Overview
The Activity Summary (Cases) report lets you view a list of all the test cases you have created or updated in a given time period. With this report, you can quickly monitor changes to your test case repository, do a pulse check on how much time is being spent on test case maintenance, see where test cases are continually having to be updated, who is writing what, and whether you have developed test cases for a new feature yet or not, and other key test case design KPIs.
Creating an Activity Summary (Cases) report
Prerequisites
Please make sure you have the following permissions enabled for your user role.
For more details, please check out the managing user roles and permissions guide
Steps to create an Activity Summary (Cases) report
To generate the Activity Summary (Cases) report in TestRail, you need to put a few configuration settings in place.
Navigate to the project for which you would like to create a test report. Then, navigate to the Report tab.
On the right side, you will see a pane titled Create a Report. Click on the Activity Summary report under the Cases section.
On Add Report page, you will find 3 main sections:
- Name and Description
- Report Options
- Access & Scheduling
Follow the below steps to configure each section
- Name and Description
Enter the report's name and description in their respective fields.
- Report Options
On the Add Report page, scroll down to Report Options. Here, you will see three tabs, GROUPING & CHANGES, SECTIONS, and TEST CASES.
GROUPING & CHANGES
Under the GROUPING & CHANGES tab, you can use the drop-down menu to choose whether you want to group test cases that have changed or updated by Day, Month, or Test Cases in your report. This lets you shape the presentation of your report so that you will see your changes either categorized by test case section and subsection or in a timeline view.
Grouping by test case lets you see if you’ve created or updated test cases by section. This can help you monitor test design work around specific functional areas or sections of test cases. Time-based groupings can identify which test cases you’ve created or updated most recently and see the activity across your test case repository over time.
By default, the report will show you both new and updated test cases (though the latest update only). You can use the checkboxes to focus the report instead on only new test cases or updated test cases if you are interested in reporting on activities like drafting new test cases versus test case maintenance, respectively.
The report’s default time frame is “This week.” However, you can adjust the time frame to suit your needs using the dropdown menu under Grouping & Changes. Your options include:
- Today: Data available for the current calendar date up until the time of your selection
- Yesterday: Data for the previous calendar date
- Last Week: Data for Sunday through Saturday of the previous calendar week
- This Week: Data for Sunday through Saturday of the current week
- Last Month: Data for the first to last day of the previous calendar month
- This Month: Data for the first to last of the current calendar month
- Custom: Data for your custom date range where you enter your own time frame filing in beginning and end dates in the date range fields.
SECTIONS
By default, your report will include all test cases in your test case repository that have been created or updated in the time frame you’ve selected. Under the Sections tab, you can filter which test cases will appear in the report by selecting individual sections or subsections. You can customize specific sections or subsections of test cases to get a more focused view of a particular area of the test case you are looking to monitor or track.
To select particular sections, click the radio button for The following sections only. Then choose sections from the multi-select field below. Remember, sections are used during test case creation to help group testing efforts. If your users have created subsections under the Test Cases tab, after creating sections, you will also see those subsections here in your options of sections to highlight in your report.
Note: You can select multiple sections and/or subsections to include in your report by holding Ctlr/Cmd on your keyboard.
Pro tip: Grouping test cases by application module or functional areas works best when creating sections.
TEST CASES
You can do the following under the TEST CASES tab:
- Filter the test cases to be displayed in the report by any case field—including custom case fields—except text fields, like Assigned to, Created By, Deletion Status, Estimate, Priority, etc. For instance, in the figure below, the Priority filter is applied and set to High.
- Choose the column(s) to include in the table to display information about test cases. The default columns include ID and Title. Depending on the information you want to display, you can add additional columns such as Type (of the test case), Priority, Created On, etc.
- Afterwards, you can set the maximum number of test cases to include in the report. The maximum number can be 100, 250, 500, 1000, 2500, or 5000.
- Access & Scheduling
This section enables users to set access and scheduling options. For more details, please refer to the General configurations guide.
Finally, scroll down and click Add Report to generate the report.
Reading an Activity Summary (Cases) report
At this juncture, it is important to note that generating your report may take time, depending on the amount of data included in the report. However, once the report is fully generated, you can view it by going to the Reports tab and clicking on the appropriate report under the list.
First, you will see a bar graph summarizing the number of test cases you have updated or created in the timeframe you selected when configuring the report. A green bar will represent the number of updated cases within your time or test case parameters if you left the box checked to show updated test cases. A blue bar will show the number of newly created cases meeting your requirements if you left the box check to show new test cases.
If you group test cases by day or month, the bar chart will display the number of test cases created or updated in each day or month included in the report, respectively. If you selected the test cases grouping, the bar chart will show you the total number of test cases for each activity category in the date range and filter parameters.
Note: If your team did not create any new test cases or update any existing test cases on a particular day or month in the report’s time range, that day or month will not be displayed in the bar chart or corresponding table.
Under the bar graph, you will see a table listing the changes organized by the sections you selected. Note the color scheme continues. In the table, you could see a blue Created label, and a green Updated label. Or, if that section item has been both created and updated in the given time frame, you will see blue C and green U buttons helping you quickly identify what has happened.
How the bar graph and the changes table appear in your report will depend on your section selections and filters. If you have asked for reporting on a subsection, you will note that it appears indented slightly to differentiate it from a section-level finding.
To learn more about a specific change, you can click on the particular case ID number (unless you previously checked the box Do not include links in your Report Options). This will take you to a new screen with those test case details. With a linked test case you can find out information such as priority, estimate, references, preconditions, steps taken, and expected results. To return the individual test case details to your report, use the back arrow in your browser window.
In the changes table, if you grouped your report by test cases, you’ll see a list of all the changes included in the report. To the right of the section name, you will also see a number in parentheses. This number captures the volume of created and altered items under that section.
