Quickstart

Everything you need to know to start testing your mobile app with Waldo!

We've created this step-by-step guide with everything you need to know to get started with Waldo. The Onboarding process consists of:

  • Creating an account.
  • Uploading your app to Waldo.
  • Creating and running your first tests.
  • Organizing your test suite.
  • Integrations

Once you complete these essential first steps, you will then learn how to create your first tests with strong fundamentals.

Getting started (estimated time: 15 minutes)

1) Sign up

You'll need a working company email to continue the sign up process. Complete the form and click the Sign Up button to receive a verification email. Head to your inbox to confirm your email.

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2) Upload your mobile app to Waldo

Give your app a name and choose your platform. Click Get Started.

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Which development environment should I test on?

Since the goal is to test your end product, you will want to setup Waldo on the environment closest to production. Most of our customers use Staging.

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Click the upload box to locate and select the zip file containing your myapp-name.app . You can also simply drag & drop the zip file in the dedicated area.

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If your .app file is configured correctly, you"ll be directed to Waldo's main dashboard.

If you're having issues with uploading your app, this article troubleshoots the most common errors: Diagnosing your upload failure

If needed, please contact our support team.

The default Starter and Team plan only accepts simulator build. For more information on how to export a simulator build for Waldo visit Exporting your build for Waldo

Create and run your first tests (estimated time: 5 minutes)

Waldo was built to give an experience that's as close as possible to the real user experience. Therefore, if you know how to navigate your app on your phone, you already know how to record a test on Waldo!

1) Create a test

The first time you see the Waldo Dashboard, screen prompts will help you walk through how to launch the recorder and create a test. You can also read our step-by-step guide here: Creating a flow

The most important factor to consider when creating a test is “Is it deterministic?”. Waldo is flexible and can adapt to dynamic content in your app without sacrificing reliability, however it does need a stable path to follow in order to ensure your app is functional from end-to-end. Therefore when you create a test, you essentially provide Waldo with a source of truth that Waldo will use to reliably report bugs and crashes.

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Organize Tests by folder

You can create folders to better organize your tests! Follow this guide to create folders

2) Run your test

The power of Waldo resides in being able to reliably replay your tests on new builds of your app.

Although it is recommended to run your test through your CI (see CI Run, you also have the option to manually trigger runs. They can be triggered at any given time by going to the Runs tab in the sidebar and clicking Run Tests.

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This option enables you to customize your run by selecting the build and specific tests you would like to launch, rather than needing to run the whole test suite. It even lets you run your tests on an older build of your app if necessary.

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3) Upload new builds

Now that you've created some tests and you know they run properly on the same build, Waldo will run the same tests every time you upload a new build and let you know precisely if/where things went wrong.

Understand your test results

The next step is to understand the results of your test runs.
For details on results visit : Understanding your Results

If you're not able to understand a reported issue or figure out why it's happening, contact us. We're happy to help.

Organizing your test suite

When you first sign-up for Waldo, your goal is to create 10 to 15 tests (ideally within the first month). Waldo helps you test your final product before it ships to production. In order to do so effectively, we recommend approaching each test from the perspective of the user.

Our customers find a lot of success starting with a “Sanity Checklist”. This list of user flows includes your app's entry points and main flows, such as:

  • Signing up flow
  • Logging in flow
  • Delete account flow
  • Feature-focused test
  • Regression test (a test to ensure your new update doesn't break something that wasn't broken in the previous build)
  • Smoke testing (daily test run to make sure main features are behaving normally)

From this point on, you can expand your test suite to include more regressions, app setting changes, feature-based tests, and smoke testing. Keep in mind that you should first have a strong foundation of core functions.

Integrations

1) CI Integration (estimated time: 15 minutes)

To get the most out of Waldo, your app builds need to be packaged through your CI and we highly recommend doing the CI integration: it will run your test suite automatically with each commit of a new PR to master.

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What CI does Waldo support?

We support most CIs. We do recommend BitRise as it manages the whole app build configuration, making it one of the easiest CI to use and integrate with Waldo. If you're using this CI, use this one easy step to integrate with Waldo

How to integrate your CI:

  • Once you are logged into your account, go to the top-right corner of the navigation bar and click Documentation.
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  • Select your CI from the list on the right-hand side and follow the on-screen instructions.
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If you have any issues setting this up, drop us a line in the support chat!

2) Slack and Git integration (estimated time: 5 minutes)

Whats Next?

1) Expand your test suite

Once you have your 10-15 tests and you're all integrated, you can start thinking of expanding your test suite to cover more user flows in your app. Some of our customers run hundreds of tests every day!

If you need some test ideas, you can look into:

  • Flows that are reported as buggy by your users
  • Using dependencies to chain tests together and test more complex paths
  • Create tests for everything related to user profile or app settings

2) Have multiple, regular test runs

Some teams test the whole app right before shipping to production, but with Waldo you test continuously, even multiple times per day if necessary. Push new builds of your app through your CI and test that recent changes to your code don't break a flow that was behaving normally on the previous builds.

3) Add more device configurations

Waldo enables you to test your app in multiple languages and even multiples screen-sizes in parallel.

To add a device configuration, you can go into the Rules and adjust your configuration selections. Please visit our article on Run Rules to learn how to change your selections.

4) Maintain your tests suite

Each time you upload a new build of your app and run your tests, monitor your results to know exactly when bugs occur.

Update your tests when you make big changes to your app to keep your app suite reliable.

To further understand how to interpret your results visit Understanding your Results