Tricentis Tosca Reviews

While we started implementation with a focus on testing automation, the Risk Management feature is one we are seeing as very valuable in our environment, allowing us to better focus on critical testing.

It has allowed us to have a highly reusable Regression Test suite. We have already been able to run it for an SAP upgrade and plan on using it on a regular basis (weekly) going forward.

The record and play is still a new feature and while SAP has been added to the latest version, it is still lacking usefulness for common repository setups.

We've been using it for about 8 months

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

We have had great customer service so far. Support has been responsive and helpful.

Technical support has been pretty responsive so far. They have provided solutions to most of our challenges and provide work arounds when no solutions were available.

The tool is very different than other testing tools and it is important to explain some of these different to all the stakeholders to ensure they really understand the benefits at their level.

By that I mean that a tester might see benefit in the ease of automation but a business user will see benefit in the risk coverage visualization, for example.

• Scriptless tool -- great for those, like me, who don't have a lot of knowledge in coding to test software
• Works quickly and easily

I have worked a lot with Tosca for the past year, and it has helped our organization complete many tasks which most of the other tools couldn’t.

Being a scriptless tool was pretty helpful for me, as I don't have a great knowledge of coding. Its features helps us complete the work soon, and in an easy way.

It’s been one year I have been using this tool and it's been pretty good working with it.

5/5

5/5

It was easy, and a straightforward approach.

With it being a scriptless tool, it helps people without coding knowledge to work with ease.

The amazing features provided by Tricentis takes automation to a different world and it's fun working with it.

I wouldn't usually describe user automation as a key feature but it is a key feature. The ability to scan the application and for it to have all of the attributes and things you need and put them into the test is the most valuable feature for us.

We did a full-blown POC. It was super successful and we were able to automate a large number of our scripts and save a lot of time and also automate a lot of our testing. We're now able to to build and get tests resolved. It has totally automated our testing, which is great. Now we are extending it across all of our teams.

We haven’t really defined this yet. Some tools we are trying to use, like virtualization, haven't been used yet, but this is really something on our end. What we can’t do we have customizations available. We know there’s a feature in the next release which automates even more, and we are trying to find a stop time so we can upgrade and get that feature.

It may be different for other companies, but for us, establishing a set of procedures to get people trained was important. The tool is fairly easy to use, but it's important that you have consistency and standards in place when using it.

I've been using it for seven months.

It's very easy to install and easy for people to use.

There have been no bugs, and it's very stable.

We are rolling it out to five of our companies. We are trying to control things internally but the solution itself is 100% scalable.

We have had them here on site nearly every week. If they aren't here they are just a phone call away. We have happily invested to get extra training. From our standpoint we have to control the roll-out speed.

The initial set up is easy, not very complex at all. You can choose how you want to do it. Depending on the size of your company. You can choose how you want to do it.

We had been a HP UFT user for a long time. We tried other tools, but this far and above exceeds this in terms of ease and flexibility with test scripts. For a lot of the tools you don’t need an automator.

The best feature is the speed in which we are able to get our automation up and running. We had an unorganized library of regression test cases. We have, within the first six months, been able to automate 85% on our critical business processes and we have been able to maintain that while keeping our BCR ratio down. We have also seen about 234 defects per month in production to less than 8.

We are able to allocate more resources on projects instead of maintenance. Our maintenance has dwindled down to two employees and we have the confidence to try and other things and explore other units.

The only thing I am not happy about is not so much the product, but it's that we don’t a good way to control licenses. Sometimes people are using licenses at their desk and when they go home, they still have the license. There is no good way to control this. When we have an issue that someone tries to log in and they can’t, it’s down to the fact that someone has walked away with 3 licenses and they aren’t using them.

I've used it for one year.

There we're no issues with the deployment.

It’s been absolutely perfect for our organization. For a year and a half, we have been constantly running regressions and the results have been 100% consistent. If we do miss something and it misses production, it’s only due to a manual oversight and has nothing to do with the solution. When we follow our process, it’s consistent.

I am about to test it in a really big way. So far it has scaled to my needs. I am taking it organization- and vendor-wide in the next 6 months. Let’s see what happens when we bring a Cognizant on.

I would say it’s excellent. We have the best support ever. They have just gone over to the Magic Quadrant. I hope they are scalable with that move and we still get the same support.

We have used previous versions so this was down to an upgrade.

