Announcing Cerberus Testing 4.12 Treasure: Self-Healing Beta & More
We are happy to announce the release of Cerberus 4.12 with a series of new features! A special surprise is packed with other improvements and fixes,
We have been focusing the product development on the last community sharing and regular feedback. Complete new features of self-healing and OTP are available in beta while the existing features are improved.
This article highlights the fundamental changes included in the 4.12 and gives perspective to the upcoming developments.
Let’s start with the first one of self-healing coming directly from a university partnership.
Self-Healing Available in Beta with Erratum
The self-healing feature now available is called “Erratum” meaning “a list of corrected errors”. Its goal is to automatically repair broken locators using a statistical algorithm for a convenient application, not relying on IA. It comes with a simplified recorder to ease your test automation journey available as a Chrome extension.
Broken and unstable tests are of low value; this is a real pain point in test automation. We shared how to do better than fragile locators in this article and explored ways to improve this issue structurally.
Using fixed locators agreed upon by the developers is one possibility not always achievable: Web languages have dynamic locators, the software development can be out of control. Leveraging Data Science seems a promising solution that requires a data engineering maturity and an essential element: models based on a large data set. In reality, this data set is a lot of time missing for teams starting automation in their project.
With Erratum, you can record your element locations with a simple click to build your test case. The repaired locator’s functionality is working on both actions and controls. The only requirement is to use the erratum locator prefix.
What happened then? From your point of view, nothing specific! You just let your test case execute as you would traditionally do. When a particular locator is not found, Erratum will find the same element based on its algorithm.
The feature has been tested with different companies in alpha and beta versions. We also verify that there is no significant impact on the performance of the tests. The feature is globally available in the 4.12. Feel free to check it out here.
The next Cerberus Testing feature makes a difference with the necessary increase of software security, supporting two-factor authentication (2FA).
Support for One-Time Password For 2FA
The two-factor authentication consists of recognizing an identity using two different mechanisms instead of a single login form. The specific workflow requires you to use the particular password in the original request.
An application incorporating this type of mechanism can indeed complicate the implementation of our automated test. Workarounds were possible with specific action scripts but not satisfying. The new feature in Cerberus Testing allows you to retrieve an OTP password within a property directly.
This configuration will allow you to get an OTP connection code from a secret key, handling your tests properly. This is a valuable simplification for a continuous testing approach across all environments with improved test maintenance.
A series of improvements on the user interface and the engine can also be helpful in your test automation journey!
UX and Engine Improvements to Accelerate
The user experience has been improved for more fluidity in your day-to-day use-cases.
You now have access to the last seen executions, test cases, and campaigns from the user menu. The test case page also brings a series of autocomplete fields to simplify the test case creation process. Improvements are also available in the web performance area. An improved JSON structure for the network traffic of GET requests is available.
The test execution engine offers even more customization!
You can now overwrite a series of parameters as a test level, being previously limited at a global level. The customization can be done up to step, action, and control level of particular tests, giving you the complete flexibility!
To ease the integration, a new API is also available to retrieve campaign details per tag. The highlight of the selenium element is also now supported.
Experiment and Stay Tuned For The Next Release
This release enables us to reach an important milestone in bringing self-healing capability. You are welcome to experiment and be part of the early adopters!
We continue our effort within the open-source community to drive the most valuable features to help you succeed in your test automation effort. The next major step is to expand the self-healing capability while providing extended webhook integration including Teams and Google Chat.
You can join and use Cerberus Testing for free, Start now.
Here is the direct link for the full 4.12 release notes.