OpenText UFT Developer Reviews

It was very interesting to see that once we began using the traditional UFT for functional testing, we received a lot of feedback from our development and testing teams that it's clumsy, not modern, and so on. But once we upgraded to UFT Pro, it was an easy adoption, even though it's a commercial product. In that sense, it supports our approach in agile and DevOps deliveries really well.

The UFT Pro follows the same projects that are following the agile DevOps journey. They are also starting to use UFT Pro.

At the moment, we are happy as it is. We don't have any kind of specific technology requirements for improvements, at least not at the moment.

But, support for open source solutions, such as the Robot framework, which is actively used, might be really helpful.

So far, we are very happy with stability, even though knowing that there is quite a lot of new development. But so far, so good. I have nothing bad to say.

We are at a very early stage in implementing this solution. But at the moment it looks promising. Although, it is difficult to say how far it goes. But at least, so far, we have started.

So far, technical support is very good because we have been using HPE products, or the earlier Mercury products for a long time. We have a quite good collaboration with them. From that kind of background and knowing our kind of working environment and solutions, together with their technical support and help, we have been able to implement these tools in the right way the first time, without trying to invent the wheel on our side.

Setup was pretty straightforward. Obviously, we kind of had a bit of discussion internally, because we didn't take a traditional migration from the earlier product. We really started from scratch. That is still somewhat an issue for some of the deliveries, that they don’t want to use the agile method. But we have highly recommended this because they are two different worlds and that it would be better to plan it carefully and not just carry on all the crap from history.

Our development teams are using a lot of open source solutions, and other tools like JIRA. But for our business needs and purposes, we have seen that HPE solutions are still valid for our business. We need to have backwards traceability. We have to have the capability to show what has been done, what's been going on, and what. In some of the cases, there has been the discussions that, "Yes. We have all this information, but you have to go to the Jenkins, or this and that logs, and it's there." But that's not what the business wants to see. They want to have a high-level visibility on their business. That is why we are still keeping the HPE products, and probably also in the future we'll have them.

The most valuable feature is that we have a test automation solution that is really developer friendly. So, you have Java as a programming language. You have Eclipse or the Intel HAS IDE and you can really use the development tools. That's the best part out of it. You can also have this with Selenium or any other developer friendly solution, but UFT Pro also supports different technologies. So, you can test web applications, you can test Java applications, you can test Windows applications. And, most other tools, at least the free-ware solutions, only cope with one specific technology.

Another big feature is the integration with ALM. It's quite easy to start the test cases from ALM and to have the results in ALM. And it's also possible to make business process tests with Lean FT or UFT Pro. And I think all these parts together make it the best possible solution.

For example, we had just recently had the new release of our web page, and there we had a lot of test cases for small tools like a calculator for tax savings when you invest in different products, or whatever. There were a lot of little pieces on the website which needed testing. And we had an agile methodology to develop the new website and from time to time a new tool got released on the test system. And then we needed little effort to automate it and do the tests. And also, we could redo all the tests when a new version was released. So, we always had the security that nothing important changed or nothing which already worked was destroyed with the new release.

There are still some stability issues. Also, the integration with ALM is not perfect. There issues with parameter parsing.

We don't have ALM Octane now and I've never used it, so I don't know whether it would beneficial. But I think we're too big to easily switch to another test management solution.

Now stability is quite good. At the beginning, we had a bit of trouble with our company environment because the browser or the Java version is specifically configured and we had to fight a little bit to make it work correctly. Right now, we are very happy. Also, with the integration into ALM, it works quite good. We had some issues with special characters from ALM, to bring them to UFT Pro and backwards, but this is the biggest pain point right now, so it's not really a big deal.

We have around three and half thousand employees. It is quite scalable. It depends how you do it. You can make automated scripts which do not scale at all. But since it's a developer friendly tool, you have the ability to cut it in the right way to make modules, and then it is very nice to handle it with multiple applications with a lot of test cases.

Right now, we have a good experience with support because we quickly get to developers with issues. When we contact the support, if it is a bigger problem, we have a call or a session with the developers themselves and that's quite nice. They have also been at PostFinance twice. And this gives you a good feeling about being important and you think they care about you and they want you to have a product that works.

Since I used to use a lot of other automation tools, it was very straightforward. It is quite simple if you know Selenium or if you know IBM Rational Functional Tester.

Compared to IBM Selenium, LeanFT or UFT Pro is more stable. They have better object recognition functionalities and more support technologies. Maybe they have a bit less browser support than Selenium, but that's okay.

Compared to any of the competitors that I’ve looked at, the HPE tool is a bit smaller. So, it makes it more fun to use it because you don't have such a large application as the Rational test suite or the Functional Tester. And I think it was more stable. So, even at the beginning, we had fewer problems than with Functional Tester and object recognition. But, I think both tools are not bad.

The major advantage of LeanFT or UFT Pro is that it is easier to integrate it into ALM. So, with Functional Test we always had these space scripts in ALM, and then we had to call Functional Tester somehow and bring the results back to ALM. It's easier with LeanFT.

