Test case review & approvals

Test case reviews and approvals ensure that test cases meet your team’s quality standards before they are used in test runs. This process adds consistency, improves collaboration, and prevents incomplete or incorrect tests from reaching execution.

Enterprise teams can now implement a test case review and approval process to ensure test cases meet organizational standards. This collaborative process makes it easy for teams to add confidence to the testing process by building a Test Case library that accurately defines your application.

Why this matters

• For manual testers: You’ll know exactly which test cases are approved and ready to use.

• For reviewers: You can give structured feedback and request changes before approval.

• For QA managers: You gain visibility into case quality and review workload across projects.

Overview of test case statuses

Test Case Statuses are used to track the progress during the design of a Test Case, indicating whether a test case is being written, needs review, is approved for testing, or is in any other phase of your organization’s workflow. These test case statuses can be customized to meet your needs and approvals can be enabled on a per-project basis.

TestRail provides three default statuses for test case reviews:

1. Design: The test case is being written or updated. It's a Default status for every Test Case once it is created or edited.
2. Review: The test case is ready for peer or manager review.
3. Ready (Approved): The test case has been reviewed and approved for use.

How to customize test case statuses

As TestRail administrator, you can review the default test case statuses, edit existing ones or add new statuses as needed. In order to configure them, go to Admin > Customizations > Case Statuses. 

To edit an existing one, click on its name (or the pencil icon at the right side of the table).

Create a new status

1. Click the Add Case Status button.
2. Insert the name of the new status.
3. Set an abbreviation to display in grids and tables OR leave it empty if you want TestRail to use the full name.
4. Enable This case status is an approved status so that a Test Case with a version in an Approved status appears in test runs that only use approved test cases.
5. Enable Default? to mark it as the default status for new and updated cases.
   1. The status marked as default cannot be deleted while is set like that.

Test case review workflow

Once approvals are enabled, the lifecycle of a test case follows these steps:

1. Design - A tester drafts or updates the case..
2. Review - The case is submitted for feedback. Reviewers can comment or request updates.
3. Approved (Ready) - Once validated, the case is marked as ready for execution..

Each time a change is done in a test case, its status will be reverted to default status, indicating that changes have been made and the test case is again ready to be reviewed and approved. 

Tester can then assign the test case to a Reviewer who can approve or reject the changes, and add comments to the test case version.

Using Approved vs. Non-Approved Test Cases in Test Runs

By default. when you create a test run that includes all test cases, only the ones with a Ready (Approved) status will be included.

If you want to include non-approved cases (e.g., still in Design or Review), you have two options:

1. Select specific test cases manually when creating the run.

2. Use a dynamic filter to include cases with the statuses you want.

When you apply a filter while creating a test run, the Status field will appear in the Selection Filter section of the dialog. You can then choose which statuses (Design, Review, Ready) to include.

How to enable Test Case Approval

Test Case Reviews is an optional setting available for each project individually. 

For any project where a review process is required, Administrators have to go to Admin > Projects > Edit and check the box next to Enable Test Case Approvals.

How to assign a Test Cases for review

When you’re working on a test case in Design, you can manage assignments, comments, and status updates from a single place.

1. Open the test case.

2. On the right-side panel, locate the People & Status section.

3. Click Change to:

   • Assign the case to a team member

   • Add comments or helpful notes

   • Update the case status (Design → Review → Ready)

When you assign a case to someone, TestRail automatically sends them an email notification.

If you’d like to adjust the content of these emails, see the Email Customization Guide.

It is also possible to assign and comment on test cases in bulk by selecting multiple test cases and clicking on the Assign To button on top of the cases.

You can also update the status of multiple test cases using the bulk edit screen for test cases. Select multiple test cases within a test suite, then press the Edit button.

Reviewing test cases 

Before testing begins, test cases can go through a review process to ensure accuracy and completeness.

• When a change is made: The test case status automatically reverts to a default state, such as Design, to show that updates were made but not yet approved.

• Next step: The tester can assign the case to a reviewer.

• Reviewer actions: Reviewers can approve or reject the changes, and add comments directly to the test case version.

• Important note: Any test run created with All Test Cases will only include cases that are already approved.

Tracking Test Case workload

You can easily monitor a team member’s test case design workload from within a project:

1. Open the project.

2. Go to the TODO tab.

3. Select the TEST CASES sub-tab.

Here you’ll see:

• All test cases that are not yet approved (Design or Review status).

• Which cases need attention.

• A quick view of recent comments on each case.

This helps testers and leads stay on top of pending work and feedback.

Viewing other Users’ workloads

By default, testers only see their own workload. Administrators can extend visibility so certain roles can also view the workload of other team members.

To enable this:

1. Go to Admin > Users & Roles > Roles.

2. Locate the role you want to update.

3. Check the box for ToDo Workload for Other Users.