New Tosca Update Service makes it easier to adopt new features

#FeatureFriday

With the release of Tosca 15.0, we’re happy to introduce Update Service, a new capability that helps Tosca users stay current with all new updates and enhancements that we ship on a regular basis. But how does it work, and what does this mean for you?

Take the following scenario: SAP just released an update to SuccessFactors. To support these new features, there is an updated SAP engine available for Tosca. You and your team want to get your hands on the new functionalities right away to help streamline your test automation. But your high hopes come to a grunt as you soon realize that upgrading Tosca in entirety to the latest version can be cumbersome. Other teams who also use Tosca are not ready to adopt a new version.

With the new Update Service, we remove that bottleneck by enabling you to update bits and pieces of Tosca, such as selected engines or individual components, so you can apply new features more easily.

Think of app stores that let you update mobile apps in the background without bothering you. Tosca’s Update Service works in a similar way.

Keep up with technological advances, faster

Enterprise technologies from ERP providers to CRM systems and different web apps are constantly improving their software with new features and updates to bring added value to customers.

Adopting new features in applications is critical to the success of any business – it can lead to improved customer retention, optimized business processes, and more productive employees. Recognizing the need for speed of change, Tricentis frequently releases new updates to Tosca’s engines to ensure our test automation keeps in line with the latest innovations of different enterprise technologies.

Take Tricentis’ strategic partnership with SAP. Our engineering teams co-innovate side-by-side with SAP to ensure Tosca’s test automation supports all new SAP releases out-of-the-box. Because we ship updates to Tosca’s SAP engines frequently, SAP automation teams can now use Update Service to apply those features faster.

We also regularly ship new updates across all technology-specific engines in Tosca from Salesforce, XBrowser, DotNet, Java, Excel, and many more, so that our customers can benefit from the latest innovations relevant to their business.

With the new Update Service, you can now easily update any one of those required Tosca engines to help you keep up with changes faster, bringing you these added benefits:

• Easier deployment of new features
• Resilient and more robust test automation
• Faster way to keep up with the latest innovations released by enterprise app providers

Who should care?

• Tosca administrators or automation specialists who upgrade Tosca to have access to the latest versions and features for enterprise apps
• Business users who automate Salesforce, SAP, or other technologies that frequently release updates

How does it work?

To access the Update Service capability, enable this feature during the installation of Tosca. Currently, there are two options of setting it up: via deployment automation or by creating a shared folder. We recommend the deployment automation option which makes the distribution of packages much faster and easier to configure. You can also distribute update packages using NuGet feeds.

Watch this video to learn more.

 

With the release of Update Service in Tosca 15.0, we also added several enhancements:

• New mass restart functionality for DEX (Agent View) to automatically apply all fixes and updates on the engines
• Auto-update functionality where Tosca applies the latest updates to your engines without you having to restart any DEX agents

What’s next?

Want to see a list of the latest update packages? Head over to the download section of our new Support Hub. Here you can stay informed on which update packages pertaining to Tosca engines are ready for deployment.

In the meantime, you can try it out and share your ideas with us at the Tricentis idea portal. Our product experts are happy to hear suggestions on how to improve the experience.

Do you have more questions? Here are some additional details:

• How can I use Update Service?
  During installation of Tricentis Tosca, accept the terms and conditions of the ‘Update Service’ feature (available with Tosca 14.3 and higher). You also need to provide the path/address based on your preferred way of distributing the update packages for your engines.
• What is the difference between Update Service and update packages?
  Update Service is the name of this new feature. Update packages contain the updates to one or more engines. A package only contains fixes for an engine, like a standard patch. It never introduces new features.
• How can I use Update Service in a DEX environment?
  In Tosca 14.3, you had to restart your DEX agents manually so that Tosca could apply the fixes or updates to a particular engine. With Tosca 15.0, we added a new mass restart and auto-update functionality for DEX agents to help you get your engines instantly updated, even in DEX environments.
• How do you recommend me to set up my update packages?
  If you’re a larger enterprise organization, we recommend setting up Update Service through a deployment automation tool which makes the distribution of the updated packages much easier. It is also possible to set this up via a shared folder, but can require more maintenance.
• What engines and technologies are supported?
  • Baseline Engine 3.0
  • DotNet Engine 3.0
  • Excel Engine 3.0
  • HOST Engine 3.0
  • Java Engine 3.0
  • PDF Engine 3.0
  • PuTTY Engine 3.0
  • Salesforce Engine 3.0
  • SAP Engine 3.0
  • TextStream Engine 3.0
  • XBrowser Engine 3.0
• How do I know which engines have been updated?
  To stay informed about which engines have been updated or what features are included in our new releases, head over to the download section of the Tricentis Support Hub.
• How do I know which engines I am using?
  If you’re not sure which engines you are using or what Tosca version your latest tests ran against, don’t worry. You can always see that information in the Support Info file.

Learn more about how to enable the new Update Service capability here.