OpenText Functional Testing Reviews

We use this solution for database and desktop application testing. We are customers of Micro Focus and I'm a senior software engineer. 

The stop automation is a great feature that is not generally supported by other solutions. 

I'd like to see reporting included in the solution, particularly test case-related reports.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The solution is 70-80%  stable. Stability really depends on the servers or the license which we have installed. If the license doesn't reach the server, there's less stability.

The solution is scalable. 

The setup process was somewhere in between straightforward and complex. The vendor carried out the implementation for us; it would have been helpful to have better documentation. The solution doesn't require maintenance but when the version changes and you have to reinstall there might be some work involved. We're not using the solution on a daily basis, just when we need it.

This is a great solution and I rate it eight out of 10. 

We use this solution to develop the framework for test automation. 

The solution is deployed on-premise.

There are about one hundred people using this solution in my organization. My company is offering services for automation. I have a team of 17 people who are constantly using the solution, and we're delivering the solution to my customers. We are a reseller and partner.

It's easy to use for beginners and non-technical people.

The scripting language could be improved. They're currently using Visual Basic, but I think that people need something more advanced, like Python or Java.

I have been using this solution since 2003.

It's stable.

It's scalable on the enterprise level. I have already scaled a project with UFT One at enterprise level. I'm using it because it is very scalable compared to open-source tools and many other tools on the market.

I have worked with the tool for a long time, so I haven't needed technical support often. But they were very helpful when I needed them.

It's extremely easy to set up.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10. 

The most important recommendation is to get trained before using this product. There isn't a lot of advanced information on the internet for free, so get trained first and then use the product at maximum capacity.

We use UFT One for functional testing of business process automation. It includes all the modules, and there are different kinds of modules.  

The inside object repository is nice. We can use that and learn it through the ALM connection. That's a good feature. The reporting and smart identification features are also excellent. 

The UA objects are sometimes hard to recognize, so the coverage should be increased. Open-source alternatives have a broad scope. Also, it's sometimes difficult to make connections between two of the components in the UFT mobile center. It should be easier to set up the wireless solution because we have to set both. We directly integrate Selenium and APM, so we should try to cover all the features they have in APM and Selenium with the UFT mobile.

We have been using UFT One for six years.

UFT One is good performance-wise. It's stable and reliable.

UFT One is easy to scale, and there's no problem. Right now, we have fewer projects, so we're using it less. 

The deployment is simple overall, takes less than 30 minutes, and I can handle it on my own. However, there's one thing. We have a UFT developer add-in built into UFT One. It takes more time to install if you aren't an expert. I think that needs to be communicated. This add-in isn't required, and it can slow down your system. That needs to be communicated, so only the useful add-ins need to be covered. Sometimes if there is an issue, and we need a deeper dive with the logs, we might need to contact support.

UFT One has some competition from open-source solutions, so the license cost needs to be reasonable, and the demo periods need to be longer. Earlier, the demo period was 90 days, but it has been reduced to 60. 

If we want to cover the market, we need to consider free users, and the demo should be extended for some customers, so they can try the solution and get used to it. Then we can ask them to purchase a license for use.

I rate Micro Focus UFT One nine out of 10. I stop short of a perfect 10 because it has room for improvement with the installation and some add-ins. UFT One has good coverage of different environments and any Windows application or web application. It's like a record-and-play kind of thing. It has many features for that. 

I am a consultant in my organization and one of the tasks that I perform is to assist other users with technical issues. Specifically, with UFT One, I am currently evaluating the AI features. I want to experiment with them and find out how it all works so that we can take that information to our customers.

The fact that UFT One covers multiple technologies helps in terms of end-to-end scenarios. When we have process flows, workflows, or scenarios that span multiple technologies, we don't have to branch out and use multiple tools. This is very helpful.

The platform supports both API and GUI usage, although we have only used it for GUI.