The use of the data sheet is not as clear-cut as we might think it would be. Some grasped it quickly and some did not. It depends on skill level whether or it is straightforward or complex. When it clicked, it worked well. It took a little longer than we would have liked.

I would say, take the training and go in to the product and use it the way they recommend to use it. They trained as and it works well. Some listen and kindly say we will use it the Tricentis way and don’t, they end up seeing problems. If I were to make a recommendation, Tricentis is as the top of the list.

This solution allows you to create an entire automated framework where it allows you to easily manage everything in one place.

It's given us the ability to do automated tests which has made some things a lot quicker.

A part of our problem is that we don’t necessarily have staff 100% dedicated to it, so that's a problem in our area. We should have had more done and taken on some huge projects, so it’s more that we haven’t had the time to use it to the greatest extent possible.

Our stability problems mentioned below notwithstanding, I am sure the new release will address everything that we need. We are going to convert to the new version and we have to address a problem with one of our apps first. We recently went through some training, our staff was excited about that and being able to see the new version was great.

The biggest roadblock for us in getting the newest version right now is accommodation of our application. The current version makes our lives easier, but we're still holding off on some testing until the accommodation issues has been resolved.

I've used it for a year and a half.

We've had no issues with deployment.

I think the version we're using is fairly stable, but I think the new version is not so stable, and that’s what's stopping us from moving over to it. We're having application problems, but once that's resolved, we'll move over to the new version.

It's scaled for our needs so far.

Overall, I'd say that technical support is good. When I have had interaction or problems, I let them know and they provide me with get instant feedback. I have been happy with that.

We didn't use a previous solution, but I've personally worked with other tools. Testsuite is versatile, and that was the big thing about choosing it. We're using Power Builder, which Testsuite can support, along with other applications. So it's great having one tool instead of many.

I think it’s important to get the training that is provided and really make sure you get hands-on time with the product. That’s our problem -- we haven’t been able to dedicate ourselves to it. If we had the time to stay with it and learn it then we could move forward.

For me there are three outstanding features:

The first one is the test case design feature. When using the feature in your project - I definitely recommend using it – it forces you to think about your test approach, and your overall test strategy. Using this feature you have to define valid and invalid states and conditions of your SUT from a business perspective (e.g. defining a valid age or a valid combination of two business properties). The tool helps you here by generating all necessary combinations automatically out of your prior definitions. You link them to a test case template and all the necessary combinations of your test cases are generated automatically. In most cases you need to adapt the generated test cases for the specific test case, but the fundamental work is done by the tool.

The second one is the simplicity of creating test cases and the underlying model based approach. The process of creating a test case is pretty straightforward. In case of a GUI application you “scan” the current screen of the SUT first. Afterwards all UI controls are displayed and you can choose the relevant one for your test. A representation of the screen – a module – is created and stored in a module folder. You can then simply drag and drop this module into your test case. In the test case, you select, for each UI control, an action e.g. “click” or a specific value. Afterwards, you can arrange the test cases in different execution lists, which are the representations of a test run from a business perspective (e.g. smoke test, regression test, etc.).

Overall, everything is reusable simply via drag and drop, and you will always have a single point of maintenance (e.g. in a future release of your SUT a button was added, you just need adapt the module. Linked test cases and execution lists are updated automatically).

The third one is the support of multiple UI technologies as well as non-UI technologies. In addition, there are (extra payable) features like mobile testing support and service virtualization capabilities.

The tool is meant to be an enterprise solution for automating software tests. The vendor has its own test philosophy and wants you to follow it. It tries to hide all technical information of the SUT and forces you to always look at your SUT from a business perspective.

The target audience are business domain experts and software testers without technical knowledge. This can be confusing for testers with a technical background who are used to scripting their way through the SUT.

Introducing the Tricentis Tosca Testsuite in a company goes ideally along with changing the whole business process of software test. I would say the company needs to adapt to the tool, and not the other way round, which is not always bad.

Though the tool claims to be an enterprise solution, it lacks some enterprise features. I would like to see a central management capability for admins, where you define initial workspaces, parametrize settings or update all clients centrally. Furthermore, the tool needs a real versioning functionality.

The out-of-the-box support for third party ALM tools must be improved. Embedding it in an existing application landscape often goes along with developing an adapter for third party components. In terms of extending the product from a technical viewpoint, the documentation for APIs is rare and incomplete. It definitely needs more code examples and a platform for developers.

