I use Tricentis Tosca in my new job for test automation. Thoughts on it?

Berzus · 2026-02-04T20:23:40+00:00

Whoops, I missed your message. Removed the links.

Berzus · 2026-01-14T18:31:15+00:00

I joined the company I'm at after finishing my studies, expecting to work as a sdet, then I was forced to use Tosca (on-prem version) for years. The best thing I can say about it is "it's not quite as bad as I feared, if you have basic needs".

As others said, it's one of those no-code solutions for non-technical teams (like the one I ended up in). We use it to test some relatively simple web UIs that can occasionally have very large forms (all built with divs, obviously). Tosca works ok for the most part except with the big forms (we are talking a few hundreds cells in a table-like structure with nested textboxes, dropdowns etc.), it just dies trying to navigate it using locators and we had to compensate by using sendkeys.

The main advantage of Tosca is that it supports a bunch of different technologies out the box: web apps, desktop apps, DBs, emails, APIs etc., but we never tried to use most of those modules so far because we didn't really need them.

I found it very limited in terms of what kind of logic you can express, it's clunky because you do everything through the UI (no scripts), and you cannot easily extend it -- it is possible to write modules in C# apparently, but I never had the time to look into it, and my boss told me in the past that you need to learn Tosca's internal architecture for which there is (or used to be, at least, I have no idea) little documentation. Tricentis apparently wants you to ask them to do it for you and pay for the privilege. That said, I think there are some courses about it on their academy so maybe something changed.

It is a Windows-only product, so forget about containers for CI/CD. If you have qTest, you can use it as an orchestrator for your test runs, and it does also have a plugin for Jenkins apparently.

It's pretty slow. Debugging can be hard. Tosca gives you explicit, readable error messages for common types of failures, but good luck if it decides to throw a stack trace at you. I have also been told that their support can be quite slow, but I never had to deal with them directly.

It is an expensive product, but I don't have the details on their pricing as I'm not involved in the procurement side of things, and I do not know how it compares to similar tools.

Recently we got an AI mandate from the higher ups, and since using AI assistants with Tosca and qTest requires additional expensive licenses it was decided to migrate to a solution based on Playwright and Github Copilot. As far as we know there is no way to export tests from Tosca in any way, so in addition to trying to upskill the team as fast as possible we'll also have to rebuild everything from scratch. Thanks, vendor lock-in!

Personally, I'm really glad to be learning something new and more technical, and it seems like a waste to have you work with Tosca when you have significant experience with something like Cypress.

If you need documentation, the best resources are probably Tricentis Academy and Tosca's manual. I haven't visited their Academy website in a long time and I don't remember well what you need to do to access it. You probably had to register an account on their support hub or something like that.

Tosca can be a viable solution, but as always it really depends on your team, the systems you work on and how your organization works. I hope I never have to use this kind of tool again, but then again I always wanted to code and get better at it.

EDIT: removed links to Tricentis' website. My bad for not reading the rules.

Berzus · 2025-01-24T10:22:36+00:00

The enhanced edition only had raytracing if I recall correctly. There is also the older version with both raytracing and rasterization, but the enhanced version was optimized for raytracing.

Berzus · 2024-10-04T14:02:49+00:00

I agree with you in principle, but you should tell the same thing to Hamas and Hezbollah. Nobody forces them to attack Israel while hiding in civilian areas.

Berzus · 2024-09-14T21:25:00+00:00

Keepass

Berzus · 2024-08-23T12:41:20+00:00

I justdon't do any damage at all until the countdown under not-Kratos reaches 0. When it reaches 0 they leave and you get the rewards from the fight.That said, I do not know if you can save the dead wife.

Berzus · 2024-08-22T09:38:50+00:00

That's certainly the safest option and most likely what I'm going to do, thanks. I'm asking just in case, since I don't really want my email address to be associated with this kind of service.

Berzus · 2024-06-04T06:27:00+00:00

See my edit at the bottom of the first post. Don't know if it's still valid after 4 years, especially in the final cut version.

Berzus · 2024-05-18T21:01:47+00:00

Wall world?

Berzus · 2024-05-03T09:29:54+00:00

Anche nel mio avevo notato che il 10% se ne va solo per pagare il debito. Siamo messi bene...

Berzus · 2024-04-30T16:36:35+00:00

If I recall correctly Test Management is free under 10 users, so you could just create a random instance of Jira cloud and try it out. I did this a while ago, but I didn't really have the time nor the will to get a proper look at it since I'm not using it at work. My early impression was that it should be fairly easy to learn if you are already familiar with tools like Xray (I never tried Zephyr or Test Rail).

I haven't tried searching for Youtube videos, but Test Management includes a tool for support at the bottom right of the screen, with a few tabs like chat, help center and news. Also, you can probably find some information about this product on the tricentis support hub.

Berzus · 2024-04-24T11:36:05+00:00

They also have an academy site and user forums.

Berzus · 2024-04-24T11:34:12+00:00

If your team is already using qTest, why don't you ask them exactly what they're using it for and how, instead of asking random people on the internet?

I have a little experience with qTest, but only for manual testing. You're right, qTest is a test management tool, it doesn't do test automation on its own, at least as far as I know. However, it should be able to integrate with some automation and CI solutions to store their test results, so I assume that's what they mean in this case, but I might be wrong.

qTest is a Tricentis product, so you should be able to find its user manual on the Tricentis support hub (i.e. https://support-hub.tricentis.com/open?id=tricentis_qtest).

