Parameter order in dropdown of expected results of manual auto-scripts

The drop down order is now consistent with the order of the parameters in the plan, rather than alphabetical.

Fast plan switching

Your 5 most recently accessed test plans are now available under the test plan drop down when you are in a test plan. This enables you to quickly switch between them or open them in a new tab.

Display and sort by recently accessed plans

You can know see when you most recently accessed your test plans, and you can sort by the same.

Clear manual auto-scripts

In the old UI, when you had more than 3 steps in your manual auto-scripts you had the option to start over and remove all the steps in a single bulk operation rather than deleting all the steps one-by-one. We lost this functionality in the new UI, but now it's back.

Frozen scenarios, bring back the blue ice!

In the old UI, frozen scenarios would be shown with an icy blue background in the table of scenarios. We lost the coloring in the new UI, but now it's back. Thank you to user Dorothy for pointing out this omission.

Description of mixed-strength scenarios in revisions

When describing the number of scenarios in mixed-strength tests, the revisions UI used the (internal) term, -1 rather than mixed-strength as the strength indicator.

Our internal CI / CD pipeline

We normally don't comment on these type of DevSecOps improvements here since they don't directly impact you as a user of the tool, but since we are all involved in the software development life-cycle in our respective teams, I thought it might be interesting to mention that we moved from a cloud-hosted Jenkins server and AWS CodeBuild as our CI/CD pipeline to GitHub Actions to power our CI/CD pipeline.

The benefit here is a bit over-determined, as a result of the move we have better pipeline performance, stability and reliability, and reduced costs.

As a potentially interesting addendum, "CI/CD pipeline" has become a generic term that is often used to describe just continuous integration, but here at Hexawise our pipeline is a full CI/CD pipeline and we do continuous deployment as well.

Requirements → Forced Interactions

During the terminology change over from "Requirements" to "Forced Interactions" we missed a few instances of the old term in more obscure parts of the user interface. These have now all been changed over.

Safari: Bulk edit toggle

The toggle between single and bulk parameter editing had a layout issue in the Safari browser. This is resolved.

Parameter name truncation

Very long parameter names, longer than about 3 lines, are now middle truncated in the user interface for defining parameters.

Handling of long expected outcomes when displaying scenarios

A very long expected outcome would case some wrapping during the display of generated scenarios. This is now resolved.

Efficient plan navigation

Hexawise remembers which screen of Rules, Scripts and Review that you last accessed for a plan, and returns you to that most recently accessed screen on navigation back to those sections leading to more efficient navigation around a plan.

Improved some low contrast link colors

Some links to actions in constraints and revisions were low contrast and hard to see/read. These have been fixed.

Edit Plan Properties dialog

It was tricky to get to a plan's properties to update them when the plan was already open. We've addressed that with a new option in the plan name drop down.

Multi-strength warning

There is a warning explanation in the user interface when generating multi-strength scenarios, and not choosing a sufficient number of parameters for the selected strength. There was a regression in this warning state so that it did not allow you to continue on and correct the issue. This has been resolved.

New Hexawise Introduction Video for New Users

New Hexawise users now get a new introduction video.

Focusing of notes data entry

Wherever possible and reasonable, the note data entry UI now has focus and is ready for immediate typing or editing of a note.

Confirmation on emailing an export

There is now a success confirmation when you email yourself a Hexawise export.

Refreshed User Interface 🎉

This update was many months in the making, and we're happy to introduce a refreshed user interface for Hexawise.

You can learn more about the UI refresh in this short video.

Advanced skip constraint and frozen test cases

There was a pairwise defect when freezing test cases that included the use of an advanced skip constraint. This has been resolved.

Regression in single parameter editing

Fixed a short-lived regression in which editing existing parameters individually would result in parameter value duplication in some cases.

Thank you to Velu for reporting the issue.

Automate: Robot Framework support

Robot Framework is an open source test automation framework that has easy syntax, utilizing human-readable keywords. Its capabilities can be extended by libraries implemented with Python or Java. The framework has a rich ecosystem around it, consisting of libraries and tools that are developed as separate projects.

Now when you create a new test script in your test plan with Hexawise Automate, you can chose to create a Gherkin feature file or a Robot Framework script.

A Robot Framework script in Hexawise Automate works very similarly to Gherkin scripts. Gherkin Given/When/Then syntax is used in the Test Cases section of the script to specify one or more data-driven test case templates.

Hexawise Automate then automatically generates as many test cases from the template as are needed for the test plan. As with Gherkin scripts, parameter values from each test case can be included with the <Parameter name> syntax, which will be auto-completed for you once you enter a < character.

You can also restrict the Hexawise test cases that apply to a specific template with the {Parameter Name[Parameter Value]} syntax and its variants such as value lists {Parameter Name[Value 1, Value 2]} and negation{!Parameter Name[Value 3]}. Auto-completion support will help you with value selection once you type the { character.

You'll see a truncated set of generated test cases in the right preview pane.

You'll get all the generated test cases when you export the Robot Framework script.

You can read more about Hexawise's Robot Framework support by creating a new Robot Framework script in your test plan and then clicking the blue "Usage" button in the top right of your Hexawise Automate screen.

Let us know if your team is using Robot Framework so we can prioritize further improvements to this new capability. Also let us know If you have ideas or requests to improve Hexawise's Robot Framework support.

Automate: Multiple save attempts allowed when using keyboard shortcut

If you used the save hotkey rather than the save button (usage variation!), the save was not disabled while a save is in progress allowing an impatient user to saturate the server with save requests and compromise their save integrity.

For future test ideas, we'll name this variation the "caffeinated user test".

Sprichst du Deutsch? 🇩🇪

Hexawise spricht jetzt Deutsch. Wählen Sie Deutsch in Ihrem Konto.

Automate: More consistent use of quoting between Gherkin feature file exports and Automated Test Framework exports

The use of " or ' to mark a parameter in Gherkin is not entirely defined or consistent in the Gherkin syntax. We have some Automate users that use them around parameters (e.g. When the "<selection>" is made) and many that don't (e.g. When the <selection> is made).

We've improved things so that we don't inject quotes some times (Automated Test Framework exports) and not other times (Gherkin feature file export) which leaves you with slightly different feature files depending on how you chose to export it.

This area has been improved but is still not perfect as the handling of quoting in the Automated Test Framework generation is both complicated and external to us, and as mentioned, we have to deal with the case of quoting being present in the script from the user and not being present. More could possibly be done here, so certainly let us know if you are running into any issues related to quoting in your Gherkin.