Testing Complex Multi-Systems: A Major Challenge

Testing complex multi-systems presents a formidable challenge. By addressing issues such as cross-device flows, verification mechanisms, live tracking features, and booking/payment integrations, applications can enhance the reliability and resilience of their digital systems, ultimately delivering a superior customer experience.

Understanding the Complexity of Multi-Systems Architecture

The landscape of applications encompasses a diverse array of types and use cases. At the forefront, we encounter versatile platforms enabling users to book services, track itineraries, and manage preferences and payments seamlessly. Typically, these apps integrate web and mobile functionalities, offering users a cohesive experience across devices. Moreover, many companies extend their reach through dedicated web interfaces, augmenting accessibility for a broader audience.

When placing a booking through an app, the journey traverses multiple layers of specialized applications. Initially, the booking submission funnels through backend systems, where it is received and processed. This pivotal step often involves distinct applications tailored for different purposes, such as property management systems (PMS) or global distribution systems (GDS). These backend systems are crucial in orchestrating booking acceptance, rejection, and comprehensive tracking.

Upon booking confirmation, the process moves to customer service and support systems for logistics management. Independent agents collaborate with the company to fulfill service needs. These agents receive booking updates, navigate to specific locations, and carry out their tasks, with their statuses and locations tracked in real time. This detailed coordination allows for real-time updates to the customer app, ensuring clear communication and a smooth experience.

In essence, the complexity of these apps transcends the boundaries of singular applications. Rather, it manifests as an interconnected ecosystem of applications, spanning diverse devices and interfaces. Yet, amidst this complexity, a unifying thread emerges utilizing APIs as the linchpin of communication. Through these APIs, apps establish a conduit to a centralized backend, enabling seamless data exchange and workflow orchestration. From the initial booking placement to its final execution, every interaction is mediated through this robust API infrastructure, underscoring its pivotal role in the digital ecosystem.

The Challenges in Testing Multi-Systems: Navigating Cross-Platform Scenarios

Imagine running a test scenario that initiates on the web where a customer books a service. The journey starts with the customer searching for available options, selecting a suitable one, and proceeding to payment. Once the payment is confirmed, the customer receives an email confirmation with the booking details. The customer then logs into a mobile app to check the booking status and make changes if needed. The process concludes with the customer receiving notifications and updates about their status via SMS. This journey, which spans across the web, backend, email, and mobile platforms, presents a diverse array of technologies and interfaces to be tested.

Undertaking end-to-end UI testing for such multi-system interactions presents formidable challenges, given the disparate technologies involved. However, leveraging the Testing Pyramid paradigm and harnessing the omnipresent APIs offers a robust solution for navigating these cross-device flows.

Given the interconnected nature of applications facilitated by APIs, asynchronous API testing emerges as the optimal strategy for validating cross-platform scenarios. By interfacing with the basic customer API to initiate bookings and trace their progression through the backend systems, testers can simulate end-to-end interactions without delving into backend intricacies. While dedicated UI testing remains imperative for each application, decoupling UI testing from backend dependencies ensures comprehensive coverage of the UI aspects across all dedicated apps. Ultimately, adopting an API-driven approach not only streamlines testing processes but also yields a substantial return on investment (ROI) by constructing end-to-end scenarios grounded in API interactions.

Overcoming Email & SMS Verification Challenges

Incorporating email and SMS verification into customer apps is a common practice. Some of these apps solely rely on mobile platforms, omitting website counterparts and traditional password logins. Consequently, navigating test automation amidst such verification methods poses significant challenges. However, a viable solution to this hurdle lies in the utilization of ephemeral inboxes.

An ephemeral inbox serves as a dedicated testing platform equipped with an API for seamless access to received emails. By registering users with ephemeral inbox emails or utilizing text messaging services like Twilio, testers can intercept verification codes and extract them using a dedicated API. Subsequently, these codes are employed to facilitate login procedures in subsequent steps of the testing process. While this approach may initially present complexities, leveraging appropriate tools streamlines the process, rendering it a manageable task within the app testing framework.

Addressing Live Tracking Challenges

Live tracking features have become a staple in many services, integrated into numerous apps. Testing such functionalities demands proficiency in geolocation calculations due to the reliance on coordinates provided by APIs. Testers must be well-versed in latitude-longitude coordinates and may need to conduct distance calculations during the testing process.

