UI component and developer tool maker Telerik today announced Version 2.0 of Test Studio for iOS, an automated testing tool for iOS apps. Available for native, Web and hybrid app testing, the updated tool offers the ability for developers to get feedback directly from the user.
The new version, available for free on Apple’s App Store, gives iOS developers automated crash and user feedback reports, as well as a new cloud Web portal that lets iOS developers sync these reports with their automated functional tests.
The automated crash reports let developers see, in real time, why their apps are crashing. “Let’s say a user downloads your app, and it just crashes on them. At that point, they don’t know what happened, they just go back and restart it,” said Christopher Eyhorn, executive VP of Telerik’s Testing Division. “What this new feature allows you, the developer, to do is get all of those crash reports automatically sent back to our server. It gives developers the intelligence to go and fix a bug without even having to see it or reproduce it themselves.”
The new user feedback reports allow iOS developers to be notified of bad user experiences directly from the users themselves. “This addresses a big need for developers because, once they publish things out to Apple’s App Store, the only kind of feedback they’re currently getting is maybe one star and somebody’s pithy comments as part of their feedback,” said Eyhorn.
But now developers can include an extension into their application that, after they publish it to the App Store, allows users to provide feedback on it. “And when we say ‘feedback,’ we mean that it will take a screen capture, and users can highlight the issue they’re talking about with their finger,” Eyhorn said. “They can actually describe what it is, and then send it back to the new cloud Web portal so that the developers can see it in real time.”
Eyhorn said the new cloud Web portal in Test Studio for iOS Version 2.0 lets developers manage everything from crash reports to feedback. “It can not only sync up developers’ feedback and crash reports, but can now sync all their automated functional tests, too,” he said.
“If they build some tests on the device against native, hybrid or even Web versions of the app, it will allow them to sync all those tests up to the cloud and manage them there.”
Test Studio for iOS Version 2.0 also includes new team capabilities and GitHub integration. “Developers can add other members of their team to participate in the Web portal so that they can all see the issues, the incoming feedback and the crash reports,” Eyhorn said. “Integration with GitHub issues means that, if you get a crash report or some feedback, you can automatically send that over to GitHub as an issue for other developers to work on.”