The tool always gives the user one specific view where you create your test cases. This works perfectly for GUI applications, but not always for non-GUI applications. For instance, when defining test cases for web services, you have exactly the same layout as creating a test case for a Java application. Technology specific characteristics are somehow mapped into the existing view, which increases the complexity. Furthermore, the abstraction at non-GUI tests is not given as in GUI tests. You really need to have the technical understanding of web services or XML to create test cases, this runs counter to the target audience.

The test case design functionality is really complex, and tends to be rocket science, so this needs to be simplified. It goes along with the reporting functionality, when you want to create your own layout and customize the report. I didn’t really get it to work.

It would be nice to distribute test cases to different machines for parallel execution. Especially when it comes to mobile test or multi-browser test where the test case keeps the same but the underlying technical base changes.

I ‘ve been working with the Tricentis Tosca Testsuite for more than four years in the context of software test consultancy. I have a decent overview how the tool is used in different companies over several projects. I have gained experience in all functional areas of the tool. Furthermore, I have developed a lot of technical extensions to enhance the tools capabilities.

Overall I would rate the customer service as excellent. The support is available via email and phone 24/5 and is located in the headquarters of Tricentis. This means that the support staff is sitting next to the technical experts which, nowadays, is rare. You get a quick response that is often the solution for your problem. In case it is a more difficult inquiry, and is not solvable with first level support, you’ll be informed that your inquiry will be passed to an expert. Depending on the complexity, you can count on having a solution within one or two working days, which is pretty fair.

Furthermore the support team offers remote sessions, together with technical experts, to find a solution directly on your machine. The support is available in German and English.

On the downside, the community outside the Tosca support portal seems to be pretty small, or is nearly nonexistent. You hardly find solutions, or best practices, for a specific problem on the web. Other vendors have a more active community, and you can often simply Google a solution to the problem. In most cases with Tricentis, you need the support team or you have to contract on-site consultancy.

It depends on your environment and your company policy. Basically, you have three components: a license server, a database and the desktop application which needs to be installed on the same machine where the SUTis located. If you want to use the mobile and/or service virtualization feature you need additional components and preparations.

You will not find an official pricing list. You have to contact the local sales team.

The tool is a desktop application and comes with all advantages and disadvantages of a desktop application in terms of deployment and scalability.

There is a cloud version (TaaS), but this version is only suitable for manual tests and web tests. Web applications need to be publicly accessible within the cloud environment (so it is not suitable for internal testing environments). It would be a nice feature if the cloud version of Tricentis Tosca Testsuite is able to drive your locally installed application.

Do not buy this tool if you simply need a driver for your automation, as open source solutions (e.g. Selenium), or technology specific solutions are more suitable here. Also, if you are looking for a complete ALM solution, there are more capable tools out there. If you have a testing department full of techies, they will feel too restricted with the tool. It’s also not suitable for manual testing only, as there are better solutions for this purpose out there. But, if you have the plan to test multiple technologies, and your testing departments consists mainly of business domain experts or software tester with few technical background, and you are planning to introduce this tool as an enterprise solution and/or want to replace existing fragmented solutions, then it is worth evaluating it.

You definitely want to have a product training first prior to implementation, and you definitely want to have on-site consultancy while making your first steps with the tool. In most cases, you also need technical consultancy in cases the tool does not recognize UI controls.
Focus on a small prototype project first together with on-site consultancy. Take the learnings from that project, and do the next one on your own.

The company is a lot smaller than the top dogs, but they are compensating it with passion and a lot of new features in every release.

The features we've found most valuable are--

• It’s a modular structure, so changes in a module are automatically updated in all relevant test cases.
• It uses a risk-based approached via a weighted requirement set.

• Not all functions are logical without certain know-how.
• Context menu in the newer versions is not ideal.

I've used it for about one year.

During an upgrade there were issues, but this was due to certain security settings on our end, and the Tosca support team was very useful in helping us with those setting and resolving the issues.

We're discussing internally with fully integrate this tool within our business.

10/10. The customer service is top-notch.

10/10. The technical support is top-notch.

In our department there was not a different solution in place.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward with support from our network department for the setting up of a common repository.

We implemented it via our in-house team in combination with Tricentis consultants.

We also looked at Worksoft.

Try it out and do a Proof of Concept.