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Creating, executing, and maintaining reliable tests has never been easier.
Yesterday, mabl launched its new native desktop application. The app centralizes and streamlines low-code test automation across browsers, mobile devices, and APIs, making it easy for quality professionals of all coding levels to test the entire user journey regardless of application complexity.
The new app was designed with feedback from the Friends of mabl community, including Eric Johnston, IT Business Analyst at NCR. Eric and his team are responsible for testing at NCR the leading provider of banking and e-commerce solutions for financial, retail, hospitality, travel, telecom and technology industries.
As an early user of the mabl desktop app, we went behind the scenes with NCR to understand how this digital payments giant sees API testing impacting software quality.
When API stands for “A Pain In…”
Modern engineering teams embrace APIs as a foundational part of application development, but unfortunately, testing them can be a complex task that increasingly burdens quality engineering teams. Quality testers, particularly manual testers, have few ways to test API functionality outside relying on unnecessarily complex, code-heavy tests that require programming know-how to create and maintain.
For Eric and his team, API testing had a few pain points. First, they didn’t have a tool that made API testing simple enough for non-coding team members to build tests, limiting their ability to test APIs and ensure sufficient test coverage. Even when API testing was being done, the NCR team lacked a single location to store (and execute) both browser tests and API tests, making it hard to garner visibility over their testing results. Finally, API testing was disconnected from browser tests since there wasn’t a way to connect API test data and browser test data. This meant that the team had to resort to duplicating efforts across APIs and the browser every time they needed to test their application.
Early benefits of API testing with mabl
Prior to API testing using mabl, Eric’s team built API tests manually, but didn’t have the tools to execute them regularly. Though they recognized the value of API testing and its role in maintaining a streamlined user experience, manual API testing was simply too time-consuming to execute on a regular basis. Further complicating the challenge was that even when API testing was completed, they didn’t have a reliable reporting mechanism in place to make test data actionable.
Since starting their API testing journey with mabl, NCR is already seeing clear benefits of the new, integrated testing capabilities. Currently, they have mabl using API tests to feed test data to browser tests using shared variables, as well as doing functional validation on a sample set of APIs. But the benefits are already clear as API testing is very fast and reliable, with near-instantaneous feedback that usually flags the source of the issue.
The faster, more accessible API tests offer an easy way to expand end-to-end test coverage, enabling the NCR team to unify API testing and browser testing into a single strategy with a unified dashboard that ensures testers aren’t duplicating efforts and that the entire user experience is fully tested.
The road ahead for quality engineering
With early access to the new API testing capabilities, Eric has already been able to plan his test automation strategy around growing mabl adoption, with the side benefit of using mabl as a learning tool to help his team become comfortable with API testing. At this point, 20 percent of the NCR testing team is using mabl for API testing, with a plan in place to expand to the entire team.
As adoption grows, Eric believes his team can transform their testing strategy to incorporate daily browser testing and API testing to give quick, consistent feedback on the stability of the application. Far from the disconnected, time-consuming task that API testing was before mabl, NCR will be able to make API testing a routine and simple automated task that’s coordinated with the rest of their testing strategy through the low-code UI of mabl.
Want to join NCR at the forefront of integrated browser and API testing? Register for your free trial of mabl today!
