Automating SAP portal based application

Since long time I wanted to write about the things which I have learned during my professional career. So here is it with which I start. As I work in QA area I would like to share my learning from the automation and the process front. First blog is about  few points to be considered about automating the SAP portal applications.

Along with windows based GUI interfaces SAP is now moving to the web based interfaces for its modules. When we talk about automation of these applications the most compatible tool which comes in the mind is HP-QTP. Following are some of the best practices which I feel are important before going for automation of the web base sap applications:

           1.    Stability of the application: The application should be stable before you take up any portal based           application for automation. As a matter of fact portal based applications are comparatively difficult to automate then the ECC as it is more stable.

2.     Return of Investment: Return of investment must be calculated before taking up the automation.

3.      Unique identification properties: Identify the list of properties which the automation team is going to use for the automation and standardize it across the QTP’s used.

4.      Subject matter expert (SME) support: This is one of the important aspects of this kind of automation where continuous support from the SME is required for the automation engineers to understand the functionality of the application and to work on test data required to execute the test cases.

5.     Training of the automation engineers on the functionality: It is important to train the automation engineers on the basic business scenarios which they are taking up for automation as it would help them to understand and automate the application.

6.      Communication between development team and testing team: This is very important where automation team is informed about the changes happening in the application. This helps the automation team to plan their activities properly.

7.      Framework for automation: Framework for automation needs to be thought of. QC-BPT approach is one of the most suited approaches if QC is used as a centralized place in the testing organization. Templates for the automation scripts and coding standards must be decided beforehand to avoid any discrepancies in the automation effort by the team. Along with QC-BPT SAP-TAO may be used for the consolidation of the test scripts to make the execution of the tests faster.

Here is a link to another blog post where I have posted challenges faced while automating portal based applications: http://mytechnicalperspective.blogspot.in/2013/10/automating-sap-portal-based-application.html

and you have also have a look at some generic functions which you might use while automation here: http://mytechnicalperspective.blogspot.in/search/label/Programming%20Help

Comments and feedback on the post are welcome :-))