An exploratory session is a time-boxed, free-form testing activity. Unlike a test run, which executes a predetermined set of test cases, a session is an open canvas where a tester investigates the product, documents findings as they go, and records issues along the way. Sessions are the right tool when you need to validate a new feature without a scripted test plan, investigate a reported bug, or do a quick sanity check before a release.
The Sessions page is the main hub for all exploratory sessions in a project. It shows active and closed sessions, summary metrics, and tools for creating and managing sessions.
Overview
Every session has a session log, a chronological list of log entries. Each entry is either a result (a finding tagged with a status such as Passed or Failed) or a note (a text observation with no status). Entries can include rich text comments, attached files, screenshots, and linked issues.
Sessions move through workflow states, can be assigned to team members, linked to milestones and issues, and tagged for filtering. When you add the first log entry to a session, Testmo automatically marks it as started and can optionally advance its workflow state.
Closing a session locks it permanently; no further entries can be added and the session becomes read-only.
Creating a Session
Single session
Click the + Session button in the toolbar on the Sessions page to open the Add session dialog.
Left side of the dialog:
- Name (required): the display name for the session.
- Configuration (optional): the environment or configuration being tested, such as a browser, OS, or device. Selecting a configuration links the session to that environment, making it easy to compare results across configurations.
- Milestone (optional): associates the session with a milestone. You can create a new milestone inline using the + icon next to the field. Sessions without a milestone appear under Unscheduled on the Sessions page.
- Mission (optional): a rich-text field for describing the goal or focus area of the session.
Right side of the dialog:
- Template (required): the field template to use for this session. Templates control which custom fields appear in the session. The field defaults to the project's default session template.
- State (required): the workflow state for the session, such as In Progress or Ready for Review.
- Assigned to (optional): the team member responsible for this session.
- Estimate (optional): a time estimate for how long this session is expected to take. Estimates can be entered in several formats:
- 1h — hours
- 5m — minutes
- 30s — seconds
- 23m 30s — combination
- 01:23:30 — hours:minutes:seconds
- Issues (optional): link existing issues from a connected tracker to the session at creation time.
- Tags (optional): add one or more tags for filtering. Tags can be created inline.
- Attachments (optional): attach files to the session itself (separate from files attached to individual log entries).
Additional custom fields may appear depending on which template is selected.
Click Add session to create the session.
Multiple sessions
Click + Multiple sessions in the toolbar to open the Add multiple sessions dialog.
This dialog lets you define any number of sessions and submit them all at once, useful when planning a test cycle that involves several parallel exploratory sessions across features or configurations.
Global fields at the top apply to every session being created: a Milestone selector and a Tags field. Use the + Session button in the dialog toolbar to add a new empty row. Each row represents one session and has its own name, template, state, tags, estimate, and custom fields, which can be expanded with More.
The Import dropdown lets you populate rows from existing data:
- Import previous sessions — opens a searchable list of all sessions in the project. Selected sessions are added as pre-populated rows you can review and adjust before creating them.
- Import from list — opens a text-entry dialog. Type or paste session names, one per line. Each line becomes a separate session row with default settings.
Configurations: Each session row has a Select configurations option. When you select configurations for a row, a separate session is created for each selected configuration. A session with two configurations in a single row becomes two sessions on save. This is the fastest way to set up identical parallel sessions across environments.
Click Add sessions to create all sessions at once.
Custom Session Log Statuses
Each log entry in a session can be tagged with a status, a label that indicates what the entry represents. Statuses are configured by your Testmo administrator and apply across exploratory sessions.
When adding a log entry, the status dropdown in the editor toolbar shows all available statuses enabled for sessions. The first option is always Note, choosing this logs the entry without any status, as a plain observation. All other options are named statuses (such as Passed, Failed, Blocked, or Retest).
Use statuses to bring structure to a freeform session: log a Passed result when something works as expected, Failed when you find a bug, and Blocked when you cannot proceed with a specific area of testing. Plain Note entries work well for observations that don't represent a clear pass or fail, for example, documenting unexpected behavior worth monitoring, or noting environmental context.
The mix of statuses across all log entries is reflected in the visual activity chart in the session view and in the metrics on the Sessions main page.
Time Tracking
Testmo supports time tracking at two levels in exploratory sessions.
Session-level estimate
The Estimate field on a session sets the planned duration for the session as a whole. Estimates feed into the estimated workload metric displayed on the Sessions main page, which aggregates the remaining time across all active sessions and gives the team a sense of total testing effort still ahead.
Entry-level elapsed time
When you add or edit a log entry, the Elapsed field in the editor toolbar lets you record how long you spent before adding that entry, for example, 15m after fifteen minutes of testing a feature area. Elapsed time is optional on every entry.
Testmo sums all elapsed values across a session's log entries to compute the session's Total elapsed time. This total is displayed in the Activity section on the right side of the session view, alongside a visual activity chart and a per-contributor breakdown showing how much time each team member has logged.
Recording elapsed time consistently makes sessions measurable and comparable: you can see how long a testing area actually took versus the estimate, and you build a history that improves planning estimates over time.
Session Metrics
The Sessions main page displays three metric cards at the top, giving the team a live overview of session activity.
- Active sessions: shows the total number of open sessions, including a count of unstarted sessions (sessions with no log entries yet).
- Latest results: a visual block chart showing the most recent log entries added across all active sessions in the project. Each block represents one entry, colored by its status. Clicking a block navigates to the session that contains it.
- Recently closed: shows a bar chart of sessions closed over the last several months, with a total count and a month-over-month change indicator.
These metrics refresh automatically as sessions are created, updated, and closed.
Session-level stats popup
On an individual session view, the progress bar in the page header is clickable. You can also open the stats popup for any session by clicking its Activity column in the sessions list on the Sessions main page.
The popup shows:
- Total number of session entries (notes + results combined)
- A breakdown of notes vs. results
- A per-status legend showing how many entries carry each status and the percentage of the total
Use the stats popup for a quick health check during a session; it tells you at a glance how active the session has been and what the overall result distribution looks like.
Linking Issues to Sessions
Issues from connected trackers (such as Jira or GitHub) can be linked to sessions in two places.
Linking issues to the session
The Issues field in the Add session and Edit session dialogs links issues to the session itself, typically bugs or tickets that the session is investigating or validating. Session-level issues appear in the About panel on the right side of the session view, under the Issues heading. They also carry over when you export or print the session.
Linking issues to individual log entries
Each log entry in the session log can have its own issues. When adding or editing an entry in the session log editor, click the Issues button in the toolbar and +Add to attach one or more issues to that specific entry.
These per-entry issues appear inline within the log entry in the session log and are recorded as part of the entry.
Use session-level issues for bugs that motivate or define the scope of the session. Use per-entry issues for specific bugs you discover while logging results; they attach evidence directly to the finding.
Exporting and Reporting
Sessions can be exported to CSV from the session view (single session) or from the Sessions main page after selecting one or more sessions.
Multiple-session exports offer two options: a session summary CSV with one row per session, or a ZIP of per-session CSVs that includes all log entries. A print-optimized view is also available from the session toolbar.
For detailed coverage of session reports, metrics, and the Reporting Center, see the dedicated Reporting article.