If you use Applitools Eyes, you’re calling our AI-powered visual testing service from your functional test scripts. Those scripts likely reside in a code repository, or multiple code repositories, in your development environment.  And, if you are using Atlassian Bitbucket, you want your code pulls to drive code merges, and also merge branches of your Applitools baseline images. With our Applitools and Bitbucket integration, you can. You can also use our Applitools and Atlassian Bitbucket integration to tie into your favorite CICD solution, including Atlassian Bamboo, Jenkins, TravisCI, CircleCI, and more.

Applitools In Your Bitbucket Workflow

As you may know, Applitools Eyes supports multiple branches, each of which can consist of multiple test baselines. Eyes supports creating a new branch based on an existing branch, independent updates to the baselines in each branch, comparing branches to detect conflicts, and finally merging of the baselines in branches. This is all designed to fit into a trunk-and-branch development workflow.

With our  new Bitbucket integration included in the Applitools 10.7 release, you can now build workflows around Bitbucket that incorporates Applitools baseline images. The major capabilities in the integration include:

• Applitools visual UI tests are automatically configured to use and save baselines in branches whose name is derived from the Git branch names.
• All visual UI tests that are in a specific CI build, are automatically batched together, with a batch name that includes the Git commit information.
• The Bitbucket pull request panel includes a status indicating the latest visual UI test results and merge status.
• When the user initiates a Bitbucket pull-request merge, this will also trigger an Eyes branch merge.

Effectively, Bitbucket workflows drive both the application code as well as the Applitools Eyes repositories.

Bitbucket Cloud or Self-Hosted

The integration works with both Bitbucket Cloud as well as Bitbucket Server or Bitbucket Data Center. The primary difference between the two setups is how the CI system lets Applitools know that a build is complete. For Bitbucket Server or Bitbucket Data Center, you need to tell your CI solution how to notify Applitools explicitly with a build status notification. That step is unnecessary when you use the cloud-based solution.

For the cloud integration, you simply need to point to the Bitbucket server and then identify your team’s repositories. There are a few other details listed in our documentation. For the self-hosted solutions, you need to configure your CI solution (CircleCI, AppVeyor, Jenkins or Bamboo) so that it sets the environment variable APPLITOOLS_API_KEY to your Applitools API key. Easy.

For the self-hosted solution, you will need to point your Applitools solution to your Bitbucket server and identify your team’s repositories. You will also need to allow traffic from the Applitools Eyes service to traverse your data center (and, potentially, your corporate) firewall. Again, the details are in our Bitbucket integration documentation

Latest SDK Includes Batch Calls to Applitools

To run the Bitbucket integration, you need the latest SDK for your UI development language of choice. SDK update are available for the following languages:

• Java
• Javascript
• Ruby
• Python
• C#
• PHP

The SDK includes a call for APPLITOOLS_BATCH_ID, which links the Applitools run to the Git commit information. From this link, the images collected by Applitools Eyes link to the branch of code being built and run – or integrated into another branch.

Bitbucket and Applitools in Operation

So, how does this all work in practice?

The Eyes Bitbucket integration is based on the Bitbucket pull request. When there is an open pull request, Eyes adds the following functionality to your Bitbucket workflow:

1. When your CI initiates a build that includes an Eyes test, Eyes detects that the run is associated with a Bitbucket pull request and will search for a baseline to use as a reference. Eyes will check for a matching baseline in the following order:
   1. On a branch that corresponds to the repository name and source branch defined by the pull request.
   2. If there is no such branch, it will create a branch and populate it with the latest baseline for that test from the repository name and target branch defined by the pull request.
   3. If there is no such baseline the test will be marked as “New”.
2. The Bitbucket Build panel will include two Applitools specific lines.
   1. tests/applitools will show the results of all tests related to the specific workflow and whether are still in progress, and for completed tests, whether they have passed, failed, or need to be evaluated. tests/applitools is a link to take you to the Applitools Eyes test results to resolve any failing tests in the Eyes UI.
   2. scm/applitools shows the results of the branch merge between source and target results. An alert icon means that there are conflicts, while a green checkmark icon means the merge passed. scm/applitools is a link to the Merge Branches screen in Applitools Eyes Test Manager from which you can inspect any reported conflict and take steps to resolve it.

Resolving Conflicts in Bitbucket and Applitools Workflow

Once you have established the integration for a given application, a pull request automatically launches Applitools Eyes for that particular branch activity. When the resulting build process run smoothly and the Build panel shows no errors, move on to your next task. Otherwise, you need to resolve the conflict.

Fortunately, this work is easy to do inside Applitools.  In this case, you check the image as tied into source or target baseline to determine whether you want to update the baseline to the source version, update the baseline to the target, or identify a new unexpected behavior that needs further development.  It’s the work you do regularly with Applitools Eyes – just limited to the branch activity in question.

By using this integration, you link your Applitools Eyes visual testing with your CI workflow. You automate the branch names for your Applitools eyes results, and your Bitbucket pull requests drive the workflows that allow you to identify and resolve differences. You can ensure tight integration between your functional tests in your favorite language and testing tool and the visual results captured by Applitools Eyes.