The continuous testing across the software lifecycle is good. When we have done continuous testing, we connect to remote machines and execute the tool. The only problem that we encountered was that when the system is not visible, or not logged in, then there were some issues. However, it has been several months since we tried this.

We have not really put the AI capabilities into practice yet because it is currently only applicable for web-based applications. Our customers have pre-existing tools that already perform this work.

In general, UFT has helped to reduce our test execution time. In particular, with our non-web ecosystem, the execution time has been reduced considerably.

At this point, UFT has not helped us to decrease defects because we are not creating new test cases. Rather, we are automating test cases with it. It might be the case for regression testing, as regression defects are much higher. 

We also use UFT One for SAP test scenarios.

I find UFT One to be very good for thick clients, which are non-browser applications. For browser applications, we have a good number of non-commercial alternatives. However, for thick clients, whether they are Java, Mainframe, SAP, or .NET, this solution works pretty well.

The introduction of artificial intelligence in UFT is a step in the right direction.

The UFT automated manual process has helped to increase our test coverage. Not every one of the tools is applicable but there are some provisions in the latest version that can increase the testing coverage.

We perform some of our tests in virtual machines and UFT gives us control over the machine configuration, such as allocating specific resources. That said, we have our virtual machines configured by another team before they are provided to us, so we don't have UFT control them.

The AI functionality has a lot of room for improvement, as it has just started. For example, when a particular object is found, you have to scroll down, rather than have it done automatically.

The artificial intelligence functionality is applicable only on the web, and it should be expanded to cover non-web applications as well.

I have been using Micro Focus UFT One for between six months and one year. More generally, I have used UFT for approximately 12 years.

The stability is pretty good with respect to the traditional functionality, which has been existing for years. Some of the new features might not be as stable. In particular, there is a little bit of instability with the AI features that I have observed. I think that this is acceptable given that it is new.

This product is scalable in some regards and not others. 

As for extending the execution of tests to other machines, you have to install UFT on every machine and get it started, which may not be very scalable. However, it is scalable in terms of generally extending coverage to other applications. Essentially, once you start automating an application, you can continue to build on that as new requirements or scenarios come in.

I have not personally dealt with customer support, although when I was helping one of our customer teams, there was a problem that I could not resolve and I asked them to raise a ticket. Unfortunately, the issue was not resolved. I was told that the answer from the Micro Focus support team was not helpful.

Five or six years ago, I did deal with UFT support, but it was not for the UFT One product.

I have interacted with the Micro Focus design team, giving my input as to how AI is important. I was told that it's going to be available in upcoming releases.

I have used other tools including Tricentis Tosca, and I find that one, in particular, to be better for testing web-based applications. There are other tools including TestComplete, but I would recommend UFT One for non-web applications.

Tricentis Tosca is nice because it is a scriptless tool, you don't need to know scripting in order to get it to work. It is more UI-based and a new person can usually do well with it, and there is not much of a learning curve. This is in contrast to UFT One, where you need to know the scripting language in order to automate tests.

I assist our clients in setting up their operations, such as helping to identify objects or setting up the scripting. However, I do not help with the actual deployment.

In the past, UFT One did not support integration with third-party applications such as Jenkins and Bamboo. However, there are now some plugins that are available.

My advice for others who are considering this product is that they are looking to automate non-web applications, then it is a good choice. For web-based applications, I would recommend another tool, such as Tricentis Tosca.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are working with a desktop-based application and we use the solution to automate testing of the application.

UFT One has helped us to reduce testing timelines. Earlier, during our manual testing days, it would take 15 days to certify a release, but with UFT One and automation, we are able to achieve that within five days. That's how important it is. It also improves the quality of our testing.

We have also seen an improvement in test coverage, going from 80 percent to over 90 percent.

In addition, it helps in identifying defects earlier. With manual testing, that 15-day timeline meant there were times when we would find defects on the 11th or 12th day of the cycle, but with automation we are able to run the complete suite within a day and we are able to find the failures. It helps us to provide early feedback.

