Release notes for IBM® Rational® Functional Tester

This document contains information about what's new, installation instructions, known problems in and contact information of HCL Customer Support.

Contents

Description

IBM® Rational® Functional Tester is a GUI test automation tool that is used to accelerate the functional and regression testing. It provides a flexible environment to test the desktop and web applications very efficiently. It is used to test a wide range of applications such as HTML5-based web applications built on modern frameworks which include Angular, React and Vue.js in the latest versions of the world’s popular browsers, both on the desktop and mobile devices. Rational® Functional Tester is available in two integrated development environments (IDE): Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. The Eclipse integration supports both Java and simplified (non-programming) method of scripting while the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET integration supports Microsoft Visual Basic .NET scripting language. See Product overview.

What's new

  • Documentation

    You can now quickly add your comments to provide your feedback about the documentation for Rational® Functional Tester by posting to a product forum. To add your comments as feedback, you must first register at HCL Support. Your login information along with your comments are governed by the privacy policy of HCL. By commenting, you accept the terms of use of HCL.

  • Support for SAP installation

    You can select SAP extension when you install IBM® Rational® Functional Tester on Windows 64-bit operating systems.

  • Support to optimize browser performance on the Mac operating system

    You can now optimize the performance of browsers that are used to play back Web UI tests on computers that are run on Mac operating systems also. See Clearing cache, cookies, and history of browsers.

  • Common web interface to configure applications

    You can configure and manage the web, Android, iOS, and Windows desktop applications, which are used to record and play back the tests, by using a common web interface in Rational® Functional Tester. You can also substitute the texts in the URL of the web applications that you configured so that you can apply the changes to all tests that use the same application URL. See Configuring applications for tests.

  • Enhancements to Unified reports
    • From the unified report, you can now navigate to workbench to view a specific test or test step in a single click.
    • You can now export the unified report to the PDF format.
    • The unified report is now the default report when you publish test results to Engineering Test Management.
    • The Extended menu and properties verification points are enhanced in the unified report.
    See Unified reports

  • Access to the dataset from custom code

    You can now access the dataset from the custom code. When you have a test that is associated with a dataset, you can view the dataset values or modify the dataset values from the custom code. See Reading and writing data from a dataset.

  • Address the browser compatibility issues automatically

    When you record Web UI tests by using the Google Chrome browser or play back Web UI tests by using the Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Opera browsers and if the browser version is incompatible, Rational® Functional Tester now provides you a link to install the appropriate updates required for the browser. This option is also available when you play back the tests from the command-line.

  • Support for Mozilla FireFox V68.9 ESR browser in Docker

    You can now use the Mozilla Firefox browser V68.9 ESR, which is packaged along with the Docker images, to run compound tests, AFT suites, or a single Web UI tests in the Docker environment.

  • Technical Preview: Support for testing the iOS applications

    You can now record and play back mobile tests on iOS devices and simulators on computers that run on Mac operating systems. You can also play back mobile tests on iOS devices and simulators connected to BitBar Cloud, Perfecto Mobile cloud, and remote computers that run on the Appium server. See Testing iOS applications.

  • Technical Preview: Support for testing the Windows desktop applications

    You can now record and playback on multiple windows including dialog boxes that are launched from the Windows applications. See Testing Windows desktop applications.

Installing the product

For installation instructions, see Installing software.

Note: You cannot upgrade to the latest version of the product. You must uninstall the existing version of the product before installing the latest version of the product.

Known issues

You can find information about the known issues identified in this release of HCL OneTest™ UI.

Product Download document Knowledge base

Rational® Functional Tester

Release document

Knowledge articles

Known problems are documented in the download document and in the form of individual tech notes in the Support Knowledge Base. See the Support Knowledge Base.

The knowledge base is continually updated as issues are discovered and resolved. By searching the knowledge base, you can quickly find workarounds or solutions to issues.

Contacting HCL support

  • For technical assistance, contact HCL Customer Support.
  • Before you contact HCL support, gather the background information that you will need to describe your problem. When describing a problem to HCL support specialist, be as specific as possible and include all relevant background information so that the specialist can help you solve the problem efficiently. To save time, know the answers to these questions:
    • What software versions were you running when the problem occurred?
    • Do you have logs, traces, or messages that are related to the problem?
    • Can you reproduce the problem? If so, what steps do you take to reproduce it?
    • Is there a workaround for the problem? If so, be prepared to describe the workaround.