• Significance of the 'Status' of a test script 
  
• Case A - You need test automation that can be used against two versions of your AUT
  
• Case B - Use the 'status' of an entity to communicate the level of its completeness with peers  
  
• The 'Life Cycle' of automation entities and their versions 
  
• Viewing the 'status' of a test script on the edit/view test script screen
  
• Viewing the 'status' of a test script on the test scripts' home screen
• Searching for (finding) a test script based on its 'Status'
  

Significance of the 'Status' of a test script:

Every automation entity type (test scripts, scenarios, run definitions, data definitions data files) in Worksoft SaaS has a 'status' the represents the version or the state of the entity. 

At a high level, every entity has the following states:

• Work In Progress (aka WIP)
• Active
• Inactive (aka Archived)

The main purpose of the 'status' in Worksoft SaaS is to allow you to have up to two 'versions' of the automation entities.  You will better understand the benefits of this versioning if you read through a couple of business cases that you may experience in real life. 

Case A - You need test automation that can be used against two versions of your AUT:  

Let's assume that you want to use your staging (or QA) environment to develop and certify the automated tests. within the earlier part of your development sprints and then you want to formally execute those automated tests against the AUT deployed in your staging during the later part of your sprint to certify your AUT functionally or from a cross-browser testing point of you. Lets now assume that you also want to run a subset of the same tests or may be the entire tests against the AUT as soon as you deploy the AUT version to your production environment (or maybe periodically thereafter in prod). Now your development team starts enhancing your AUT as part of the next development sprint and your automated tests may need changes to match the modified/enhanced behavior of the AUT in the staging environment. If you start modifying the automated test scripts within your Worksoft SaaS account, your automated tests will only successfully run against the version of your AUT in your staging environment and may not run against the previous version of your AUT that is in your production environment.

If you want to maintain two separate versions of your automated tests (combination/collection of test scripts, scenarios, data definitions, data files, etc) so that you gain the ability to use automation to test and certify the AUT versions in your staging as well as in your production environment, the 'status' of the entities becomes essential and critical for you to tap into.

You can have your 'Active' version of the automation entities (scripts, scenarios, run definitions, data definitions, data files, etc) be in sync with the functionality within the AUT version in your production environment and the 'WIP' (Work In Progress) version of the automated tests that are in sync with the state of your AUT in your staging environment. Then you can realize even more value out of test automation against your AUT in both environments.

Case B - Use the 'status' of an entity to communicate the level of its completeness with peers:  

Some of our customers don't have a need to run automated tests simultaneously against more than one version of the AUT. However, they still use the versioning concept in Worksoft SaaS for entities to make sure that the stake holders in the project know from the status of the entity whether the automation entity is ready for use by others (if the status is made 'Active') or if there is still some work pending on it (if the status was still 'WIP').

The 'Life Cycle' of automation entities and their versions:  

You may be thinking 'How can I change the status of my automation entity'?. The answer is that Worksoft SaaS does not allow you to explicitly change the status of an automation entity (test script, scenario, run definition, data definition, data file) on its own. Instead, the status is automatically changed based on the decisions you make about activating, inactivating or editing an active entity.

And this life cycle of WIP->Active->WIP of Active->Active (with previous 'Active' inactivated) repeats itself as you enhance your automated tests to keep them in sync with your even evolving AUT.  

WIP - the initial state:

When you create a new version of an entity (test script, scenario, run definition, data definition, data file), its state is Work In Progress (or 'WIP for short).  There can only be one 'WIP' version of a test script at a time.                                                   

Activating a WIP changes the entity's status to 'Active':

When you activate an entity (test script, scenario, run definition, data definition, data file) in 'WIP' status, the status of that entity automatically changes for that entity to 'Active'.   

For more details on 'activating' a WIP, click here.

Editing an 'Active' version creates a second version of the entity with status of 'WIP of an Active':

When you start editing an 'Active' version of an entity (test script, scenario, run definition, data definition, data file), Worksoft SaaS keeps the 'Active' version intact and creates a copy of it with a status of 'WIP'. But that WIP is shown on the Worksoft SaaS app as 'WIP of an Active' to help you realize that there is, in fact, an 'Active' version of that entity. But this 'WIP of an Active' essentially works like a 'WIP' in that you can activate it.    

For more details on 'editing' an 'Active version of an automation entity, click here.

Activating the 'WIP of an Active' version makes the previous 'Active' to 'Inactive':

When you activate an entity (test script, scenario, run definition, data definition, data file) in 'WIP of an Active' status, the status of that entity automatically changes for that entity to 'Active' and the status of the previous 'Active' version automatically changes to 'Inactive' (also known as 'Archived').

 

For more details on 'activating' the WIP of an Active version of an automation entity, click here. 

Viewing the 'status' of a test script on the edit/view test script screen:  

You can view the status' of a test script on the test scripts' edit or view screen right before the controls that appear on the top right-hand side of the test script name. 

Viewing the 'status' of a test script on the test scripts' home screen:  

You can view the status' of a test script on the test scripts' home screen, within the 'My Favorites' view and the 'Script Library' view.

Bindu, please insert a screenshot (does not have to be an animated gif) that shows scripts from the Amazon project, and may be circle the status for a few records or include a pointer to it.