There are a few limitations when it comes to automating desktop-based application testing. You need a medium to run the test cases. We used to run it as a test suite. OpenText provides that in terms of a test management tool as ALM, but when we think of integrating with a distributed version control system, like Jenkins, there isn't much integration available. That means we need to make use of external solutions to make it work. We have other apps which help us to integrate all the tests into a dashboard. So one area for improvement would be to allow us to run that test suite.

We would also like to see improvement when it comes to generating reports.

OpenText UFT One is the latest edition, but I have been using UFT for four years.

UFT One provides pretty good stability.

Scalability isn't really applicable to us because we have 10 virtual machines and UFT is installed in all of them. Jenkins is what takes care of the scalability, based on the workload. It allocates the jobs to any number of servers that are available.

I don't know how many people are using UFT One in our company, but on our team we have 15 people working with it. They are testers and automation engineers.

Plans to increase usage depend on the new initiatives that are coming up. For about a year and a half we have been using UFT on 15 virtual machines, to its full potential. There are plans to increase its usage, because there are new projects coming up and we intend to deploy UFT on them.

If there are issues, when we reach out to the support team, they are able to assist us. It may be something like we were running an older version and there was a new deployment that created this kind of issue. But the support team is always able to assist us. I would rate their technical support at nine out of 10 or even a 10.

We didn't have a previous solution. We were looking for a solution where, once the elements of the object repository are created they stay there. Also, when there are changes to the application, how quickly would it be able to transition as a result? We were mainly looking for object identification and consistency of the tool.

There aren't many tools on the market for automating desktop application testing, but one of them is OpenText UFT. We tried UFT and it seemed to be suitable, so we started using it for automation testing. It suited our requirements for desktop application testing.

We tried TestComplete, but I was not part of the team when the decision was made to go with UFT One.

Everyone has their own requirements, but based on my experience with UFT, I have found it to be very consistent. If anyone is looking to automate web-based or mobile-based applications, UFT is very good. My advice would be to try it and explore UFT a lot.

Using it, we have learned how to design our framework and how to adapt it to improve our test suite. We have learned how to write effective test cases and how to improve the usability of the functions that we add.

AI is kind of exciting but, at the same time, it's not available for desktop-based applications yet. So we are waiting to make use of AI. In general, AI helps to reduce testing time. It increases the amount of reusability and it also makes the tester's life easier by asking them to identify the objects and differentiate them. In addition, it helps to identify any elements that could be missed by the human eye. Those are the features that we think will be helpful for us, once they are available for desktop application testing.

We use this product for end-to-end testing, from order to cash.

The interface is fine and there is nothing else to add in terms of enhancement.

It works well for testing multiple end-to-end scenarios.

We have had some issues with stability, where it crashes sometimes.

In the next release, I would like to be able to see multiple scripts at the same time.

We have been using Micro Focus UFT One for several years, since before it was purchase and renamed from QTP.

We have had some issues with stability so I would rate it a solid five out of ten in that regard. Middle of the road.

The scalability is okay.

We have not yet contacted technical support, although there are areas where we need to. Our contract is set up such that we would not be contacting Micro Focus directly.

The initial setup was straightforward. It did not take long to deploy because there are only two departments using it right now. It is not company-wide.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to be aware that it lends itself to having coding knowledge. I would say that you have to be comfortable with coding to use it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this product for our functional and automatic testing. I'm a senior test manager and we are customers of Micro Focus.

It's a fine solution with good out-of-the-box protocols. Right now we're moving to a new way of working so we're going to need to move away from this product. 

Improvement could be made in the cost of the solution and the support time involved in solving issues. This is something that is quite tricky. I try to get the support on a ticket, but it takes time for it to be managed. This part is always quite tedious and that's in addition to the renewal process for licensing. It's not managed very well by Micro Focus. We're looking into more open source products. 