Try to build a test automation framework so that part of it could be managed by the development teams. And at least the page objects should be released together with the software to test. This makes everything easier for the test automation team. And makes the test automation solution faster.

The solution helps to accelerate software testing automation. It will help to reduce lead time and increase productivity and efficiency. 

The tool could be a little bit easier. 

I would rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten.

I would rate UFT Developer's scalability an eight out of ten. 

Support is very good. 

Positive

The tool's setup is deep and it took me almost two to three months to complete. You need to have great knowledge of software transformation. I would rate the installation a ten out of ten. 

I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

We use both the on-premises and cloud deployment models of this solution. The testing tool needs to connect to the real environment and that almost always means on-premises. However, you can also use a cloud variant, but then you're working on virtual machines in the cloud.

The most valuable feature for me is the number of protocols that can be tested. It not only tests Web, but also SAP, Siebel, .Net, and even pdf. That's a strong point of this tool because open source tools like Selenium can run only one protocol, like Web, for example. A lot of legacy systems do not use Web as their front end, however. They use a Windows-built .Net application or something else that is not web-enabled.

It's now too heavy and they should be making it faster. We do an attempt at automatic regression testing. We schedule a test to start at a certain time. It takes a lot of time to download the resources and start UFT. Competitors in this area have tools that start faster and run the test faster. For example, if the test at our side will take 10 minutes, another tool will do that in one minute.

I would like to see them add a feature that tells you if you can run parallel sessions in it. If it were a lot faster than the Chrome version that would be a major win.

The product itself is a stable tool when running on a stable machine. However, a lot of things can influence the stability of the tool. Windows updates can have an influence on the stability of the product. Virus scanner local policies can have an influence on the stability of the product.

It's a single run, so that means that you cannot usually use it multiple times in one session.

The problem is that when you run this through a development tool you must be an actual developer to program the script language. Normally there are other script languages for example, .Net or Java. When you have Java development name, then this tool would normally not fit into it because it has another language. It chooses another language, so that would be complicated for developers to use it. And the problem is that sometimes the programming language it too complex for just help us to make scripts.

The reason we chose this solution is because it is the company-wide chosen solution. It integrates with other tools, such as ALM, a test management tool. We are also going to move up to Octane, but Octane also integrates with UFT. Octane also introduces the possibility of connecting to other tools via Jenkins or Bamboo. The main connection with most ports will be UFT, though. If you look at other tools that are compatible in the market, such as IBM or smaller, open-source tools, they will fit for us, but they have the issue that they only work with one protocol. They only work with Web. If you have complex protocols, then you are forced to use the commercial solutions. IBM or another one that's based on another technique would then also work.

For me the setup is simple but I think that when you have to do it for the first time, you have a lot of choices which you can make. Then it would be complex, but I think that with the knowledge that I have it is easy. I can do the installation of such a tool in 30 minutes. It can also be set up in collaboration with other tools, but then you have to set some environment settings before you can do that. If you do not know that, then you will need to search for that information before you have the answer. That's some knowledge that you have to be aware of.

Testing is much more complicated than presented by the provider. They make it look like it's easy, but that's not the case. There is a lot of work put into it and you must also maintain the scripts. Sometimes people think that you don't have to maintain it, but scripts will not update themselves. There is no artificial intelligence in these kinds of tools.

For example, if you have a login page and you get an update then you also have to update your script. This is because it used an object repository where it put in some objects to verify it. When objects change, the script won't run or at least it will fail. There are already tools that have a functionality that can update the object repository that it uses because it sees similarities in the tests that would normally run. The tool sees an update to objects and it can interpret that as a correct version of the tests that should run.

I would rate UFT overall as seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution to enable us to easily automate tasks on several different applications based on different technologies.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the number of plugins for object recognition. The predefined libraries allow us to automate tasks.

UFT is like a flagship of testing tools, but it's too expensive and people are not using it so much. They should work on their pricing to make themselves more competitive.

The performance can be improved. There are much faster tools now. This solution is a bit older and works with older systems, but it's a bit slower because of this.

They should modernize the product a little bit. The UI looks okay, but it also looks like something that is ten to twenty years old.

The stability of the solution is good.

The scalability is good.

Technical support is okay, as long as you pay for it. It's not free.

You don't need a lot of in-depth experience to handle the setup. It's enough if you read some documentation. There are plenty of tutorials to help you if you need it.

I handled the implementation myself.

Pricing depends on which model you choose. The cloud version has a monthly fee, whereas on-prem versions offer yearly or monthly fees. You can also purchase a permanent license. If your license expires, you will still be able to use the solution, but without support. 

We use the on-premises version. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

If a company doesn't have people who are skilled in programming, they definitely should go with UFT, as it's simple to use and doesn't require programming knowledge.

UFT Pro is something that is completely new, and has been rewritten from the beginning. They may be trying to compete with Selenium, but Selenium is completely free, unlike this solution.

We use UFT Developer during the application testing process.

The most valuable feature is the Object Model, where you can directly pull up the object as a global or a local. It does not require as much scripting.

