We are starting HP Application Lifecycle Management ALM Quality Center QC tutorial series. This will be a complete online training in 7 in-depth tutorials. Note — HPE ALM is now Micro Focus Application Lifecycle Management ALM software. Earlier, it was known as HP Quality Center QC. HP QC acts as a test management tool while HP ALM acts as a project management tool. HP QC is named as HP ALM from version 11. I am sure that this tutorial will really be a guide to those who are new to this tool. HP ALM Version History HP QC was earlier known as Test Director, which was a product of Mercury Interactive. Later, Test Director was acquired by HP and the product was named as HP Quality Center. HP Quality Center was named as HP Application Lifecycle Management from version 11. The below table explains the version history: S. No Name Version 1 Test Director V1. The following are the list of components: 1 HP ALM Client: HP Application Lifecycle Management tool uses Java Enterprise Edition J2EE technology and Oracle or MS SQL server at the backend. HP ALM Client is the browser using which a user can access this tool. A load balancer is also used to cater multiple requests from the users at the same time. The application server uses Java Database Connectivity JDBC to cater to the user requests. Site Administration database server stores all the information related to the domain, users, and projects. HP ALM essentials edition provides the basic features to the users such as requirements, , and defects. HP QC Enterprise edition is for the users who want to integrate ALM with HP Unified Functional Testing to drive automation scripts through ALM. HP ALM Performance Center edition is used for the users who want to integrate HP ALM with HP LoadRunner to driver performance tests through ALM. Import Test cases from Excel to HP ALM Creation of test cases directly on this tool is a time-consuming process. Hence importing test cases from Excel to this tool can be done using an Excel Add-in. HP ALM Excel Add-in Installation Given below are the list of steps that indicate how to download and install Excel add-in: 1 Download the HP ALM Excel add-in from. The below web page will open up. Download this add-in based on the ALM version installed. Extract the contents of the ZIP file to a file folder. An Installation wizard opens up. Once the installation is complete, the below screen will appear. Click on Finish button on the Install shield wizard. The below screen will appear. Defect Lifecycle in HP ALM A defect is raised when there is a deviation between the actual result and the expected result. Defect lifecycle defines the phases through which a defect has to go through during its lifetime. The number of phases and the phase description differs from organization to organization and from project to project. In general, a Defect in ALM tool will go through the following phases. This is the default status for every defect initially on HP ALM. Filter, Find and Replace functionality in this tool Filter Functionality Filter on HP ALM is used to filter the data based on each of the fields displayed. The filter is available on Requirements, Test Plan, Test Lab and Defects modules. Example: Filter criteria on Test Lab module will appear as below. Select a field and apply the filter condition as below. Logical operators such as AND, OR etc. Find Functionality Find functionality is used to search for a specific item. Item can be a requirement, test case, test set, a folder or a subfolder. It is available in Releases, Requirements, Test Plan, Test Lab and Defects modules. Example: Below is the representation of how the find dialog box appears. Click on the Find option. Find dialog box appears there, using which the users can enter a search term and find the required item. Below image represents the search results screen displayed. Replace Functionality Replace functionality allows the users to find a specific item and replace it with a new value. Replace functionality is available on Releases, Requirements, Test Plan, Test Lab and Defects modules. Below image is the representation of how the replace window looks like. The below window appears once the replace operation is successful. Email Functionality Send Email functionality is available on all the modules of this tool. Below is the snapshot of how to send email dialog box will look like The users can customize the content of an email to be sent based on their requirements. To:Users can enter two or more email addresses separated by a semicolon. CC: Users can enter two or more email addresses separated by a semicolon. Subject:Subject field is auto-populated on the tool based on the selected item. However, users can customize it as per their requirements. Before being called HP Quality center it used to be Mercury Test Director. In my experience, I have come across very few projects Manual and Automation that did not use Quality Center software. It is a very simple tool to use, extremely user-friendly. Even if you have never used it before, chances are you will be able to figure out how to in a really short time. However, there is a lot of difference between being able to navigate through the tool and being able to exploit its potential to benefit your project. So here is a tutorial to easily learn Quality Center capabilities and use them successfully. It is a little tricky to install it on your local machine. But you will be able to do so if you have a compatible machine and understand the components ALM has. ALM helps make project management, from requirements to deployment easier. It increases predictability and creates a framework to manage projects from a central repository. Step 3: Enter the username and password. The Domain and Project fields get activated. Depending on your login credentials you have access to certain projects. This information is set by your ALM Admin. Once you are logged in, ALM window opens up and displays the module in which you were working last. The domain is nothing but a logical division of departments for your organization. Example: Banking, Retail, Health Care etc. Projects are the different teams working within the domain. For example in a Retail project, they could be working on the front end store Point of sale app or the back-end inventory module. The Domain and Project information is set by the ALM Admin. Step 5: The user domain, Project, and user information is displayed in the upper right-hand corner. Also, notice the sidebar. It contains the components from the ALM flow. Even though Dashboard is the first in the list, we will discuss it last in our series, simply because it is an overall monitoring feature and it will be more practical to see the data that we actually create. Conclusion I hope that this tutorial would have given you a great insight of HP Application Lifecycle Management tool. HP ALM is one of the most widely used tools among testers. The simplicity and ease of using this tool make it the ideal choice for many organizations worldwide. This tool can be used in two ways either as a desktop application or on a cloud. As desktop application requires a tedious process of download and installation of HP ALM on local machines, an on-premise cloud is generally preferred for business purposes. In next tutorial 2, we will cover. Later, we will continue HP ALM QC training by taking an example of Gmail application. This session will cover what this tool can do for your project and how best you can manage all your testing related activities in one place. Are you aware of other interesting facts about this tool apart from the ones mentioned above? Feel free to share your thoughts. Hi, I have installed HH ALM 11. What I have managed to do so far is passing a ticket data from Zendesk to HPQC and create a ticket on HPQC and if some one updates the ticket on Zendesk update the same on HPQC. The last requirement now is if the same ticket is updated on HPQC, I want an update to be send to zendesk. I am not sure how I can achieve this. The documents are so helpful for me to learn more things in Software testing. I want same ebook for HP quality center, because for quality center there is no book available in the market. Please sir write a book for quality center and provide us so we can start working on quality center by the help of that book. If you Know you can answer it. I would be thankful if you could help me. Do I need them also? How do I get them? Recommended Environments The following table includes recommended configurations for each operating system: Operating Systems Databases Web Servers Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise SP1 64 Bit Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 Microsoft IIS 7.