I'd like to see a change in the programming language so that the product would support modern programming languages. It would improve agility which I believe the product needs. 

I've been using the solution for four years. 

Technical support could be improved. 

The implementation was carried out by the vendor but the rest was done either in-house or using third party providers. We carry out the maintenance using our admins. We're using the product intensively right now and we have around 80 or 90 users using it every day. 

The license model is quite complex. We have the normal basic license plus some support costs and other things so it depends on a lot of factors.

I'm not sure this solution is the future with many companies now moving to agility-focused solutions. I have used these products for the past 20 years and they were good and fast but now there are other competitors who are coming out with better solutions. 

I would rate this solution a six out of 10. 

QTP is a functional and regression automation tool originally developed and marketed by Mercury Interactive which HP acquired in 2006. In 2012, HP released UFT (Unified Functional Testing) version 11.5, which combined QuickTest Professional and HP Service Test into a single software package along with newly designed IDE (Integrated Development Environment).

Before UFT, QTP and Service Test were two separate downloads. So essentially, UFT has bundled QTP and Service Test into one package along with several other add-ins. It is also important to note that on February 28, 2015 End of Support Life for QTP 11 was reached which meant that a company had to upgrade to UFT to get technical support and access to patches, documentation, etc.

For clarity, I have pasted screenshots of QTP (Figure 1) and UFT (Figure 2) below.

Figure 1 – QTP 11.xx

Figure 2 – UFT 12.xx

Note, UFT came out with a feature called InsightObject that has the ability to identify any object by taking an image of the object. Furthermore, by using the GetVisibleText the user has the ability to get the text off of the InsightObject even though it is essentially an image.

The InsightObject feature is so helpful that I thought it was worthy to dedicate a special section with screenshots along with an explanation of how the InsightObject feature works as shown below.

InsightObject Select learn mode feature shown above

After selecting the object that you want to add to the Object Repository, notice how the perimeter surrounds it.

How the InsightObject appears after being added to the Object Repository.

UFT is on top of the AUT (Application Under Test). Notice the small image in the code of UFT that represents lower left image with text "70 microns."

The actual VBScript Code is pasted below. Note how after the code was executed the text "70 microns" was extracted from image as shown from Print Log.

Browser("Space Images | Circumstellar").InsightObject("InsightObject70_microns").Hover
strGetVisibleText = trim(Browser("Space Images | Circumstellar").InsightObject("InsightObject70_microns").GetVisibleText())

print "strGetVisibleText = " & strGetVisibleText

Print Log

strGetVisibleText = 70 microns

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Review for UFT 14.00 added here.

In January 2017, HPE released UFT 14.00. The previous version was UFT 12.54, and HPE omitted using number 13 as a version. The most probable reason for not using version 13 is that the number 13 is still perceived by some as a superstitious number.

New Name Changes in UFT 14.00

The new UFT brand includes UFT Ultimate, UFT Enterprise, and UFT Pro (formerly LeanFT). The following are the new License names and the associated products included with them.

• UFT Ultimate – includes UFT, UFT Pro (i.e. LeanFT), Sprinter, BPT (Business Process Testing), and Mobile Center (functional testing only).
• UFT Enterprise – includes UFT, UFT Pro (i.e. LeanFT), and Sprinter.
• UFT Pro (i.e. LeanFT) – includes UFT Pro only.

Test Combinations Generator

When developing automated test scripts, getting data can be time consuming because almost every company uses data indigenous to its propriety systems. Furthermore, to develop an effective automated script, you need data for both positive test cases, and just as importantly, data that will throw an exception or error (i.e. negative path) so you can build exception handling into your script to prevent it from stopping unexpectedly. The Test Combinations Generator makes this task significantly easier by utilizing a Regular Expression to generate the type of data you want including the specified format. For example, you can now quickly generate dates, URLs, passwords, confirmation numbers, shipping numbers, etc., that would be time consuming to do manually. The data created for a positive test case is labeled “HAPPY PATH” and the data for a negative test case is labeled “ERROR PATH.” Also, this feature can be used to help the whole QA team because you can generate data for the manual testers as well which helps free-up their time that they otherwise would be using to get data. My key take-away of the Test Combinations Generator is that it lowers Opportunity Costs for the whole QA team. By this I mean that the time and cost previously used to generate data is now minimized, so the QA team now has more time to focus on testing versus having to generate data.

Significant Changes

In my opinion UFT Pro is the tool that has the most significant enhancements. With the rising popularity of Selenium, HPE did a good job of making changes and came out with UFT Pro for Selenium. This tool includes a Java Library that extends the WebDriver API and also has additional locators and utilities. UFT Pro also has an Object Identification Center that helps speed up the time to develop a test.

Another significant change is that UFT Pro (i.e. LeanFT) is now supported on a Mac OS and Linux, in addition to Windows. Furthermore, it supports the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome, which was expected.

New changes for UFT 14.03

Screenshot of UFT 14.03 IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

New Object Spy functionality allows UFT's Object Spy to compare two objects.

Suppose we want to compare properties of "MARS" and "EARTH."

Now we can use the Spy Comparison Tool to get properties of both objects and compare at the same time as shown below.

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On September 1, 2017 the HPE testing tools officially became Micro Focus. It is too early to see how the transition to Micro Focus will change things. I am keeping an optimistic view that Micro Focus will continue to invest in R&D and place a priority on customer support. I believe a lot of long-time customers would like to see things run like they were back in the Mercury Interactive days, which was one of the most innovative software companies of its time. If Micro Focus develops the right strategy, they could become the dominant player in the software testing market.

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Author’s comments added 6/07/2016: Here are some interesting actual business cases at companies I worked at where automation (i.e. QTP/UFT) has been used to add productivity other than in a QA capacity.

1)   QTP/UFT can be used to send large volumes of emails to intended customers along with attachments. At a previous company we actually used QTP to automate this process that took an Excel input file with a field for Customer Name, email address, the text verbiage for the body of the email, and an indicator for which specific documents to attach and send using Outlook. We placed the documents in specific directories to be uploaded depending on the indicator in the input file. This automated process was very efficient and time-saving by sending out a large volume of emails with respective attachments with minimal problems. Eventhough at the time QTP was being used, UFT has the same functionality to execute the same process.

2)   At a previous health care company where I worked, when one of the clinical legacy systems was being decommissioned in place of a newer system, we were able to use an automated script to take the data from the legacy system and enter it into the respective fields of the newer system through the GUI (Graphical User Interface). This entailed downloading the data from the legacy system and importing the data into 12 separate Excel input files and running on multiple computers. This is an example of an unconventional but cost effective use of a QA automation tool.

3)   At a mortgage company that I worked at where previously a person or persons would have had to manually enter data into several fields while navigating through several screens, we were very successful in fully automating this process including logic and the specific values to enter into specific fields based on the conditions. For example, if one pre-populated field had a certain code, the script would use logic to programmatically enter the corresponding data into other fields. This saved the company time and resources by not having to hire people to enter the data manually. This one automated process saved the department sixty hours per week or 3,000 man hours per year.

Author’s comments added 12/26/2016: I originally wrote this product review for UFT 12.02. I updated this product review for UFT 12.54 to make the product review current along with the updated versions of technologies UFT 12.54 is compatible with.

Author's comments: This review has been updated to include UFT 14.03

If your concerns go beyond automating tests to providing evidence that specific tests were executed, what the test pass/fail status was, the user who executed it, the date/time of execution, UFT is top notch at providing test results because it has built in reporting features as well as allowing for customized output files showing exactly where a test step failed along with the timestamp. This is especially important for providing evidence that healthcare, insurance, defense, financial services, and mortgage companies might need, especially to furnish proof to auditors. UFT has at least one distinct advantage over Open Source tools. That is since UFT is an Enterprise tool, you do not have to download anything from the Internet which is good for Security reasons. Most Open Source tools that I am aware of require some form of download from the Internet which results in being less secure.

