Automation script ideas

I have recently started using eggplant and am creating an extensive suite of scripts. I am hoping to reach a point where anyone in my office can write eggplant scripts to automate a specified set of tasks, application and OS (Windows) related using my suites.

I was wondering if any of you out there could help me out by maybe listing tasks that you may have automated or ideas on frequently performed tasks in Windows that ppl find useful to be automated.

Thank you so very much for your overwhelming support in response to my question. :frowning:

I was wondering if any of you had any interesting ideas as to what you have automated using eggplant before.

Anyways below I’ve listed a few things that I have done using eggplant that I think are useful as a whole when testing your application. They range from disturbingly simple to slightly more complicated (simple to you gurus nonetheless).

I have tried to use hotkeys to navigate through most of the applications that I have touched, unless I’ve had to ensure that something specific comes up properly.

I’ve tried to use objects (I’ve still got a lot to learn) to store properties of pages and other specific actions that have helped me to reuse my code quite a bit.

  • Logging in to Windows given a user name and password
  • Running applications using the run dialog box.
  • Ensuring the proper users are logged in to Windows and the applications.
  • State tests to ensure that programs are pulled up properly
  • Navigating to specified pages in IE.
  • Small macros to customize IE like
    - switching the homepage to a specified page
    - clearing the cache
    - changing server details, etc.
  • Using perfmon to monitor system.
  • Attach/detach dbs in SQLServer

and much more…

If any of you can come up with some more ideas, I would be much obliged!

You have a lot of good ideas there already. I’m sure that others could benefit from your scripts if you are willing to share them. If they are reasonably generic, we would be happy to post them in the Examples forum – just email us the entire suite, including images, if you’d like us to do that.

Other things that you might consider scripting would be generic interactions, such as moving or resizing windows, or controlling some more difficult user interface widgets such as scrolling lists (e.g. you could write a function that would take an image name, and would scroll through the list until the image was found and select it). Or you might want to write a handler that could open any file on the SUT in its default application.

If you have any specific questions about using objects to store properties, etc., please ask and we’ll be happy to help you continue your learning.