What is trace-ability alert? How to trigger a trace-ability alert in Test Director?

The process of sending e–mails in order to notify the ones that are responsible whenever some change is made to the project. This can be done by instructing the test director to create an alert whenever a change occurs and send e – mails appropriately. One’s own follow up alerts can also be added. 

There are certain rules called the trace-ability notification rules (based up on the associations that were made in the test director among the tests, requirements and defects) which are activated by the test director administrator for generating the automatic trace-ability alerts.

On what occasions a trace-ability alert issued?

Only for the following issues test director can generate the trace-ability alerts:

1. Whenever a requirement (except change of a status) changes, the designer of the associated tests is notified by the test director.
2. Whenever a requirement having an associated test changes, all the project users are notified by the test director.
3. Whenever the defect status changes to ‘fixed’, the responsible tester of the associated test is notified by the test director.
4. Whenever a test run is successful, the user assigned to the associated test is notified by the test director.

Steps to trigger trace-ability alert

1. Log on to the project  as a different user.
2. Click on the test plan tab to turn on the test plan module which will display the test plan tree. Expand the concerned subject folders and select the required test. A designer box displaying the user name in the details tab in the right pane is seen. One thing to be noted is that whenever an associated requirement changes, the trace-ability notification is only viewed by the designer.
3. Click on the requirements tab to turn on the requirements tree and also make sure that it is in the document view.
4. Among the requirements choose the one that you want to change.
5. For changing the priority of the requirement click on the priority down arrow and select the required priority. This will cause the test director to generate an alert for the test associated with the requirement selected above. Also, an e – mail will be sent to the designer who designed this test.
6. When you are done log out of the project by clicking on the log out button present on the right side of the window.

How to view a trace-ability alert?

This trace-ability change can be viewed for a single entity or all the entities in the project. Here by entity we mean a test, a defect or a test instance. To view the trace-ability alert follow the below mentioned steps:

1. Log on to the project as the designer of the test.
2. Click on the test plan tab to view the test plan tree. Expand the subject folders to display that test. You will see that the test has a trace changes flag which is an indication of the fact that a change was made to the requirement associated with it.
3. Clicking on the trace changes flag for the test will enable you to view the trace-ability alert. Also, the trace changes dialog box will open up. Clicking on the requirement link will make the test director to highlight that particular requirement in the requirements module.
4. For viewing all of the trace-ability alerts click on the trace all changes button in the common test director tool bar. A dialog box listing all the trace-ability changes will open up.
5. Once done close the dialog box. 

What is a follow up alert? How to create follow up alerts in test director?

Test director is mercury interactive’s test management tool. 

- It helps in creating a quality assurance personnel plan and organizing the whole testing process usually termed as the test director testing process.

- It lets you build a data base consisting of the manual as well as automated test cases, test cycles, run tests, reports of the tracking defects and so on. 

- The test director instructs to create alerts automatically and notify the responsible people whenever some changes are encountered by the project. 

- Alerts are generated for the changes that affect the project in one or more than one ways. 

- For generating automatic alerts, the administrator can activate the trace-ability notification rules based on the associations made among the requirements, defects and test.

What is a Follow Up Alert?

- Test director allows to add own follow up flag to a defect, test instance or a specific test so as  to remind oneself to follow up on an issue. 

- When the date of actual follow up arrives, an e – mail is send to the person’s mail box. 

- Test director notifies the tester by adding a trace that changes the flag to the changed entity or by mailing a notification whenever a change is made to the requirement, defect or test in the project. 

- Creating follow-up alerts is always useful since you are always reminded whenever it is required to follow up on some issues. 

Requirements for Follow up Alert

- Test director 8.0 should be installed on your system. 

- You must have access to all the four modules of the test director namely requirements, test plan, test lab and defects. 

- You must have either a sample project or an actual project on which you carry out the exercise.

- Work with a new copy of the project. 

- You should also have either a sample application or an actual application.  

Now we shall discuss the procedure to add a follow up flag to a defect whose status requires to be checked. 

When the follow up date comes, the flag icon is turned to red color and the test director sends a notification via e – mail. One thing that you should always take care of is that the flags have a specific user name which means only the user whose name is on the flag will be able to see it. 

Steps to create a Follow-up Alert

Follow the steps mentioned below to create a follow up alert:

1. Click on the defects tab so as to turn on the defects module.
2. From the defects grid select the defect for which you want to set up a flag to follow  up.
3. Now for creating a follow up alert click on the ‘flag for follow up’ button and a flag for follow up dialog box will open up. Fill in the following details:

a)   Follow up by: select the date.

b)   Description: type:

Once done with filling up the details click ok. A flag icon will be added to the      defect record by the test director.

4. To display the information bar for your follow up alert, double click with the follow up flag on the defect. A defect details dialog box will pop up and will display a yellow information bar with the follow up alert.
5. To close the dialog box click on cancel button.