Micro Focus proudly announces the general availability of Silk Central 17.0! If you already use Silk Central and you have a maintenance contract, you can upgrade to Silk Central 17.0 for free.
Silk Central 17.0, Micro Focus' premier test management solution, represents an innovative open solution that aids collaboration and controll for all testing related activites. As an open test management tool Silk Central allows users to unify all assets of the testing lifecycle in a central location for planning, execution (manual & automated), and reporting, by integrating with various requirements management, test automation, defect tracking, and source control tools, giving users full traceability of their software quality at all stages.
Highlights of Silk Central 17.0
Increased Data Security, Enhanced Stability and Scalability Through Instances
Silk Central 17.0 introduces a completely new, centralized page for managing your Silk Central infrastructure, and also introduces instances.
Such instances are independent sets of Silk Central services (application server (AS), front-end server (FE) and chart server (CS)), with their own database and execution server (ES) connections - which means physical separation of data and processes and therefore increased data security and enhanced stability and scalability compared to Silk Central Clients, which separate data logically within one database only.
Instances and their Silk Central services are managed through a common user interface called Instance Administration.
Additionally, all Silk Central services can now run in 64-bit mode.
Keyboard and Multi-Selection Support in Trees
The Requirements, Tests and Execution Planning trees now feature keyboard and multi-selection support which boosts efficiency dramatically. Basic navigation with the keyboard is also supported in the Reports and Code Coverage trees.
Following keyboard actions are supported:
Following keyboard actions for multi-selection are supported:
Mutli-Selection in the tree also brings additional functionality - for example you can now select several Execution Plans and run them.
Multi-Selection and Drag and Drop Support for Test and Requirement Assignments
Now the assignment grids in the Requirements, Tests and Execution Planning units support multi-selection and drag & drop. This means you can assign several requirements/tests within a single drag & drop action and you can remove several assigned requirements/tests in a single action.
Drag and Drop Tests to Execution Plan
Multi-Select Tests in Execution Planning Assignment
Rebranding
With version 17.0, all Silk products now fit together under the umbrella of the consolidated Micro Focus brand. With this move, the brands Attachmate, Borland, NetIQ, and Novell will disappear, while all the products of their respective brands become Micro Focus branded products.
Usability Enhancements
This section lists the usability enhancements that have been made throughout Silk Central 17.0.
Synchronizing Current Runs with all Updates
You can now synchronize all the information of current runs with a single click. If you have changed the test assignment of an execution plan, or if you have updated tests in the Tests area, and you want to reflect these changes in the current runs, click Synchronize Current Runs. This will update all assigned tests of the current runs. The Synchronize Current Runs button has moved from the Assigned Tests page to the Current Runs page.
XLSX Report Templates
Report templates in Silk Central are no longer limited to the outdated Excel XLS file type, but now also support the newer XLSX file type.
Locating a Testing Cycle in the Execution Planning Tree and Vice Versa
You can now locate a testing cycle in the Execution Planning tree and vice versa with a single click on the icon next to the testing cycle's name.
Assigning Manual Tests to All Testers of a Testing Cycle
In the Manual Execution Planning unit, you can now assign your selected tests to all manual testers of a testing cycle by simply dropping your selection onto the new icon in the test cycle header.
Dashboard Settings are Considered for Automatic User Account Creation
When letting Silk Central automatically create Silk Central user accounts after validating new users against an LDAP server, the dashboard settings of the selected template user are now copied for the new user.
Configurable List Size on Dependencies Page
A splitter has been added between the Master Execution Plans and Dependent Execution Plans lists on the Dependencies page, allowing you to change the size of the lists to your liking.
Linked Custom Requirement Properties
If the only value of a property is a URL, Silk Central automatically displays it as a link, which enables direct access to other web applications from within Silk Central.
Web Service Updates
This section lists the changes that have been made to the Silk Central Web services.
New API for Managing Execution Server Keywords
Two new web service methods have been added for managing execution server keywords. The web services getExecServerKeywords and updateExecServerKeywords can be found in the sccentities (MainEntities) instance.
Syntax:
String[] getExecServerKeywords(long sessionId, int execServerId) throws InvalidIdException, InternalException;
void updateExecServerKeywords(long sessionId, int execServerId, String[] keywords) throws InvalidIdException, InternalException;
Integration Enhancements
This section lists the enhancements that have been made to the integrations in Silk Central.
IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation Integration
Silk Central 17.0 offers out-of-the-box support for IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation, without the need to customize anything in your DOORS installation.
Office Import Enhancements
The functionality for importing requirements and tests from Microsoft Office has been enhanced.
Permission to Modify Office Import Mapping Files
A new permission has been added for modifying Office import mapping files. Users with the role Project Manager and Test Manager own this permission per default. Users with other roles will no longer be able to edit or create mapping files.
Ability to Assign Requirements to Imported Tests
A new property has been added to the test mapping file: Assigned Requirement IDs. If requirements should be assigned to the test, specify the ID's of those requirements as comma-separated list. Make sure that this column is formatted as "Text" in Excel, otherwise the assignment may not work.
Atlassian JIRA
The functionality around the integration with Atlassian Jira has been enhanced.
Atlassian 7 and JIRA Agile 7 Support
Silk Central now supports Atlassian JIRA 7 and JIRA Agile 7.
Pre-filtering Atlassian JIRA Agile Requirements
To limit the amount of requirements that are being synchronized, you can use the Custom JQL field to prefilter requirements before they are being synchronized. Create a query using JIRA Query Language (JQL) within your JIRA Agile system, then copy and paste the string into the Custom JQL field. For more information on JQL, visit Atlassian's Advanced Searching Documentation.
New Atlassian JIRA Issue Type and Custom Property Field Type Support
The Atlassian JIRA issue tracking integration now supports sub-task issue types and several new custom property field types. The Atlassian JIRA issue tracking integration now supports sub-task issue types by enabling you to set the issue's Parent Issue ID. Additionally, several new custom property field types are now supported:
• Date Picker / Date Time Picker
Note: These types are provided as text fields and need to be formatted like in JIRA: Date Picker: dd/MMM/yy (for example 24/Mar/16), Date Time Picker: dd/MMM/yy h:mm a (for example 24/Mar/16 4:11 AM)
• Group Picker (single group) / Group Picker (multiple groups)
• Project Picker (single project)
• User Picker (single user) / User Picker (multiple users)
Note: For JIRA version 5 and lower, users which are only part of the default jira-users group are not displayed.
• Version Picker (single version) / Version Picker (multiple versions)
Synchronization of Priority and Synopsis
When synchronizing the information about issues between Silk Central and your issue tracking system, the priority and synopsis of issues are now also updated automatically.
More Information
For more information on all new features of Silk Central 17.0, you can also refer to the Online Help.
Another valuable source of information: The Silk Central 17.0 Release Notes.
If you are already convinced and want to try out or buy Silk Central, don't hesitate to Contact Us!