Case Study: TestComplete Helps Aurora Do Black Box Testing and Report Automation

Aurora Public Schools use TestComplete to automate testing and run reports. Recently, Aurora Public Schools shared some details about how TestComplete helps them automate not only their testing but their financial reports.

Overview

Each month, Aurora Public Schools and support sites receive a series of financial reports to provide budgetary statuses and other useful information. "Due to special circumstances and the way date parameters are interpreted by the financial system used at the school district, Oracle Public Sector Financials, these report groups must be manually scheduled each month," said Vince Giannatala from Aurora Public Schools.

TestComplete Does Black Box Testing

Aurora Public Schools is a K-12 public school district in Aurora, Colorado. Aurora uses TestComplete for black box testing and integration testing of third party software. "We are not a development shop with source code to be tested. Instead, our need is to analyze new revisions to the packaged software used at the district and determine the impact that those revisions will have on our organization," said Vince.

Monthly Report Scheduling with TestComplete

Vince explained that there are many report groups to be scheduled each month and it's a repetitive task ideal for automation. "We had already purchased TestComplete to provide automated testing in our organization. Knowing how easy it is to accomplish scripting with TestComplete, it was an easy decision to use the product outside of its normal application and let a test script run all screens and enter any values necessary for scheduling our reports."

"The script was developed and variables were added for dates and other parameters that change from month to month. Using the script, the reports are easily scheduled each month in a matter of minutes."

"We have used this technique on several other occasions to read data from a file and enter it into the system through the available user interface screens. The scripting feature has been extremely useful for us!"

"The screen shot below shows TestComplete accessing the report scheduling screen in Oracle Applications and submitting one report set (group of reports) after another through the scheduler so they will print at a designated time."

Key Features

Vince said that TestComplete's support for scripting helped them overcome screen transitions. "The scripting language’s ability to introduce pauses into the keystroke stream helped overcome the need to wait for the application to transition screens without overloading the keyboard buffer."

Confidence in Automation

Vince explained that TestComplete provides them with higher confidence due to automation and less human interaction. "By using TestComplete, we have a powerful tool that allows us to process long, repetitive tasks using automation," said Vince.

"We can create a script to do a task and then let the machine repeat those steps over and over without manual user delays like thinking about what to do next and that provides us with confidence."

The Perfect Solution

Aurora Public Schools were looking for a tool with full scripting capabilities. "TestComplete was one of the few products that had full scripting capability and that is very critical in our environment where we use packaged software from a vendor. Add to that the ability to analyze the results that appear on screen and a terrific price and TestComplete was the perfect solution for our initial foray into small-scale testing and automation," said Vince.