Understanding the QuickTest Professional Action Conversion Tool

The Action Conversion Tool can help you convert your existing actions to scripted components. A scripted component is a reusable script. that performs a specific task in your application. Scripted components can be combined with business components to build business process tests in your Quality Center project (with Business Process Testing support).

When using Business Process Testing, it is generally preferable to create new business components in Quality Center rather than convert existing test actions to scripted components, as this enables Subject Matter Experts working in Quality Center to maintain the components over time. In addition, scripted components can be modified only in QuickTest (and not in Quality Center). Therefore, Subject Matter Experts cannot modify scripted components, although they can view scripted components in read-only mode.

You may need to perform. additional tasks before conversion to enable the scripted component to run correctly. For example, after you add an action to the Action Conversion Tool, you may need to modify the action to make it suitable for conversion. For more information, see Understanding Conversion Requirements and Modifying Actions Prior to Conversion. After you convert test actions to scripted components, you can plan and create your business process test.

The conversion process is only one stage in preparing your test actions for use in Business Process Testing. After you convert an action to a scripted component, the resources that were associated with the action (for example, shared object repositories, function libraries, recovery scenarios, and QuickTest add-ins) are no longer associated with the converted scripted component. Therefore, after the conversion process, you must open each scripted component in QuickTest and associate it with the application area that can provide the component with the required resources and settings.

When you convert an action to a scripted component, you perform. the following steps:

Choose a test or a test folder that contains the actions you want to convert and add it to the Action Conversion Tool. When you add a test or a test folder, the Action Conversion Tool analyzes the test(s) to determine if the actions can be converted, or not. If an action cannot be converted, the reason is listed in the Status box. For more information, see Understanding Conversion Requirements.

You can generate a log file to view a list of all actions that can and cannot be converted, together with an explanation of why a particular action cannot be converted.

Select the check box(es) for the actions that you want to convert. You can modify the name and path of the target scripted component, if needed.

Convert the action(s) to scripted components.

View the conversion results.

After you convert an action, you can view it in both QuickTest and your Quality Center project. Before you begin working with the component, though, you need to associate it with application that can provide it with all of the required resources and setting.