What Wikipedia Can Not Tell You About Test Link
Some TestLink Annoyances
TestLink is a very useful test case repository management software. When the company gets bigger it's time to consider investing in an application that can meet the challenging needs of the company.
I like TestLink, but it just not as useful as it was when we first installed it 8-years ago.
Four Annoyances using TestLink
Here are my annoyances with using TestLink. We currently use TestLink 1.9.3 (Prague).
Integration with Jira/Slack
Most competing test case repository applications have integration with Jira. This allows developers to assign test cases that they would like QA to run when testing a particular issue.
As for Slack, It would be nice to call out particular test cases from a test case repository. For example, if someone ask for the regression test of Cookies in Chrome - someone could link to the actual test case. You can not link to particular test cases in TestLink.
Easy Test Case Import
TestLink isn't fun to work with when you need to add a bunch of test case. This is a problem when your implementing a new feature and want to add a bunch of test cases. There is some support for importing from Excel documents but it is a complex process.
Also vise versa, if there was a major product change, it isn't very easy to modify all the test cases that are impacted by the change.
A Test Case repository should be super flexible so that QA Engineers will want to use it. Its shouldn't be an environment that QA despise using.
The overall feeling about TestLink, from QA team members, is that it is not a very joyful experience.
Better Management of Test Cases
It takes a while to understand how to manage test cases in TestLink. Every once in a while, I'll need to log in and go through the test cases to see which ones are still relevant. It's just a complex process of going through the test cases and removing them them from the current test plan.
Having multiple test plan builds slows down the reporting process - for some unknown reason. I frequently have to cleanup old builds so that the reporting takes a reasonable time to build.
No Automation Support
Automation is now essential to any QA process. TestLink has no automation support. It would be great to have a central application that the QA can understand the coverage.
I wouldn't expect to execute automation from TestLink, but there should be a way to see which issues are being controlled by automation.