Xamarin Test Cloud and Hockey app for testing of mobile Apps

Continuous Delivery

•Practices to ensure code can be delivered automatically

•Automated deployment to pre-production environments

•Includes automated testing

In this blog I am going to cover automated testing

The most effective way to validate the behaviour of an application is by running it and using it. If it behaves as expected, without crashing or returning incorrect results, then the application is probably in good shape and can be released to users without worry that it will cause frustration or be unusable. This process, of testing the UI by actually using an application and interacting with it, is known as UI Acceptance Testing. Traditionally, however, UI Acceptance Testing has been extremely expensive due to the manual nature of it. It has historically required lots of manpower to deploy the application and then use it, verifying that it behaves correctly. Multiply that by each build that needs testing as well as each device that it needs testing on, and the cost can skyrocket exponentially, meaning that effective UI Acceptance Testing has been out of reach for nearly everyone but the most resource-laden organizations.

So what tools are available to help you test your mobile applications

Xamarin Test Cloud is a cloud-based service that provides an automatable way to do UI Acceptance Testing of mobile applications in the cloud across hundreds of different devices. This enables anyone to ensure that their application performs correctly and efficiently across a variety of devices with minimal effort. Additionally, because it’s cloud-based, the maintenance and procurement efforts are then removed from the test consumer, who can then focus on other efforts.

Test cloud allow you to automate your app testing and run them on over 2,000 different real devices. Test everything users do, as well as any performance problems with step-by-step memory and performance tracking.

Real devices, real quality

Ensure higher quality by testing on real devices

Use C#, Ruby, or Cucumber to build automated tests

Integrates with any continuous integration system

HockeyApp - The Platform for Your Apps

The world's best developers develop the world’s best apps for iOS, Android, OS X, and Windows on HockeyApp. Bring Mobile DevOps to your apps with beta distribution, crash reporting, user metrics, feedback, and powerful workflow integrations.

In-house App Store for testers - Upload beta versions of your application to the HockeyApp store to allow testers to install and test beta versions on actual devices.

Deployment made easy - HockeyApp’s desktop application automatically tracks all necessary information about your latest build in order to make uploading beta versions easy.

A conversation with your users - All feedback is handled as discussions. You can manage discussions in the web interface or through email. Search discussions, mark them as completed or create work items based on them. Give your users a voice outside of the app store.

For all development phases - You can use the feedback feature for all builds of your app or just beta versions. Either way, HockeyApp makes it easy for users to tell you what's what. Let them post ideas right from within your app