Ugyen Dorji is our Quality Assurance guru here at ServMask, He is from the small Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan in the mountains of the Himalayas and he believes in the Buddhist teaching that “the most valuable service is one rendered to our fellow humans” and his work ethic shows this. He is responsible for the robust Quality Assurance process for our All in One WP Migration plugin.
The plugin is used to easily and seamlessly migrate entire WordPress websites from one server to another and it also has the functionality to take scheduled backups to various cloud storage systems and local servers. Ugyen Dorji knows that the ongoing work that he does to verify and validate our plugin gives users confidence in the quality of our products and services.
The quality of any plugin is dependent on how well it’s maintained and assured and with the complexity of the ever changing WordPress environment, Ugyen Dorji is kept fully engaged. