Zeenyx AscentialTest Reviews

I’m constantly running into people struggling with automating their testing. Thanks to AscentialTest those days are long behind me. In 2015, after my company went through several failed attempts at automating one of the key applications at my company, my boss and I decided I would give it a try. We were somewhat invested in Selenium and I had past experience with QTP, but I hadn’t done any coding since 2003 and really didn’t want to script.

We have a major upgrade of the two key applications I automated. This will be the first time we have an automated regression to run.

It's easy to create tests because you just drag and drop objects instead of writing code.

It would be great if AscentialTest supported the license server being in the cloud.

Customer Service:

Excellent.

Technical Support:

Excellent!

My company had an outside vendor, as well as one of our employees, try to complete an automated solution using Selenium. A framework was created but the automation was never completed.

In 2015, after my company went through several failed attempts at automating one of the key applications at my company, my boss and I decided I would give it a try. We were somewhat invested in Selenium and I had past experience with QTP, but I hadn't done any coding since 2003 and really didn't want to script.

I decided to do a formal tool evaluation. I evaluated tools, services, and scripting languages. See the list below. Note AscentialTest is not on the list. We selected SmartBear's TestComplete.

Appvance

AutoMate

Fluent Lenium

HP Tools (QTP)

IBM Tools (Rational)

qTest eXplorer *** Not an automation tool. Captures manual test steps.

Pyramid Consulting *** Not an automation tool. Service vendor.

Ranorex

Reslet

Selenium

SmartScript

TestComplete

TestingAnywhere

TestQuest

ZAPTEST

TestComplete was very affordable and it was very easy to capture user workflows with TestComplete. But once I tried to capture and playback some of the unique aspects of our applications, was when I ran into problems. I spent 6 months working with technical support to resolve each hurdle. In the end, they agreed there were too many manual interventions (a.k.a. hacks). They said they had never seen anything like it.

Fast forward to the 2016 QUEST Conference and Expo. I stopped by the Zeenyx booth and met with Brian Le Suer. He gave me an overview and demo of AscentialTest. I was really impressed and excited about the tool and sorry I didn't know about the tool the year before. I started working with a trial version right after the conference.

It's been really easy to automate the same applications TestComplete struggled with. I have been able to automate two of our key applications in just a few months. I haven't even taken their training yet.

Customer Support has been amazing. I prefer to work with Brian who happens to be the CEO of the company. I didn’t realize that right away. When do you have access like that?

My boss is also happy with AscentialTest. I presented our automation using AscentialTest at the netFORUM Users Group Quarterly Meeting in 2017.

The initial setup was very easy and straightforward. I only had questions when switching from the trial to the licensed version.

• Excellent Support for PowerBuilder Applications.
• Excellent Test Result Tracking and Test Result Reporting.
• Re-usability of steps user defined parts.
• Flexible Object recognition and snapshot integration for step creation.
• Excel integration was an important factor for my projects.

In conjunction with our team we have integrated Automated Regression in to our core Reinsurance Application to monitor expected results against nightly production and test environment results. As recently as this month the regression scripts identified some key issues in our key quarterly reporting. Invaluable. To give some idea of the complexity of our applications, our core Reinsurance application was developed as an in-house product but has been sold to five other major companies.

The ability to copy internal tables would be nice.

2 years.

No issues.

No issues.

I am a 30+ year IT professional and the level of support I have gotten has been unparalleled. A special thanks to Brian Le Suer who has hand held myself and my team through the whole regression scripting process. We were all new to automated regression and Brian made the whole process easy and comfortable. It would not have gotten done without his support. A number of the functions we needed to complete were new approaches for Zeenyx Ascential and they always came back with an answer and solutions.

Excellent. All issues have always gotten resolved and the response time from all Ascential teams has been seamless.

No.

No - we were hand held.

In-house with Ascential Support.

Yes. We had looked a a HP solution but were not comfortable with the support they would seem to offer for PowerBuilder.

I have a lot more regression projects in the pipeline. With Ascential support at the level I currently receive I am very confident they will all be successful.

Zeenyx AscentialTest has a great number of features but the most valuable to me are the ease with which capturing snapshots to create my app object library is one of my favorites. Many of our larger groups use the built-in Subversion feature that allows us to check files in/out seamlessly. We execute our tests from different virtual machines so we use the TestSet feature that sends all results to a MySQL database (we are an Oracle shop and do not have licenses for Microsoft SQL). Finally, running tests to our virtual machines using the Host/Target feature significantly reduces our test execution time.

Update Dec. 2015:

The latest version of Zeenyx AscentialTest (7.8) has incorporated many GUI changes that makes the product much more user-friendly.

Using the Host/Target feature has allowed our various teams to significantly reduce execution time by sending our tests to virtual machines.

Zeenyx has been working on a feature for AscentialTest that will allow our non-automation people (business users, managers, etc.) access to a portal. This portal can be used by non-licensed users by hitting a URL to see the execution status for the testing effort. Currently, to access the testing reports, you must have a licensed install of AscentialTest and be familiar with the tool to generate reports.

3.5 years

AscentialTest is a local install license. Since we use a great deal of virtual test machines, deploying the install to our machines can be time-consuming. You can install AscentialTest as a full install or as a runtime but the install is easy to execute.

Being an automation tool, it seems as though Zeenyx can be very processor intensive while it executes tests. I think that many of the issues we have are the fault of our own network setup but occasionally, our tests run slow. However, AscentialTest rarely has issues.

We currently have groups with over 15 testers on the automation team that share a Zeenyx project. The product does have limitations on how certain project files are locked (checked-out). You may have to architect your project to allow for multiple files so that different users can checkout files. This is more of a limitation for version-control software.

I don't typically deal with any customer service issues related to Zeenyx AscentialTest. Any dealing I have with Zeenyx is done through their technical support group and they are more than happy to forward my question to the correct contact.

I have been working with different vendors in my role, I can say without hesitation that the Zeenyx Support Staff are the best group I've worked with. Typically, they have an answer to our question with 24 hours and most likely, the answer is within a couple hours. They go above and beyond with their support level.

Before Zeenyx AscentialTest, our company was using an old version of SilkTest (that was out of maintenance). The main reason for the switch was that we wanted to have support but were unwilling to continue the maintenance with the previous software.

Since we were moving from a different software tool (SilkTest), the initial setup was easier since Zeenyx supports some SilkTests scripts (many functions were named differently). We also wanted to update our scripts (since they were old) immediately after converting to AscentialTest.

We implemented Zeenyx AscentialTest in-house and did not use a vendor team. This question does not apply to our company but I have to type 120 characters in this field so I am continuing to type words.

I do not have insight into ROI. I can tell you that since we distribute our tests using the Host/Target model we saved a great deal of execution time after we switched from SilkTest. Since our execution time decreased substantially,

Our company was an early adopter of AscentialTest. We have an Enterprise license so can install the software on as many machines as we want. If you are planning on using the Host/Target feature, I would recommend buying more Runtime licenses as they are a little cheaper.

The decision to move to Zeenyx AscentialTest was done prior to my arriving at this company. I have been told there was no other evaluation done.

I have been working with Zeenyx AscentialTest for almost 4 years and have a very good relationship with them. I will say that they are genuinely interested in improving their product. We have given them multiple ideas of new features and they have implemented several.

• Zeenyx AscentialTest provides excellent support for PowerBuilder applications.
• Object recognition is very powerful and flexible.
• Application Objects are created by interacting with snapshots in a highly visual drag and drop environment.
• It is easy and quick to manage and maintain tests.

Zeenyx AscentialTest has been an essential part of our product testing

Since 2011

No

No

No

Excellent

Zeenyx is very responsive and easy to work with

Excellent

SilkTest

It stopped supporting PowerBuilder applications

Initial setup was straightforward and smooth

In-house

Yes

AscentialTest was the best among serval testing tools supporting PowerBuilder applications

I strongly recommend Zeenyx AscentialTest

Reusability of the steps was something that we (our team members) found the most valuable. That helped in saving a lot of time we spend on developing our tests.

Zeenyx team did provide us with a very reliable support throughout the automation of Siebel as we were unable to find a good automation solution for an older version of Siebel app.

It would be better if the support for Web Tables and Siebel Tables are readily available and made more simpler as they are encountered quite often while automating the apps.

2 Years

We did not find any issues whatsoever with the deployment of AT on our Windows XP machines and later in Windows 7 as well. The deployment was indeed an hassle-free experience.

The tool is pretty stable and we never encountered any stability issues with the new version of the application.

With respect to scalability also AT is a reliable option. We had generated a Regression Suite of more than 600 Test Cases and we didnt notice any issues during the execution of the same.

Zeenyx team provides a wonderful customer support for any kind of issues we face and they worked along with us and provided solutions as early as possible too.

Zeenyx has got a quality tech support team who are always there to help you out. Especially, their support to find out a solution for a complicated scroll table issue in Siebel was outstanding.

In fact we couldnt use another solution previously as we were working on an old version of Siebel that was not been supported by many solutions out there in the market.

Initial set-up was pretty straightforward and also their installtion package comes with all the prerequisites and hence we did not face any problem in the set-up phase.

We implemented through the Zeenyx vendor team itself. And I would rate their level of expertise and the support highly.

We had a pretty decent ROI for this venture of investing in AscentialTest. We were able to find out many crucial bugs in our regression tests developed using AscentialTest, which improved the quality of the software decently.

The pricing and license cost is decent considering the features we have got from AscentialTest and the support they provide throughout. We are in fact using the Enterprise version of the solution.

Yes, we did evaluate some other options like Routine Boat, EggPlant etc., but we were unable to get a satisfactory solution. Finally we ended upon AscentialTest which proved very helpful.

The scripting time required is less compared to other solutions. In fact not much scripting is required as most of the actions are readily available on the Actions Panel of the solution.