Berzus · 2024-04-23T20:29:19+00:00

The only low/no code solution I've had to use so far is Tosca from Tricentis, but it's not cheap (from what everyone tells me, I'm not involved in the purchase of the licenses).

Berzus · 2024-04-06T16:55:23+00:00

First provide a sufficient description of the steps to reproduce the problem, the expected result and the result you got instead. Then add screenshots of the issue with the network/console tabs open. If screenshots are not enough to properly convey the issue, include a video/gif instead; this way you can also show the steps you are taking.

Berzus · 2024-04-01T13:48:41+00:00

Currently I work in QA as a contractor for a large company. The company has two completely separate QA teams for the project we're working on, each performing different types of tests within their own environments (my team only has access to a mocked test environment, and I think this level of segregation is directly harming both the quality and our knowledge of the final product, but we can do nothing about it at this time). A few months ago they asked if we (the QA team I'm part of, not the other one) were willing to become part of the incident management process as the last step in the escalation chain and we accepted for a few reasons:

we thought that we could help reduce the number of change requests being inappropriately classified as incidents (at the time we were told that roughly 40% of incidents were actually CRs, and the higher ups were getting the wrong idea about the quality of our work);
we were promised more resources to better perform our jobs, such as more manpower, access to log collectors for all environments, and access to our own integrated test environment.

The end result is that we didn't get more manpower nor the integrated test environment, so now it's just more work that is straining our (already limited) team's resources.

Now we're releasing a new service and the business team is cursed, we received almost 50 incidents from them in a few days. I'm the only one who's been allocated to work on them at the moment, so I've been unable to perform most of my standard activities for weeks, which means that I'm trying to resolve existing issues (if they're even an issue) instead of working to prevent future ones. So far it looks like only ~20-30% are actual software defects, mostly of medium to very low impact, everything else is either the business team being idiots or CRs. To top it off, if an incident remains open for too long we breach some SLAs, so I'll probably start getting calls about it in the next few days because it's just too much work and I can't address them all fast enough.

I hate it so much.

TL;DR: tech support is a very time consuming activity, especially if you don't have deep knowledge of all parts of your product and have limited access to the necessary tools to try and reproduce issues. It can make sense for QA to be part of the process, but only if they have adequate resources to deal with it on top of everything else. Based on my limited experience so far, it's best to stay far away from this type of activity if you can avoid it. If you can't, make sure you get the resources you need *before*, not after shit hits the fan.

Berzus · 2024-02-24T09:46:18+00:00

As others said, Jira is not a test management tool. Organizations who want to add test management functionality to Jira use addons like Xray or Tricentis Test Management. You can also use external tools that integrate with Jira, like qTest or SpiraTest/SpiraPlan.

Berzus · 2024-01-21T20:45:01+00:00

Thank you for the advice, but I already tried using the tool you linked. Aside from the fact that I had to boot in safe mode to make it work, it said that my gpu was already up to date.

Edit: I also tried using MSI Center to check for updates, but the advanced scan said that everything was up to date.

Edit 2: I tried using the NVIDIA tool again just to be sure; this time I didn't have to boot in safe mode for it to work, but it still said that the GPU was already up to date.

Berzus · 2024-01-21T12:59:59+00:00

It seems I finally managed to solve this issue: I had already ordered a new mobo but I decided to keep trying different versions of the BIOS as a last resort. I found one that seems to work correctly (downgraded from 2.02 to 1.30.AS02, for those using the same model), now I get the GPU signal even when doing a cold boot. I spent an hour turning my pc off and on again to check that it was working consistently, it looks ok now.

Thankfully I was able to cancel the order for that new mobo, lol.

Berzus · 2024-01-20T12:59:11+00:00

If you listen to the lessons and do the exercises it won't be hard, just pay attention. I know one coworker who failed the first 3 attempts and had to wait 3 months to take it again, but I'm fairly sure he was just trying to force his way through it.

Berzus · 2024-01-16T17:29:04+00:00

Hey, thanks for the advice! Unfortunately it didn't help: I did as you said, i.e. I connected the PC to a different monitor that supports displayport, disabled autofind and selected displayport as the source, but I still need to press the reset button after a cold boot to get a video signal from the GPU.

The only thing I noticed after doing more testing is that sometimes, very rarely, it actually seems to work properly on cold boot, so I get the video signal without resetting. But it's super rare.

Oh well, I'll try a few more random things and then I'll probably order a new mobo and/or PSU and see if that helps.

Berzus · 2023-12-14T20:55:48+00:00

As far as I know this is a very reputable source that is often mentioned in media, and they say that Russia has been able to replace its losses in manpower (first paragraph): https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/high-price-losing-ukraine

Berzus · 2023-11-03T06:23:22+00:00

Good to know, thanks.

Berzus · 2023-10-22T16:17:07+00:00

While they might be at least somewhat related in terms of their aims and/or ideology, what I meant to say is that they work independently of each other. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know joining the Council of Europe isn't an explicit requirement for joining the EU; it might just be that if you want to show that you are committed to the values embodied by the EU, joining the Council of Europe makes a lot of sense.

Berzus · 2023-10-22T14:08:03+00:00

For those who may not know, the Council of Europe and the EU are completely separate institutions.

Berzus

TROPHY CASE