A basic level of programming knowledge is definitely needed to use this solution. It would be improved by adding a drag-and-drop interface to help alleviate the coding. We are investigating solutions where a layperson, with an interest in automation, can begin to work with the tool.

I have been using this solution for one and a half years.

This is a stable solution and it is used perhaps three times per week.

We may increase our usage in the future but it depends on our clients and their requirements. If their operations increase then our usage will as well.

UFT Developer is easy to scale. I am not sure how many people use this solution in the entire company, although I can say that we have approximately nine people who use it in my group.

The technical support has been fine.

We are also working with Selenium, which is an open-source solution. We did not use another tool before these.

The initial setup is of medium complexity. The deployment took a little longer than we had expected. We had planned for one day and it took a few hours longer than that.

The deployment was done by four to five people from our in-house team. They are mainly IT architects.

The cost of this solution is a little bit high and we are considering moving to another one.

We are considering moving to Katalon Studio in order to save costs. I am also hoping that it will be easier for people with non-programming backgrounds to use.

This is a good solution and I recommend it. I also recommend using Selenium if people want to use a more web-based application.

Overall, Micro Focus UFT is a good tool, but it is a little bit expensive.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our primary use at this time is mainly to automate testing of Windows and web-based GUIs.

The recording feature is quite good as it helps us to find out how things are working. 

There is quite a bit of room for improvement. As time has gone on the product has failed to improve. Basically, Micro Focus' UFT (Unified Functional Testing) was a good product 15 years ago when it was first introduced. They have not really made substantial changes to it since then — which they should have done to make the product more useful and competitive. The gap between it and the competition has shown in the product's lack of development.

To improve the product they could better integrate the API and the GUI testing. At the moment, when you run the GUI testing, you run it in Visual Basic Script — which is a very old Microsoft product that Microsoft no longer supports. For the API testing, you have to write your tests in C# or C++. If you write a functional library for one test process, you can not use the same library with another test. A further problem is that even if you have a functional library written in VBScript, you can not use it for multiple projects. You have to make a copy of the library for each project that you use it with. Then, of course, every time you make a change, you have to replicate the change manually through the different projects and that is a real pain.

A new feature that I would like to see is better integration between the API and the GUI testing so that you could use the same libraries and the same scripting languages and so forth. That is a major missing piece because of their lack of effort in development over time.

The stability of the product is adequate.

When it comes to scalability we never had the opportunity to run UFT in parallel with multiple platforms, so I don't know that the product hits the mark at this point for the type of scalability we would want to test.

We did actually contact the technical support for an issue once. The support was actually quite good. But, honestly, that is what I would expect for a product at this price point.

Micro Focus UFT is an okay solution for specific purposes that we use it for. I also use Katalon Studio and, since Katalon Studios is Java and Groovy-based, it is much better and more up-to-date for testing.

The initial setup was reasonably straightforward. I have no issues there. I don't remember exactly because it was a long time ago, but the setup was not excessively long. It was just like any basic software installation.

We didn't need to use a reseller or a consultant for the implementation. We did it on our own.

As far as comparing to other products, the licensing costs for UFT are very high. I don't remember the cost exactly. The maintenance of the service contract was very high as well and, frankly — compared with more modern tools — it was and is not worth it.

A good thing is that there are not any costs in addition to standard licensing fees, but the standard licensing fees are going to be high in comparison to other products so you don't gain anything.

My advice for those considering this product as a solution is that they should look closely at alternative products to make a good comparison of features, capabilities, and cost. At the moment we are also using a product called Katalon Studio, which is freeware and it does pretty much everything that we want it to do.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using UFT is to compare solutions. I would go so far as to say that even if UFT were free, I would still prefer Katalon Studio.

On a scale from one to ten where ten is the best, I would rate UFT Pro as only a five now. I would rate it so low because over the last 10 or 15 years this product, which was a superior solution at one point, has not really been developed to its capacity.

What’s awesome about it is you can use the same language the developers already use.

LeanFT integrates with our developers work-flow. Our developers can now perform automation using familiar tools, programming language, and IDE. This helps get the whole team involved in test automation.

In the next release I'd like to see HP enable LeanFT to work with Sauce Labs. I know HP has their own solution, but it would be better if it were more integrate-able in the spirit of being more open-source, more friendly.

We haven’t been using it that long, but it has been stable for the last month we’ve been using it. It works as advertised thus far.

Very positive: seems like it’s a lightweight solution that's not going to impact what we were already doing as it's just a "wrapper" on top of what we already do.

Haven’t had any technical support yet, but the demo team was great.

We had used a lot of different applications and we needed to shift left to new development practices. So we ended up using Selenium without native Java. Unfortunately, before LeanFT, we ran into issues where Selenium couldn’t handle the functionality of all the applications.

It's very straightforward-- you just import a library like you would any other tool and go.

Smartbear.

To me, it has to be using the same tools that the developers already use and that it fits in with their workflow. Testers should be using the same tools as the developers, making the development process easier.