Difference between Global Wait and Wait Step Timeout

[David]

Is there a way to make a step use the global wait timeout?  It is very difficult to maintain timeouts on individual steps, would prefer to be able to adjust in one place - had thought that was what the global wait timeout was for, but it doesn't seem to be the case.  The two values are very confusing - if the Global Wait timeout isn't used for a wait step, when is it used?

[Plamen]

Hello David,

A "Wait for Exists" is basically built into every test step. This includes Wait steps such as "Wait for Text Same" and "Wait for __ is visible." There are two levels to dedicated Wait Steps. Test Studio waits for the element to exist first, then performs the comparison dictated in the Wait. A simple "Wait for Exists" is only one level, thus it does not have the additional options under the Execution heading in Properties and it only takes the value set in the Timeout property(not the Global wait).

• Everything under the Execution heading pertains to the first level - the Wait for Exists.
• Everything under the Wait heading pertains to the second level - the actual comparison the Wait is performing. 

For all other action and verification steps, there are two types of Waits: Global and 'per step'. When an element is located (before it's acted upon) using the implied Find under the hood, Test Studio uses the Global setting value defined in the Quick Execution Options or the corresponding ElementWaitTimeout value in the Test List Settings.  

You can override the global setting on a per step basis if you set UseStepWaitOnElementsTimeout to True in the test step properties. Once enabled you can set the WaitOnElementsTimeout property for that step and that value will be used instead of the global value. See this article for more information.

The WaitOnElements property specifies whether or not to wait for the element to exist before executing the step. The default value of this property is True and it's better to keep it that way. Setting it to False will ignore the 'Global' and 'per step' settings and will execute the step without waiting for the element. 


Kind regards,

Plamen
the Telerik team

[David]

Thanks Plamen - let me see if I have it correct, specific to Wait steps:

    Wait for * (minus wait for exist) has an implicit wait for exist and that will use the global seting.

    Wait for Exist is special and will explicity wait for element to exist with the given wait timeout configured in the step.

[Plamen]

Hi David,

That's correct. Every action and verification step includes a build-in "Wait for exist".

All the best,
Plamen
the Telerik team