Best Practices for Creating NLP Test Cases

Creating NLP Test Cases

The Functionize NLP Test Creation system is highly advanced and is specifically designed to understand test cases. It can cope with unstructured tests, but it is far better to provide clear, unambiguous test cases. 

The following advice will help you create better test cases for the system to process.

1. Review your test plan before submitting it and ensure it meets the guidelines above.
2. Remove any test steps that are obsolete and/or unnecessary.
3. Ensure that verification actions are included for each step.
   Examples:
   If the test step is “Open the URL https://example.com/login” the next step should check that the page opened correctly. For instance, “verify the page title is login” or “verify the login form is displayed”.
   
   If the test step is “enter username ‘test’ and password ‘password’, then click on the submit button”, the next step should check whether the ‘test’ user is correctly logged in. For instance, “verify the username ‘test’ is displayed top right”.
   
   If the test requires a long form to be filled in, you should add intermediate verification steps. For instance, on an address form, after the street, town, and postcode fields have been entered, verify that the postcode field displays a valid postcode. It will also help to capture a screenshot of the input steps for later verification.
4. Double-check every URL in the test case.
   In particular, the initial URL used during test job creation must be exactly correct. Pay particular attention to any variables being passed in the URL.
5. Don’t leave logical gaps in the flow.
   Our system is intelligent, but it isn’t a human! If there are any missing steps, it won’t know what to do. For instance, a human will just dismiss a popup warning message about weak passwords, but the NLP system won’t. 

See also: Effective Test Case Writing in NLP, Keywords Used by the NLP System and Operators Used to Test Dynamic Data.

Format for Submitting NLP Test Cases

Functionize NLP Test Cases need to be submitted in a particular format.

1. The test plan should be a spreadsheet with a minimum of three columns with headers given in CAPITALS as below:
       a. STEP
       b. TEST DATA
       c. EXPECTED RESULT
2. The TEST DATA and EXPECTED RESULT columns can be empty, but must be present. Without these, the system won’t be able to read your test case.
3. The document must be either a CSV (.csv) or excel file (.xlsx).
4. Test cases must not contain any blank rows.
5. Any instructions or comments relating to the test case should be added as rows above the three mandatory headers listed above. These rows must use a double forward slash ‘//’ to indicate they are not part of the actual test.
6. Remove any unicode or special characters that may not load or display properly.

Note: If the system is unable to identify the correct column headers, or if they are not written correctly, you will be brought to a mapping modal to let our system know which columns contain the correct information. Use this to tell the system what the correct columns are.