Telerik extension for Microsoft Coded UI tests?

[Kevin]

Hi --
I'm trying to find out if Telerik or anyone else has created a plugin/extension for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 that will allow Microsoft's Coded UI Test builder/runner to access all properties of Telerik's ASP.NET AJAX RadControls such as RadComboBox.

For background on my question, please see this article http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mathew_aniyan/archive/2011/03/28/visual-studio-ui-test-extensibility-scenarios-amp-guiding-principles.aspx which says 
"Microsoft encourages third party custom UI framework vendors, such as, ComponentOne, DevExpress, Infragistics and Telerik to build and support UI Testing for their custom UI frameworks."

I know that Telerik sells a Test Studio application that has translators for the RadControls, and Telerik offers a free test framework with wrappers for RadControls.  But my company is already using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Test Manager for test automation, and the Microsoft test tools currently have limited awareness of RadControl properties on web pages.  I don't want to replace the Microsoft test tools and start using Telerik's Test Studio at this point; I want to extend the Microsoft tools with help from Telerik or the developer community.

PS: Maybe another alternative is for Telerik ASP.NET AJAX RadControls to be compliant with Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA)?  Apparently that has been done for Telerik WinForms controls http://www.telerik.com/products/winforms/whats-new-full-story.aspx, but I don't know if that has been (or can be) done for Telerik ASP.NET AJAX RadControls.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Pavel]

Hello Kevin,

Currently we have no plans for creating extensions for our controls for Microsoft's Coded UI Test builder/runner. We have invested a lot of effort in our wrappers/translators for our own testing framework
and there are only a few requests from our customers for such extensions for Microsoft's product.

Regards,
Pavel
the Telerik team

[André]

Hello,

my company is also using Telerik ASP.NET Ajax for our web controls and Microsoft Test Manager for desktop and web application test.
So, an update to run these controls on MTM would definitely be a must have for my company.

Hope this post helps increasing this feature's priority.

Best Regards,
Jorge

[Pavel]

Hello Jorge,

We will take into account your opinion and consider the possibilities for adding such extensions in the future.

Kind regards,
Pavel
the Telerik team

[J]

We would like to see Telerik extensions to coded UI as well.

[Ramin]

This is very important for us and our tests break in almost every page that we use Telerik RadGrid in WPF

[John]

Would be nice to be able to add in the SAFS Framework (http://safsdev.sourceforge.net/sqabasic2000/SAFSFramework.htm).  I have used it in the past, not bad.

John

[DavidS]

If like me you've tried to get help on using VS2010 Automated UI Testing with Telerik AJAX controls you'll know there's not much availible. Do a search for "UIMap" and all you'll get is a pdf that might as well be called "Why Test Studio is better than VS2010 Automated UI Testing".

Telerik Test Studio might well be a better test environment but at the end of the day like many other AJAX control users I've already bought VS2010 Ultimate with its own test recorder, editor etc and I've also bought Telerik AJAX Controls, BECAUSE it was advertised as providing an "Improved Visual Studio Experience".

So the question is do Telerik AJAX Controls only improve our Visual Studio experience in areas that are not competing with other Telerik products?  Telerik stand to make a lot of money from encouraging developers to think they have to use Test Studio of course, having structured their pricing so this involves a $1500 upgrade followed by significantly increased renewal costs.

The good news in my experience is that you can effectively use VS2010 Automated UI Tests these days with Telerik AJAX controls. There are however a number of gotchas. Whether these are down to Telerik paying insufficient attention to the VS envronment or whether as Telerik staff sniffily like to say they are "issues with your chosen test environment" depends who you talk to. What they seem to be missing is that our "chosen environment" is VS2010 and when Telerik stop supporting this they're on a slippery slope. It strikes me that not documenting the workarounds in this area is cynical.

If you'd like to see better integration/documentation of VS2010 testing I'd strongly encourage you to tell Telerik .I f you're having specific  problems give me a shout at [e-mail] and I'll try to help.

[DavidS]

-

[Martin]

Hello Guys,

I understand your concerns, but I am afraid that I have to confirm we have no plans for creating extensions for our controls for Microsoft's Coded UI Test builder/runner. Note that we have invested huge effort in the wrappers/translators for our own testing framework. Building similar functionality for the MS testing environment would definitely be an unneeded overhead compared to the value it will bring to our customers. In addition I also doubt that many of the fancy features our TestStudio currently offers would be achievable when it comes to the VS environment.

Regards,
Martin
the Telerik team

[DavidS]

Marin

I'd like to thank both you and Misho for your support with VS2010 UI testing RadFormDecorator and Tooltips over the last few months. My issue however is wider than extensions:

1) Telerik are using double-talk about their support for VS2010 UI testing. In September Misho told me your ASP.NET Ajax controls are "fully compatible with VS2010 Automated UI testing". Since then I have wasted weeks (with your support of course) developing workarounds to get Telerik controls  working with VS2010 UI testing. I've documented some of this and passed it on to Misho however I still don't see evidence of Telerik documenting VS2010 Automated UI testing. My conclusion is that Telerik don't want to ease use of VS2010 Automated UI testing so as to encourage their customers to buy Telerik Test Studio. (Testing Framework shouldn't be used in the same breath)

2) I don't doubt that Test Studio is a wonderful tool and I would have given in by now and bought it however for developers the cheapest option is:

- pay $1,500 now to upgrade to the Ultimate package
- pay a further $999 in renewals every year i.e. twice what I would be paying for Ajax Controls renewals, despite the fact that I only ever wanted my original AJAX controls and Test Studio Express.

