What best practices should I consider when creating ATF tests?

Automated Test Framework (ATF) is a ServiceNow application built for automat ed testing within a ServiceNow instance to

confirm that the instance still works as designed after being upgraded or modified. ATF is active by default in the platform and

is available at no extra license cost.

ATF reduces testing time and costs by creating reusable and automated tests that are repeatable & UI independent –

reducing overall project costs and schedule.

What best practices should I consider when creating ATF tests?

• Align ATF to key functional test scenarios – ATF is intended for functional testing of your specific business processes. Testing

should focus on key user flows or process flows within your ServiceNow applications.

• Impersonate first – Typically, the first test step of every test impersonates the appropriate user to perform the work. To

impersonate a user, use the Create a User test step to create a user with specified roles and groups for the test. The user record

gets rolled back after the test completes.

• Group tests – Building and running automated test suites allows you to group tests in a specific order to test an application or a

group of related features. This way, you’re able to run tests and see results as one job.

• Run tests in parallel – Reduce testing time by running multiple tests and test suites in parallel. Run tests that create their own

data to prevent resource conflicts and data dependencies. You can prevent conflicting tests from running in parallel by

marking tests as mutually exclusive. This ensures that tests that require the same data don’t run simultaneously.

Questions addressed

Page 1:

• What is Automated

Test Framework

(ATF)?

• What best practices

should I consider

when creating ATF

tests?

Page 2:

• What best practices

should I consider

when creating ATF

tests? (Continued)

• Take a timeout – User interface (UI) test steps have an intelligent built -in wait

mechanism that requires the UI change to complete before the next UI test

step proceeds. However, asynchronous updates on the server, such as event

processing, workflow updates, and email notifications, might require the test

designer to incorporate an additional wait for processing to complete. Setting

the timeout on server test steps can also be useful when debugging tests. For

example, you could incorporate a 30- to 60-second timeout to manually

inspect the state of records before the rollback.

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What best practices should I consider when creating ATF tests?  (Continued)
• Keep it short  – Test a discrete set of items during testing.  This makes it easier to build tests and evaluate any failures.  It is easy to string multiple tests 
together as part of a suite and you can even use test suites hierarchically.  This allows you to perform additional testing should an early step in a test fail. 
• Avoid test  step repetition  – Don’t repeat testing for the same UI functionality in multiple tests. If other tests require similar functionality, simulate it using 
server test steps rather than repeating the same UI test steps. Server test steps perform faster. 
• Test the outcome – Focus on the outcome to verify rather than testing each point along the way. Keep this in mind when verifying business rules
or Flow Designer processes.  When testing flows, build the conditions to trigger the flow in the test, then check the flow outcome for the expected result. 
• Consider access  control rule (ACL) security – When debugging unexpected test errors, a common mistake relates to security authorization. Based on the 
roles of the impersonated user, a test step might fail. By default, ACL security is enforced for record inserts, updates, and deletes. Sometimes this setting 
must be disabled for test steps performing actions to set up a test. Other test steps actually performing the verification might require it to be enabled.
• Validate record updates – Include a Record Validation test step after every Record Update test step to ensure the record was actually updated. A 
Record Update appears to always pass even if the record was not updated for any reason, such as being rejected by a data policy.  This can lead to 
confusing failures in subsequent test steps. It can also mislead you in trying to troubleshoot the wrong test step.
• Test functionality instead of data – Rather than test every possible combination of a data-driven feat ure, create one or two t ests focusing on the 
functionality. Then verify that the values change as intended without spending too many cycles on all the possible combinations of a vast data matrix.
• Approach conditional testing differently  – When you want to perform ATF test steps based on given criteria or branch a test along different paths, create 
a separate test for each condition.
What best practices should I consider when creating ATF tests? (Cont.)
Related resources
• Success  Quick Answer  – When and how should I use ATF? 
• Product Docs – Automated Test  Framework overview
• Now Community – Best practices  for using ATF
• YouTube  – Getting started with ATF
• Now Learning – ATF  Fundamentals eLearning  series
• New for developers in Paris: Overview of Automated Test  Framework changes
• Customer Success  Center – Upgrade  quickly  and maintain platform health
• YouTube  – Upgrading  to a new release
• YouTube  – Quick  start tests | Overview
• YouTube  – Getting started with quick start tests