For More Information

Documentation about Applitools-Bitbucket Integration

Blog: How to Make Jira Easier to Use with Integrated Visual UI Bug Tracking

More from Applitools: Request a Demo, Sign Up for a Free Account, or visit our Tutorials.

The post How to integrate BitBucket into your Visual Testing appeared first on Automated Visual Testing | Applitools.

Why is Jira so hard to use for bug tracking? This seems to be a continual refrain heard on the web: “Jira isn’t suited for Agile development”. “Jira is complex and bloated”. “People cram too much information into Jira”. Another common complaint is that Jira tickets are simply unmanageable.

Organizing JIRA tickets pic.twitter.com/2YeDNc7tcf

— Mike Herchel (@mikeherchel) October 2, 2017

But, love it or hate it, Atlassian Jira is very popular for bug tracking and can be found within many software development organizations worldwide. If your workplace is one of the many that uses Jira, you might want to consider using Applitools Eyes to make your visual user interface (UI) testing easier.

First, some background: Applitools Eyes lets you automate visual UI testing of your web and mobile application front end. Using Applitools Eyes ensures that your application’s UI is displayed consistently and accurately across any device, browser, or viewport. Atlassian Jira manages your development workflow, task tracking, issue management, and reporting.

Integrating Applitools Eyes and Jira will save you time, especially if your visual tests detect many defects. Manually logging visual defects may take a lot of time: grab a screenshot, draw a circle around the defect, write some text explaining what the problem is, create a Jira ticket, attach a screenshot, then have a follow-up call with a developer because they didn’t understand your write-up. This may easily add three to five minutes just to report and explain one software bug.

Three to five minutes per bug? What a time sink…

There’s a better way: integrate Applitools Eyes with Jira. Doing this lets you directly report issues to your engineering team, and track those issues to resolution. Highlight a region, write a quick comment, tag your teammate responsible for investigating, and you’re done. A bug report with screenshots with highlights of all visual differences, along with your comments, filed in Jira and your teammate is notified. Total time: about thirty seconds to file a bug.

With the manual tasks of reporting and tracking out of the way, testing teams can focus on increasing test coverage (and leaving the office at a reasonable time). This post explains how to quickly report issues and defects captured by Applitools Eyes to a Jira project.

Configuring Applitools

First, open the Applitools Eyes Admin panel and locate your team. Find the Jira section on the page and click the checkbox to enable the integration. In the text box, type the URL of your Jira server. Next, specify the Project ID (PID) and the ID of the relevant issue type for the target project. If your project uses additional Jira fields, type the field name into the text box and press the Add button. In the drop-down menu, select a field type. Alternatively, you can type the name of a custom field into the text box. After you provide all the relevant configuration information, save it.

Applitools Eyes Jira Integration in Action

Now that you have configured the Applitools Eyes Jira integration, we will show you how to use it. In this example, we will simulate a defect in an existing web application (Gmail), and then use the integration to create a new Jira issue. The test inspects Gmail’s More button and detects a typo. When a test detects an issue, click the Create New Jira Issue button. This opens a new browser tab that displays the Jira Create Issue form. In the form, each field you specified during the configuration process contains the relevant Applitools Eyes test information. You can edit the information in the form and populate any empty fields. When you are ready to create the issue, click the Create button.

After you save the detected defect, Jira creates an issue that includes the name of the test, the batch in which it was running, the step description, the time when Applitools Eyes encountered the issue, the execution environment in which it was running, and any custom properties you defined for the test. The issue includes a link that lets you view all the defects in the Applitools Test Manager. This allows you to examine the recorded visual validation in context and compare captured screenshots with the test’s baseline images.

You can add existing visual regression test results that were not linked to a Jira project using the Link to Jira issue dialog box. The dialog box lets you enter an issues Applitools ID and add it to Jira. After you add an issue from Applitools to Jira, click the View in Jira button from an issue region or the Collaboration View to view the defect in Jira. You can also use the dialog box to link to a different Jira issue, or you can just delete the link.

Find visual UI bugs before your customers do

In this post, we explained how our Applitools Eyes and Jira integration can boost your team’s productivity. Integrating Jira with Applitools will help you streamline communication with your engineering team, which will allow for more efficient management and tracking of issues. As a result, your software development team will ship better quality software in less time.

But productivity is only part of the picture. It’s absolutely critical that you don’t let visual user interface bugs escape into production. When this happens, your customers will lose trust in your software and brand.

Even worse, you can have a visual bug that blocks customers from buying, such as this glitch on the Southwest Airline’s website. See how the text is overlapping the Continue button? Because of this, the Continue button doesn’t work, and customers can’t book a flight.

From a business perspective, this bug is disastrous since it is blocking revenue generation and is actively driving customers to competitors. It’s these kinds of revenue-killing production bugs that software QA and development teams need to be able to report and act on quickly, and 

So, once you’ve integrated Applitools and Jira, what will you do with all the time you’ve saved?

If you are a Jira user and want to read more about Applitools’ visual UI testing and Application Visual Management (AVM) solutions, check out the resources section on the Applitools website. To get started with Applitools, request a demo, or sign up for a free Applitools account.

The post How to Make Jira Easier to Use with Integrated Visual UI Bug Tracking appeared first on Automated Visual Testing | Applitools.