As I say I really appreciate your support but I can't help feeling there is a sales director behind the scenes here who is laughing like the Wicked Witch of the West.

[Iana Tsolova]

Hi Davids,

Thank you for your feedback and for the detailed explanation of your point of view.

For now you can test our controls with the VS 2010 Testing Framework, but as we are not providing wrappers/translators for them, it is rather expected additional adjustments to be needed. Unfortunately creating such wrappers/translators is not in our future plans as already mentioned. And this is not because they are not important. However the priority of this task is low compared to the others and the value it will bring to the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX suite would be less than the rest of the features we want to introduce.

Regarding the pricing of Test Studio, I would suggest that you contact our sales so they give you the best offer for your specific case.

Best wishes,
Iana Tsolova
the Telerik team

[Corey]

Do you have plans or have added support for mapping Telerik's RadTreeListView.Item for Coded UI mapping. I can located the TreeListViewVirtualizingPanel, but not row or cell property/values.

Is there a workaround? 

[Martin]

Hello Corey,

I guess your question does not target RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX because currently we do not have RadTreeListView control in this product line. I would suggest that you post your queries in the correct forum so that you receive the answers you actually look for.

All the best,
Martin
the Telerik team

[Brad]

Since this is May 2013 I wonder if this is still the case:

You have no plans for creating extensions for our controls for Microsoft's Coded UI Test builder/runner.

Regards,
Brad

[Martin]

Hello Brad,

Unfortunately, I have to confirm that we have no plans for creating extensions for our controls for Microsoft's Coded UI Test builder/runner in the near future.

All the best,
Martin
the Telerik team

[DavidS]

Personally I think it's a disgrace that Telerik strongly imply (and their support staff appear to believe!) that their product is fully integrated with Visual Studio ...including it's out of the box test mechanisms, when it clearly isn't . Surely one of the main reasons we buy this tool is on the understanding that it works seamlessly with what we have i.e VS? If it's only strategically useful when you buy other Telerik products ... well, you should be more honest.

[Okami]

So is it still true that there will be no built in compatibility with Coded UI? If that's true that's just another reason for our company to move away from using Telerik

I don't see how you can put this blog up for your WPF controls

http://blogs.telerik.com/michaelcrump/posts/12-11-28/coded-ui-test-support-for-wpf

And then go back and say it's not needed for the Asp.net

[Rumen]

Hello,

For the time being we do not plan to provide support for Visual Studio Coded UI since this is a very huge task that would require months or years of development to ensure that all of the 80+ controls in the suite work without problems. Another problem is that such implementation will require a solid amount of men power which could be used for implementation of new and improvement in the existing wrappers and translators that our Test Studio uses.

As an alternative to VS Coded UI framework, we strongly recommend that you test the available solutions provided by Telerik that we support:

1. The free Telerik Testing Framework which helps you automate AJAX, Silverlight and WPF applications using coded steps. It includes integrated adapters are specially designed for automatically identifying the control and exposing its API for the purpose of making the functional coded testing easier.
2. WebUI Test Studio which has the options to record, execute and debug functional tests with the Visual Studio environment or in a standalone solution.

You could find more benefits of using the Telerik Testing Framework and Test Studio in the following blog post Automated Testing for Dynamic ASP.NET Web Applications Made Easy with Telerik Test Studio.

Using the testing frameworks and tools provided by Telerik, ensure that you will get the best support and interoperability between the controls and the framework.

We will appreciate your feedback after completing your evaluation of Telerik Testing Framework and WebUI Test Studio.

Best regards,
Rumen
Telerik

 

 

[Raji]

Hi Rumen,

Just to confirm... does Vs2012 not support all the three types of Telerik controls

Radcontrols for Asp.net AJAX
Radcontrols for WPF
Radcontrols for Silverlight.

In one of my posts its mentioned it does support WPF and Silverlight controls.
http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/reply-thread.aspx?messageId=0&threadId=745370.

Just need clarity on this..

Thanks in Advacne,
Raji

[Rumen]

Hi Raji,

I talked with the Program Manager of the WPF and Silverlight teams and he told me that currently only RadControls for WPF offers support for VS 2012 Coded UI tests.

RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX and RadControls for Silverlight do not offer support for VS2012 Coded UI tests.

Best regards,
Rumen
Telerik

[Dushant]

How to work with ajax control through coded ui test/Coded ui test builder

[Dushant]

How to work with ajax control through coded ui test/Coded ui test builder

[Misho]

Hi,

Could you please specify more details about which Telerik components you would like to test and what your use cases are, so we will be able to provide you with more reliable information and advice?

Best Regards,
Misho
Telerik