Testing, in general, is an integral part of any software development project. This is necessary to deliver reliable, scalable, and robust applications. RPA, in itself, is also software development and, for a long time, has been lacking in terms of quality testing.
“A Digital Workforce is only as strong as the weakest bot”
– Karan Ramsodit
In the current landscape of RPA, testing is limited to debugging and multiple runs of developed robots to validate that a bot can perform reliably. Other issues to keep in mind are the applications and environments used in automation. These components of automation are updated more frequently than the process itself(i.e., application updates, OS updates). This, in turn, leads to the breaking of a robot and a high level of maintenance required once deployed.
Due to the high level of maintenance, the actual savings don’t match the expected project savings RPA provides. The UiPath Test Suite addresses all the concerns mentioned above through a single platform.
The Test Suite provides the following capabilities:
- RPA Testing
- Application Testing
- CICD integration through Jenkins or DevOps
- Test Management through Orchestrator & UiPath Test Manager
Through RPA testing, the stability and robustness of robots can be evaluated before being deployed by integrating test cases into your CICD pipeline. Besides RPA testing, the UiPath Test Suite also provides Application testing. This is the automation of testing activities during application development through integration with the new UiPath Test Manager. Through scheduled test runs,
application changes that may impact running RPA processes can be detected in a timely fashion as not to impact business processes.
Benefits of UiPath Test Suite
- Improved robot stability, reliability, and scalability
Due to the lack of proper testing capabilities for robots far too often, we come across bugs in robots after they have been deployed. With proper RPA testing in place, such issues are detected long before deployment - Low maintenance for deployed robots
With testing being provided, the effect of changes in environments and applications on running processes can be evaluated before they are put in production. This allows for making either change on the side of the RPA process or reevaluates changes being made to applications and environments. It is significantly reducing the chances of robots breaking. - Automated Application testing
Thanks to the Test Manager test cases and user stories/requirements can all be grouped in one place, monitored throughout the application lifecycle, and allows for tracking features and their completion through automatic testing.
