Automation linking is an optional feature in Testmo. This guide explains if and how you can use automation links.
Testmo comes with optional features to link your manual test cases in your project repository to automated tests. This can be useful if you have manual test cases that you are migrating to automated tests over time, or if you have related automated tests that you want to reference from your manual test cases.
This is an optional feature because for most projects it is not necessary or needed to create & link manual test cases for your automated tests. If you are unsure, we recommend using Testmo's standard test automation workflow and only enable automation linking for projects that require this.
Should you use automation linking in your projects?
We have designed Testmo's test automation features to be highly productive, scalable, fast, and easy to use. With Testmo's regular workflow, Testmo will handle everything for you automatically.
You simply submit your automation results, and Testmo will automatically start new test runs, add & identify your tests and record all test results in your project's Automation section. So there's no need to create or map manual test cases, link any IDs or write custom code. Testmo's dedicated automation support provides many benefits over basic test case management tools:
- Everything is handled automatically: no need for custom programming, API code or mapping IDs
- Powerful and fast CLI tool that works with any automation tool and platform
- Automation-specific features to capture console output, test times, exit codes & more
- Identify & report flaky, slow, and often-failing automated tests
- Support for advanced workflows: parallel test jobs, CI/CD, custom fields & more
- No need to mix manual and automated tests; get more accurate metrics & charts
- Combine your manual and automated tests with milestones & test plans for reporting
What projects can benefit from automation linking?
Some teams also prefer to link some of their manual test cases in the repository to automated tests, e.g. for automated UI tests, and our goal is to support all workflows. We have collected some recommendations and use cases below to explain when automation linking might be useful.
| Automation type | Project size | Automation linking? |
|---|---|---|
| Frontend / UI tests maintained by QA team | Smaller (1-250 tests) | ℹ️Optional |
| Frontend / UI tests maintained by QA team | Larger (> 250 tests) | ❌ Not recommended |
| Unit tests, backend tests, API tests & similar | Any | ❌ Not recommended |
| Tests coupled with your project's code | Any | ❌ Not recommended |
| Tests maintained by the dev team | Any | ❌ Not recommended |
For most projects, our regular test automation workflow works best. Simply submit your test automation results to Testmo, and everything is handled automatically for you.
Using test automation linking
If you would like to use automation linking between manual cases in your repository, you can enable this feature from Admin > Automation. Automation linking can be enabled for all or just some of your projects.
Once enabled, you can edit test cases from your project repository and select one or multiple automated tests to link to. When selecting automated tests, you can either search for automated tests by their name, ID or key. You can find the ID and key of automated tests by opening the test in a recent automation test run (via the small info popup next to the test name on the right).
From your project's test case repository you can then see all referenced automated tests for your test cases. And you can optionally show the Automation column to identify which cases have automation links.
Manual & automated test runs
Your automated test results will still reside in the automated test runs under the Automation section of your projects. And your manual test results are added as part of your manual test runs. This provides the best of both worlds and you still benefit from all the automation-specific features, more accurate metrics and high performance & scalability.
To make it easier to start your manual test runs, Testmo can automatically exclude any test cases with automation links from new manual test runs. This feature is enabled by default under Admin > Automation. So when you add a new manual run, only your manual test cases are included.
Tracking coverage & test statuses
Testmo includes a useful optional Status (latest) column on the repository page. Once you add this column from the Columns menu, you can easily see the latest status of all your test cases across multiple runs, across multiple milestones and even across manual & automated tests. As a bonus the column also shows all recent test results in a small breadcrumb/history graph, so you can easily identify any issues with recent test results.
Viewing test coverage for manual & automated tests
You can combine coverage, statuses, and automation linking to show a unified view of your test results by linking your manual tests to your automation, and adding the Automation and Issues columns to the Repository view.
See how in the video below:
Sort, group & filter test cases
Last but not least, Testmo allows you to sort, group, and filter your test cases in the repository by the latest status, regardless of where and how the latest status has been added (manual test runs, linked automated tests etc.). Also, when you start a new manual test run, you can easily select and filter your cases by recent status, so you can override or manually test any failed, skipped or blocked automated tests, for example.