We are happy to announce TestRail 3.1, a new version of our popular web-based test management tool. This new version introduces various new features such as improved user management with user groups and bulk user adding, test plan & configuration enhancements and better test case selection filters.
TestRail 3.1 also adds custom defect templates (for pushing bug reports to your favorite issue tracking tool), enhanced test run grouping and sorting options, additional often requested API methods and various other improvements. Please see below for detailed descriptions of the new features and improvements.
Improved user management
TestRail already comes with various features to make it easy for both small and large teams to get started and to integrate the product with your existing infrastructure, including capabilities such as Active Directory integration, extensive security options and a flexible permission and role system. If you have a lot of different project and product teams though, assigning project permissions can be a time consuming task. To make this easier we added a new Groups feature in TestRail 3.1 to easily create user groups and quickly assign project permissions to many users at once.
In addition to making it easier to manage groups of users and their project permissions, the new TestRail version also introduces a feature to add many users at once. This is especially useful when a new team starts using TestRail or if you are inviting a new external team or department to help review and contribute to your testing efforts. The new bulk user add option allows you to enter or copy a large number of users and automatically send account invitations via email.
Configuration selection & settings
TestRail’s test plans and configurations make it easy to execute your test cases against different configurations and platforms, such as different operating systems, web browsers or mobile devices. TestRail allows you to select different configurations and automatically creates test runs for each selected combination. In some cases you might want to skip certain configurations (e.g. if they don’t make sense such as Ubuntu Linux + Internet Explorer 10) or concentrate on specific configuration combinations. To support this TestRail 3.1 now allows you to directly select and pick specific configuration combinations to test against.
In addition to selecting specific configuration combinations, the improved test plans now also allow you to assign specific test runs to different testers and use a custom test case selection for each resulting test run. This way you can split the testing efforts for different platforms across your team and also select different test cases for each platform.
Case selection enhancements
Allowing you to select test cases for new test runs based on their attributes has always been one of TestRail’s more powerful features. TestRail 3.1 now allows you to more easily combine, add and subtract test cases from the selection with new selection options. Combined with the new Or/And Match options as well as the existing Rerun feature to select test cases based on their previous results, selecting cases for your new test runs and plans has become much more powerful. We also added similar filtering options to various report forms in the new release.
Custom push defect templates
Most teams integrate TestRail with an issue tracking tool such as JIRA, FogBugz or Redmine to directly push bug reports from TestRail to their issue tracking tool. TestRail includes the entered test result comment as well as a link back to the test by default so your development team can directly look up additional details in TestRail. Some teams prefer to include additional details in the pushed bug reports and we already supported this via custom defect plugins.
As many teams don’t have the resources to build a custom defect plugin and because this is also becoming less practical with TestRail Hosted accounts, however, TestRail 3.1 now allows you to directly customize a bug report template as part of the integration settings. So you can now freely customize and define the content sent to your issue tracking tool and include additional details such as the test steps and expected results.
Test run grouping & sorting
If you have a lot of active test runs at a given time, it can be difficult to get a clear picture of your testing efforts from the Test Runs & Results tab, especially if you test multiple milestones at the same time. To improve this, TestRail 3.1 comes with additional grouping and sorting options so you can group your test runs by milestones or sort your tests by different attributes.
TestRail API updates
We also included new capabilities in TestRail’s REST-based API to make it easier to use some of the new features of TestRail 3.1 and also to make it easier to integrate automated test results. To use the new configuration features mentioned above with the API as well, we added support for configurations to the add_plan and add_plan_entry API methods, which has been an often requested feature.
We also added a new get_configs call to request details about a project’s configurations as well as new add_results and add_results_for_cases methods to submit multiple results at once. This is especially handy for test automation integrations and makes submitting many test results at once much faster. Please refer to TestRail’s API documentation to learn more about the new API methods.
Other improvements
TestRail 3.1 now also officially supports PHP 5.5, so you can install TestRail on newer platforms and OS versions. Please note that we also updated the minimum PHP version required for TestRail to PHP 5.2.4, so please make sure to update your PHP version in case you are still using a very old PHP release (also there’s currently no ‘sqlsrv’ driver for PHP 5.5 so for Windows-based installation we still recommend PHP 5.4).
The new TestRail release also comes with various other new improvements such as better warnings and end-user documentation, better logging to diagnose and troubleshoot issues as well as making it easier to track the total number of test cases your team manages. Please see the link to the changelog below for a full list of changes in this new version.
Getting the new version
Want to upgrade to and benefit from TestRail’s latest version? Upgrading TestRail is very easy and we’ve included all the necessarily details below, depending on the edition you use:
- TestRail Hosted: your account has already been updated!
- TestRail Download (licensed): you can download the latest version or renew your support plan from your customer portal account.
- TestRail Download (trial): please contact us to download the latest version.
- New user: want to try TestRail? Get a free trial.
You can read the full change log to learn more about all new features, improvements and bug fixes included in TestRail 3.1. If you have any questions or feedback about the new version, please just drop us a note.