Moreover, obtaining real-time status data involves two primary methods: traditional HTTP polling and modern WebSocket communication. While HTTP polling entails repetitive requests for status updates, WebSocket technology enables direct communication between servers and apps, eliminating the need for continuous polling. In the context of testing apps, familiarity with WebSocket testing is paramount for comprehensive testing coverage.

Traversing Billing and Payment Challenges

One common obstacle encountered in testing revolves around billing and payments. Completing any scenario necessitates a functional payment mechanism—whether it's the customer's payment or the service provider's acceptance of it.

Understanding the intricacies of payment vendors like Stripe or other service providers is crucial. These vendors typically offer dedicated test environments and cards for testing purposes. Ensuring connectivity to the appropriate test API, such as Stripe's, is imperative to process payments correctly.

Furthermore, testing scenarios extend beyond the confines of the testing environment, often encompassing acceptance testing in production. This underscores the need for caution and sensitivity when conducting tests involving billing and payments. While dedicated company cards may facilitate testing in such scenarios, safeguarding their security remains paramount.

Integrating API Testing for Efficient End-to-End Flow Testing

Integrating API testing offers a more efficient approach for creating end-to-end flow testing that spans across multiple systems. The complexity of apps, involving various applications across web, mobile, desktop, and headless platforms, means that relying solely on UI testing can lead to increased challenges. Each platform requires its own UI testing framework, which can be time-consuming and difficult to synchronize for comprehensive coverage. Furthermore, UI tests are much slower, less stable, and more sensitive to interface changes, potentially impacting the overall efficiency of the testing process.

API testing, on the other hand, allows testers to focus on the interactions between these varied systems at a more fundamental level—testing the logic. Since these apps heavily rely on API interactions for processes like booking, tracking, and service management, API testing enables a streamlined evaluation of these critical functions. It facilitates a more efficient creation of end-to-end scenarios, covering the entire process from the customer's booking to the final service execution. This method provides faster execution, greater stability, and better integration capabilities across different components of the app. By combining API testing with necessary UI tests, teams can achieve a more balanced and thorough testing strategy. This blended approach ensures not only the functionality and interoperability of the back-end systems but also maintains the integrity and user experience of the front-end interfaces, leading to a more robust and reliable app.

Leveraging Loadmill's AI-Driven Approach

Loadmill is an innovative AI-driven test automation platform designed to streamline the entire test automation lifecycle. Our platform harnesses artificial intelligence to simplify the creation, maintenance, and analysis of test scripts, allowing QA engineers to generate robust, automated test scripts from manual test cases with minimal effort. By focusing on testing through the API layer, Loadmill provides a solution that is fast, cost-effective, and platform-agnostic, enabling comprehensive cross-platform end-to-end testing. Integrating seamlessly with existing SDLC tools and workflows, Loadmill ensures compatibility and enhances productivity in diverse development environments.

Loadmill's Native AI unlocks the potential for testing multi-system applications. It captures API traffic from mobile and web-based apps, property management systems, global distribution systems, desktops, and headless applications, transforming this data into automated test scenarios. This API-driven approach is advantageous for managing the complexities of app testing. It's faster and more stable compared to traditional UI testing tools, efficiently tackling the unique challenges presented by these multifaceted applications.

The platform's AI capabilities extend beyond test creation. Loadmill assists with test maintenance by intelligently refactoring test scripts in response to application changes, significantly reducing the manual effort required. Additionally, Loadmill's AI-driven analysis tools help QA engineers quickly identify and resolve test failures, providing detailed root cause analyses and suggesting potential fixes. This comprehensive approach not only boosts QA and development productivity but also increases test coverage and reduces test cycle duration.

Designed for enterprise customers and complex multi-system applications, Loadmill is a versatile and powerful solution for modern software testing needs, offering robust integrations with various CI/CD tools, source control systems, and ticketing platforms. By leveraging Loadmill's AI-driven approach, teams can achieve unparalleled efficiency and reliability in software testing.

Conclusion

Testing the intricate web of systems within applications stands as a daunting task. By tackling challenges ranging from cross-device flows to verification mechanisms, live tracking features, and booking/payment integrations head-on, apps can fortify the reliability and endurance of their digital infrastructure. Through these concerted efforts, they can elevate the caliber of service offered to customers, ensuring a seamless and gratifying experience at every touchpoint.

Interested in seeing how Loadmill can help your company? Check out Loadmill in action and talk to us to learn how we can enhance your testing strategy.