Ability to sort Tests within Test Cycle in Zephyr

[Artem Vasiuk]

Hey there,

Sorting in Test Cycle is working quite poor - first item added by tester goes to the end of the list. This is not good, because normally tester adds quality-critical itemsat first , while minor items are added to the cycle last. But, due to Zephyr Test Cycle sorting options, items appear reversed, meaning that testers see minor tests first, and critical are somewhere in the end of the list, on last page.

BTW pagination in Test Cycles is another pain - why do we get 10 items on one page?? For Enterprise systems I need way more items within single Test Cycle.

Combining these two requests in one solution in upcoming releases will make many people happy and satisfied. Please consider this while planning further releases.

[Chris Miller · Accepted solution]

Gents,

Zephyr 2.0 introduced a way to do this - though not in Cycle View.

Navigate to "Search Test Executions" and this is where you can accomplish your goal.

Use ZQL (Zephry Query Language) to seach by Your Test Cycle Name (cycleName) and you will get back all the testcasese in the Cyclethe. Then you can sort on a field field and execute as needed. Currently we know we're missing the testcase name from this list but it will arrive in our January Release.

Kind Regards,

Chris

[Sarah Woodhouse]

I have the same original question but this answer does not help me. Our test cases need to be executed in a specific order but there is no field that contains that information - in our current Test Case Management solution we can sort test cases manually by dragging items around in the list. Test executions are generated in an order that matches the test cases but can then also be manually reordered if required.

Does Zephyr have any functionality to support manually ordering tests?

[Andy Hart]

Hi, is this still outstanding?  We are currently using Zephyr and still do not seem to have the ability to order tests within a test cycle by drag and drop.  Am I missing something as this post is over 4 years old or is this functionality not being developed?

[Neil Hellwig]

The tests can be reordered by doing the following:

Select your project and go to the test cycle list view.  Find the test cycle that you want to reorder, hover your cursor over it and you will see a gear icon and a small down arrow to the far right. Click the down arrow to open a drop down menu.

Select the "Reorder Executions" option at the bottom of the drop down menu and a pop-up will open with all of the tests listed.  Each test can be moved by "grabbing" the dot grid icon to the left of it and holding the left mouse key down while dragging the test to reposition it.

IMPORTANT! - the reorder executions pop-up will list the tests in the REVERSE ORDER of how they appear when the test cycle is opened so when reordering the tests, start at the bottom and work your way up to the last test (for example, if there are 10 tests in a cycle, move test 1 to position 10, test 2 to position 9, test 3 to position 8 and so forth). 

Click "Save" in the lower right to save the new test execution order.

I hope this helps.

[Lee Calladine]

Hi @Neil Hellwig, is this on JIRA Cloud with Zephyr addin?

[Andy Hart]

Hi, I cannot see the down arrow option.  I am using Zephyr in Jira cloud and am not sure if this is only available in the server version.  Next to a test cycle there is a gear option available with no change when hovering over the cycle, the gear sub menu only contains 'add tests', 'edit cycle', 'delete cycle', 'export tests' and 'clone cycle'.

[Neil Hellwig]

Sorry, this is on the server version.  I am not familiar with the options in Jira Cloud.

[kiwipete]

We're trialling the Zephyr addin for Jira Cloud too.  Our test cycles will quickly become cumbersome if we're not able to easily re-order tests.  Has anyone else running Cloud managed to crack this? 

[Lee Calladine]

[JIRA CLOUD and ZEPHYR addon]

Hi @kiwipete, @Andy Hart and I were looking into this recently and then discovered the ADG UI beta update that Zephyr have offered foillowing the recent JIRA UI update.

If you are a tester familiar with ALM or Rational you will be familiar with the tree structure for tests and sets. Well the good news is that this UI update fro Zephyr takes a step in that direction.

You still can't drag and drop items or move the order of cycles or folders in cycles, so they have a long way top go to make this mature functionality.

BUT............

if you are a tester who cut their teeth numbering your tests like 100. Login, 200. Add flight details, 300. Confirm booking, then there is hope, as this new UI gives the ability to sort by Summary, whereas the old UI does not.

Caveat is that this is only BETA, so it is flaky and quite bad performance, but the functionality is 100% better than what was in the old UI.

Activate ADG UI and then browse to Plan test Cycles.... Enjoy!

[kiwipete]

hi @Lee Calladine, thanks for your reply...much appreciated. I will take a look at the ADG UI.  If we need to number pre-fix our tests to get them to sort then so be it!  It's definitely an improvement on not being able to order the tests at all.  

cheers. 

[kiwipete]

hi again @Lee Calladine, just a follow up on this....

Using ADG UI I'm now able to sort by Summary....which is great...but there's an issue...

Test plans results are only displaying in blocks of 10...and sorting just works on the 10 results currently being displayed.  So my test plan contains 20 tests...which is 2 pages of results. Unfortunately the 2 pages or results sort independently....which obviously isn't going to work :( 

I'm not sure if there's a way to increase the 'results per page' number....

cheers

[Blake Turner]

For a product of this maturity, the lack of sortable test cases is a major flaw. All our testing also needs to be sequential and the inability to sort tests into the right sequence is a deal breaker.

Proper grouping would help alot too ... an awesome product but absolute basics seem to be missing 

[Lene Solberg]

Hi,

In  Zephyr  2.5.0.25001732 • Released 2014-07-22  the release notes says: "Tests in a Test Cycle can now be re-ordered for execution via simple drag-n-drop". I have upgraded to Version 2.5.4.25401885, but I cannot make this functionality work..

kind regards Lene

[Neil Hellwig]

Zephyr 2.5.1.25101747

Sorting is really a pain. An administrator should be able to add fields and dictate if they appear as a sortable column in Cycle View. As test cycles evolve, steps may be added or deleted and there is currently no way to insert new test steps in the order that the user wants. The fact that this feature is missing is crippling to us and almost makes Zephyr unusable. We have had to use some very hacky work-a-rounds to make it somewhat functional in the hopes that the Zephyr development team will add this obviously needed ability in a (hopefully) soon to come release. It is beyond me to imagine that this wasn't considered to be a critical feature when the plug in was originally designed. PLEASE make this a priority!

[Peter Moline]

I agree with Artem. This is something that could easily be improved. There are a couple of options that would be better than the current sort order (which is most recently added at the top).

1. The tests within a cycle could be sorted by Priority. This assumes that each test is prioritised accurately, and that priorities are consistent across all versions / cycles (a reasonable assumption in most cases)

2. The tests within a cycle could be sorted with the most recently added tests at the bottom, as per Artem's original post

Actually, I think the best long term answer to this problem is to allow project administrators to configure which columns in the Text Executions view users can see. If they want to sort by 'date added' or by 'priority', or don't want to see 'labels', then let them configure the view to display or hide those columns.

[Chris Miller]

Hi Artem,

Thanks for the feedback. I'll send these ideas to the development team for consideration for a future release.

Kind Regards,

Chris