Do you know the pain of doing the same thing again, all over again and again? Now imagine you need to document the same process, same results multiple times for each business/company branch.

Well, at Mitsui Rail Capital Europe (MRCE) they have thought about it in advance and took actions to make the life of key users easier and make this boring manual process faster and more fun with automated testing tool for JD Edwards by DWS: Dimension SwifTest.

MRCE

MRCE is part of one of the leading electric locomotive leasing companies. With a fleet of more than 340 state-of-the-art electric locomotives and many years of experience in the railway industry, they are a knowledgeable partner to support in the rail business. MRCE, as part of the Mitsui & Co. LTD group, was the first leasing company in Europe.

As one of the largest integrated global traders with around 45,000 employees, the Mitsui & Co. LTD group has been involved for decades in numerous global metro, short and long-distance traffic projects, as well as international railway logistics. Since 2010 MRCE Europe has been using JDE Edwards. Beginning of this year they invited us to give advice and supply an offering for the first step of their improvement process: The upgrade of JDE 9.0 to JDE 9.2 as functional "as is". The goal is simple, everything works the same in a newer version of ERP.

Next to the technical upgrade MRCE also took the chance to improve their process documentation and testing approach. Assuring testing efficiency with fewer possible interruptions for business operations.

Realizing the time-consuming aspect of repeating scripts in each round of system testing, knowing the importance of proper documentation for audit purposes, and limited time of human resources. MRCE did a smart choice to select the DWS Dimension SwifTest application.

Swiftest solution

"Dimension SwifTest™ is a testing solution designed specifically for, and integrated with, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. It has been designed with the non-technical end user in mind to make the creation, editing, scheduling and execution of testing as simple and efficient as possible. Savings of up to 60% can be realized during test execution, with further savings of 70% achievable during the creation and maintenance of test scripts.”[1]

Testing strategy

MRCE realizes the importance of testing for a successful project and took the responsibility in their hands with the support of Quistor as their partner.

Scripts are being created by selected MRCE users in the current 9.0 testing environment via SwifTest. These will then be used in 9.2, just with a simple change of the URL in the SwifTest setup.

How do you create a testing script in SwifTest?

You perform all steps you normally do in JD Edwards, but now via SwifTest. The tool executes them immediately and saves all the actions entered as a script which is then available for further execution but can be also used as a base for a user manual.

This removes painful manual creation and further maintenance of manual testing scripts being entered in excels/words document with all related screenshots etc.

Where are we now?

Now that all scrips have been created MRCE users start to enjoy the fruit of their work. In the upcoming project phase, they start testing the new environment with SwifTest. Key users then focus on just checking test results and do not spend time on entering the whole testing themselves. I see MRCE key users enthusiastic and curious about the project phase we are just entering. If you are also curious, stay tuned for the next edition of Q-pulse to read how it went. For myself is really nice to see that MRCE adopted me as part of their team and it is a great pleasure to work with such a dedicated group of people.

Future

MRCE will benefit from having all main processes scripted in Swiftest also after the upgrade is done. Scripts created can be run repeatably to test any future change requests, another data set or new functionality to assure that the process is still working smoothly. In case of process enhancements, testing script can be easily updated to reflect the change.

Thinking about how to automate your testing?

Well, go for it! In case you are also planning an upgrade, in case you are rolling out your template into new companies going live on JD Edwards, in case you care about staying code current... In all these examples and many others, having testing automated via SwifTest gives you a great benefit as you can repeat the tests easily anytime needed, with minimum additional effort.

There are basically three ways which you can choose to make it with SwifTest:

• Train your people for the tool and have the knowledge in house, or
• Benefit from Quistor MSF (Managed Services Functional) to save the time of your resources and let the testing and/or test script creation on experienced consultants.
• Combination of above.

[1] https://dws-global.com/solutions-for-jd-edwards-e1/test-automation/