Integrating External Tests Overview

ALM enhances your testing capabilities by enabling you to synch externally executed test results with ALM. Automation tests executed by Jenkins or other testing frameworks will be integrated into ALM along with the latest test runs, giving quality teams comprehensive quality coverage. When working with Jenkins, this integration enhances the Continuous Testing process.

When synchronizing externally executed test results, ALM creates entities in the following modules:

Test Plan module

ALM creates an external type test (EXTERNAL-TEST ) for each test case specified in the result file. The test details in ALM are created from the test case details defined in the result file.

Notes:

Each external type test links to its counterpart test in the external repository.
External type tests cannot be added manually to the Test Plan Tree.

You can create requirements coverage by linking the tests to requirements in your project.

Test Lab module

ALM creates external type test sets for each test suite defined in the result file. Test instances are created for each test case defined in the test suite. The status of each test instance is updated according to the status in the result file.

Note: External type test sets are read-only. You cannot create, modify, or run test sets directly from ALM.

Test Runs module

ALM creates run entities for each test case run specified in the result file. Errors and details specified in the result file, can be viewed from the Report tab.

ALM provides two methods for synchronizing external results with your ALM project:

Synchronizing results from Jenkins	After you configure Jenkins to synch results with ALM, each time you run a job from Jenkins, the external results are synchronized automatically with ALM.
Synchronizing results by external testing tools	When working with external testing tools, you synchronize an external result file to ALM by manually importing the file to ALM.

Workflow for Integrating Results with ALM

The section describes the flow for integrating external results with ALM.

Integrating Results from Jenkins:

The following diagrams illustrates how to integrate Jenkins results with ALM:

Generate External Tests in ALM	Import tests from your external result file to ALM's Test Plan module. ALM generates tests (EXTERNAL-TEST test type ) and adds them to your Test Plan Tree.
Manage Requirements Coverage	Create coverage by linking the external tests to requirements in your project.
Configure Jenkins to synch results with ALM	Configure Jenkins to automatically synch the external result with ALM.
Run Tests	Run a Jenkins job. When the job completes, it uploads the result file automatically to ALM. When running subsequent jobs, if the test entities already exist in ALM, then it will only upload the new run entities.
Analyze Results	Review and analyze test results from ALM. ALM displays the uploaded test sets, test runs, and tests. ALM also updates coverage created between the external tests and your requirements.

Integrating Results from Other Tools

The following diagrams illustrates how to integrate external results with ALM:

Generate External Tests in ALM	Import tests from your external result file to ALM's Test Plan module. ALM generates tests (EXTERNAL-TEST test type ) and adds them to your Test Plan Tree.
Manage Requirements Coverage	Create coverage by linking the external tests to requirements in your project.
Run Tests Externally	Run tests using your external tool.
Import Results to ALM	When the test run completes, you import the result file to ALM's Test Lab module. When importing subsequent result files, if the test entities already exist in ALM, then it will only import the new run entities.
Analyze Results	Review and analyze test results from ALM. ALM displays the uploaded test sets, test runs, and tests. ALM also updates coverage created between the external tests and your requirements.