UFT has improved our organization because when we have regularly occurring releases of an application, we can have any QA team member execute a set of tests (i.e. regression suite) stored in ALM/Quality Center, let the tests run unattended and then examine the results after test completion. We are also able to determine if any of the Web page links are broken by using an instance of MSXML2.XmlHttp. We have a script that does this by retrieving all the links on a page and then reporting the Status for each link. For example, if the Status returned is 404 we know that the link is broken.

With certainty, the best feature of UFT is its compatibility with so many products, tools and technologies. It is a challenge currently to find a single tool on the market besides UFT that will successfully work for so many projects and environments. For example, UFT supports GUI testing of Oracle, PeopleSoft, PowerBuilder, SAP (v7.20), Siebel, Stingray, Terminal Emulator, Putty, and Windows Objects (particularly Dialog Boxes). Furthermore, UFT has the built-in functionality to import Excel input files.

For Web browsers, UFT 12.54 supports IE9, IE10, IE11, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome (versions 31.0 to 54.9), Firefox (versions 27.0 to 49.0). Besides GUI testing, UFT supports database testing and API testing (Docker, WSDL, and SOAP).

For the first time ever, HP started to expand the testing capabilities of UFT (QTP) beyond Windows beginning with UFT 12.00. A UFT user can now run tests on Web applications on a Safari browser that is running on a remote Mac computer.

Sometimes it appears that UFT takes a while to open and sometimes will run slower than expected. Also, UFT uses a lot of memory. On this note, if you are running UFT on a virtual server I would add more RAM memory than the minimum requirements especially when using multiple add-ins. HP is pretty good about coming out with new patches to fix known issues and it pays for the user to check for new patches and updates on a regular basis.

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Author's Comments 9/29/2022: This review is an older review and I have since written a newer product review on 9/28/2022 about UFT One 15.0.1 that reflects the newer features of UFT and should be considered a replacement for this review.

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In my 10 plus years of hands-on experience using QTP (QuickTest Professional) and UFT (Unified Functional Testing), I have observed that there has been a lot of confusion among the testing community on what the difference is between the two tools. Therefore, I thought it would be beneficial to clarify what distinguishes UFT from QTP because it is important for the reader to know.

When considering UFT for your organization, I would first evaluate how large your QA department is and if you will have a business need to automate your functional and regression tests. HPE recently extended the demo license period from 30 days to 60 days which was a very wise and popular decision to give potential customers more time to install it and try it for free. Even if your company has a salesperson come in and demo UFT, I would highly encourage at least one of your developers or automation engineers to download and install it to explore for themselves the functionality and features included during the demo trial period. If your IT Organization can afford it, I would encourage the company to buy both ALM/Quality Center and UFT. The reason being that UFT is very compatible with ALM/Quality Center in several ways. First, the user is able to store the test results in ALM/Quality Center. Second, ALM/QC has a built in scheduler that can launch a suite of regression tests initiated by the user scheduling a particular date/time to run.

If your company is going to invest in UFT, I would encourage the company to do their due diligence in making sure that they hire an Automation Engineer well experienced with the HP tools. This person must be very good at writing VBScript and knowing all of the advanced tips and tricks in getting UFT scripts developed so they will run without stopping unexpectedly. The QA Automation Engineer must be able to write functions from scratch and know the difference between passing a parameter by Value and by Reference.

I would also encourage the company to use a Citrix Server for UFT to be installed on. The reason for this is that it is much easier to maintain the Citrix environment with respect to patches, Browser versions, etc., versus every user having to make sure their laptop or PC is up to date with patches. Also, Citrix can have multiple sessions and be accessed remotely.