QTP / Dynamic Great Plains automation

Question

I have recently completed a detailed investigation regarding GP functional test automation possibilities with QTP, TestComplete, and other GUI recognition/interaction tools. In short, none of the tools acted well. Mentioned above did best but still featured a lot of hard-coding in recorded sample scripts. QTP did significantly better though.

Some of the GUI were recognized under .NET (swf... in QTP) and handled well. Some other were recognized as swfObject only but accessing native methods and properties allowed performing required interaction.

Finally, object internally named "Microsoft.Dexterity.Shell.DexDialogHost" renders objects that seem don't have Windows Handle and thus unrecognizable by QTP. I haven't found any detailed documentation on those objects family (like class reference to find out names of methods).

So I was wondering if someone could share experience automating GP and what tools / approach were used.

Thanks.

Answer 1

If QTP doesn't recognise some controls you can extend the set of controls it supports by using .NET Extensibility. This allows you to add new functionality which is relevant for these controls but is not supported out of the box by QTP. Note that some .NET programming is required.

The documentation for .NET Extensibility is available at Start > Programs > QuickTest Professional > Extensibility > Documentation > .NET Add-in Windows Forms Extensibility Help

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Fact of the day: The SWF in .NET objects' names in QTP stands for System Windows Forms.

Answer 2

With regards to the objects that were partially successful, the ones you noted were recognized as SwfObject - if these logically map to a standard class, you can configure QTP to treat it as a standard class. For example, if you have an SwfObject that behaves like a button, you can configure QTP to record and replay as if it is a standard button.

[removed suggested keystroke+clipbaord work-around as it is inappropriate for this situation given further information that there are multiple Dexterity dialogs, each with many objects]

Answer 3

It took a while for me to conduct a research, and then practically prove the concept. I started series of posts about Great Plains automation success story where I put all the details and steps of my investigation along with sample code.

http://automation-beyond.com/2009/08/24/great-plains-automation/

http://automation-beyond.com/2009/08/26/dynamics-great-plains-gui/

http://automation-beyond.com/2009/09/01/gp-automation-utilizing-com/

(to be continued)

Here's the summary.

1. Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains has its own completely independent GUI/Event system (Dexterity) that makes it cross-platform product. The same thing makes it almost completely "black box" not accessible from outside.

2. Platform-specific engine supports COM Automation and various integration models for Windows platform. All these are gathered under Continuum Integration Library name.

3. What is especially useful for Test Automation needs, Continuum provides high-level methods to simulate user inputs for the GUI thus acting the same way as Test Automation Tool does.

4. Wherever Continuum doesn't cover Test Automation needs, direct calls of sanScript (Dexterity's internal scripting language) could be executed in real-time.

5. With all the above, I created custom "Dexterity GUI" component for Quick Test Professional enabling functional test automation of Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains application. Of course, without any use of keyboard/mouse hard-coded workarounds.

Thank you.

Answer 4

You can download the .NET Add-In from hp. link text