us know if it helps.

[jenplourde]

Yael,

Unfortunately, this update won't be sufficient as it assumes that all of the run level attributes are the same for the entire test suite, Instead the requirement would be to be able to set the fields individually for each manual run generated under the suite run. Often, the test suite represents an end-to-end scenario with manual tests sequenced in such a way that it will cross teams, testers, security roles, and multiple dates.

Because there is so much variation, it is easier to populate these values in an Excel spreadsheet and upload into the testing tool. 

In fact, we have had the same requirement for years and years and built an upload utility for ALM to help our project teams with this requirement. Unfortunately, we are not currently in a position to build such a utility for Octane due to security concerns around the REST APIs - that's a completely different issue.

[yael]

Thanks for the detailed answer @jenplourde 

I will open this for votes