Case Study: Snaptracs

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Case Study: Snaptracs

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Project Information

Company Name Snaptracs, Inc

Address 6215 Ferris Square Suite 140 San Diego, CA 92121 USA

Website http://www.pettracker.com/

Project Information

Industry Wearable devices, Pet-tracking web application, Pet-tracking mobile

application

Environment Windows

Technologies Java, Git, Eclipse IDE, WebDriver, Appium, Saucelabs, Bamboo, Bitbucket

Duration Test Automation for Web: 5 months, Test Automation for Mobile: 1

month

Manual testing for Web: 1 month

Team 1 test automation engineer, 1 manual test engineer, 1 PM

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Challenge

Flawless operation of an application and robust performance of a website is a must of every successful business. To ensure this kind of quality, Snaptracs turned to AltexSoft, a reliable partner with the technical and business expertise.

Snaptracs is an American company based in San Diego, California that produces

wearable tracking devices for pets (cats, dogs, etc.). The device is called Tagg the GPS Pet Tracker and enables pet owners to locate and track the activities of their beloved pets. The technology aims to ensure safety, measure activity and express love for the pets, so the mobile app’s and website’s accuracy and speed were of utmost importance.

AltexSoft was given the task to create a set of automation tests for http://www.pettracker.com/ web application and

for the similar mobile application based on the PhoneGap platform.

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Solution

The AltexSoft QA team of two Engineers and a Project Manager was executing the testing and quality assurance activities during 5 months.

The test process included manual testing of critical web application’s features, performed with the market’s best testing tools, and creating automation tests for the mobile app.

The AtlexSoft team created a set of automated tests taking into account all of the client’s requirements as well as testing best practices. Now these Automation Tests should be run periodically with Continuous Integration to assure the applications’ quality and provide quick feedback on its state.

In the early stage, AltexSoft provided Snaptracs with an estimate and iteration plan for test automation, which was then approved. On the client’s request, Java was selected as Programming Language for automation tests.

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Technologies used

For several reasons, the platform and language-neutral interface WebDriver was chosen for automate web application testing. The compelling tool is fast, has an extended support for a wide range of web browsers, programming languages and test environments, and is considered to be an industrial standard.

As a mobile automation tool for iOS and Android, Snaptracs and AltexSoft chose open source Appium due to its support for WebDriver library, its accuracy and scalability. Since the main idea of the whole project organization was “All in the cloud”, the bottom line was that both WebDriver and Appium tools supported by saucelabs could be run in cloud. The team used:

• JIRA Cloud as Project Management tool • Confluence Cloud as Knowledge Base tool • Bamboo Cloud as Continues Integration tool • Bitbucket as code repositories tool

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Web Application

These technologies helped the team create and perform tests on the main functionality of the apps, namely verify robust logging, tracking pet activities, and reduce risks

regarding map failures.

More specifically on the latter, the team needed to make sure that other maps, besides Bing Maps, would provide the same positive user experience. Therefore, a set of automation tests for Bing Maps were created and implemented, as well as manual testing was performed on the apps that use MapQuest.

As a result, Snaptracs was given enough data to make an informed decision in favor of one or the other cost-effective and flexible map for their application. Here is the map page interface of the web

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Mobile Application

Here is how the mobile application interface looks like:

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Tech Feedback

“AltexSoft partnered with Snaptracs to create a framework for running automated

user acceptance tests. This suite of tests became a valuable tool for sanity checking the health of the system, and also for verification that serious regressions were not introduced following a deployment to the system.

Before these automated tests were available, tests were run manually, which was often error-prone, tedious and time-intensive. What previously took hours, now only takes a few minutes and is literally initiated with the push of a button. The tests freed up the operations and development teams to spend more time improving the system and gave them the confidence to deploy changes more frequently,” says Garret Pick, Engineering Lead at Snaptracs.

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Benefits

• Immediate feedback. Snaptracs gets quick feedback on problems caused

by сhanges in the web and mobile application code.

• High quality. Snaptracs becomes more confident about the web and

mobile applications’ quality, because there are sets of tests which run after each build.

• Automation. Snaptracs’ scope of manual testing has dramatically decreased,

because most-used features are covered with automated tests.

“We are pleased with the projects that AltexSoft was able to complete for us, including automated tests for both our web and mobile applications as well as manual testing for a critical

cost-savings feature for us in the Tagg backend. The software was delivered with quality and on time and communication was always handled in a professional manner,” summarizes Scott Neuberger, CEO of Snaptracs.

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Take Your App to the Next Level

AltexSoft strives to help businesses build top-class products in a range of business

verticals, including but not limited to: E-commerce & Retail, Travel & Booking, Finance & Banking, Marketing & Advertising, Aviation & Transportation Systems.

Our team offers QA integration and automation services as well as QA consulting. Our methodology covers all the phases of the QA process, and this gives you the opportunity to have step-by-step quality processes deployed without disrupting your business.

Your organization receives frequent, fast and valuable feedback on any code changes, gets reduced scope of repetitive manual testing, increased test coverage and accurate estimates of software product performance.

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Find out how your business can make the best of

our Quality Assurance services

www.altexsoft.com

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