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Because speed is a top priority, using automated testing solutions has become necessary to stay competitive. To better serve the need for continuous delivery, ServiceNow introduced the Automated Test Framework (ATF) to accelerate testing on their platform.
ServiceNow releases two major upgrades per year that include new products, applications, and additional features. While this is an attractive benefit of using the platform, it can present significant testing challenges for users after these updates occur.
Depending on the level of complexity of your organization, full regression and integration testing with the ATF application may prove to be a big challenge for many users. In this how-to blog, we will briefly discuss the advantages of using ServiceNow’s native ATF application and why you may need supplemental ServiceNow testing tools.
For ServiceNow users, the ATF application can significantly improve their testing processes and ability to push higher-quality releases faster. The ATF application can automate thousands of tests required to validate your apps, customizations, and configurations.
It can perform functional testing with actions such as creating records, determining field values, and verifying the results of field values. ServiceNow’s ATF application is free with the Now Platform and allows users to create and run many tools in sub-production instances.
Manual testing can be prone to human error, time-consuming, and challenging to scale as system complexity and testing ground increase. For many organizations, the ATF application allows users to expand their test coverage and reduce test time with automation.
In addition to delivering faster results during implementation and after upgrades, several ATF application advantages include:
However, while ATF is great for simple test cases, many organizations find that as they grow and their business processes become more complex, so too does their testing. They quickly run into scenarios where they need outside tools to achieve full test coverage for all their integrations and custom workflows.
While ServiceNow clients can benefit from the ATF, there are several challenges that testers may face when using the application. The most common issue is that ATF is not an end-to-end testing solution.
People love ServiceNow because you can do anything with it. It's highly customizable and configurable. However, if you’re testing in a complex testing environment that involves multiple systems, clouds, or even on-premise applications, you’ll need additional tools to expand coverage.
In addition, doing full regression testing with ATF can become time-consuming. The UX requires you to add steps line by line for hundreds to thousands of tests. This makes test scripts particularly laborious to create and maintain.
Furthermore, ServiceNow does not recommend using ATF for unit testing, so avoid building tests for features that may change frequently. You can test changes you make to your instances but not base ServiceNow functionality. ATF is also not a load or performance testing application.
Additionally, you should not test in a production environment. Using ATF in production can result in instance outages or data loss.
ServiceNow’s ATF application is a reliable and effective testing solution for simple use cases, but you may need to combine ATF with additional ServiceNow testing tools for customizations and more advanced test scenarios.
Depending on the complexity of your organization’s IT landscape, full regression and integration testing after ServiceNow updates can be a significant challenge.
ServiceNow’s native ATF application is excellent for out-of-box and simple workflows, but you may need additional ServiceNow testing tools for complex IT landscapes. Consider Copado Robotic Testing, which offers features like:
Full Regression Testing
Automated testing software with advanced analytics performs full-scale regression testing and ensures business processes involving multiple systems are operational.
Integration Testing
Verify all integrations and data loads operate correctly.
End-to-End Testing
Verify thousands of critical business processes across multiple platforms. Cross-platform cloud coverage minimizes conversion maintenance. Once established, test scripts can be repurposed and reused for continuous parallel testing.
Low-code Functionality
Low-code solutions make testing accessible to everyone. Handle challenges no-code testing tools can’t. Utilize low-code test scripts with visual recording and natural language keywords. No coding required.
Self-Healing Scripts
Powered by AI and machine learning enables self-healing of broken tests and quality prediction for upcoming releases.
Copado Robotic Testing is a powerful AI-powered automated testing solution for the cloud. Our cross-platform SaaS product can be used to automate testing or tasks for any web-based application.
Ideally, advanced test automation should allow you to spot and catch bugs in early development to avoid interruptions to your release schedule. The goal is to test frequently and have tests fail fast. Further, we recommend end-to-end regression testing for every single release to ensure continuous ServiceNow functionality.
Copado makes it possible to take every ServiceNow upgrade and patch, and deploy confidently. Our testing solutions enable customers to test 10 times faster with 78% fewer production failures.
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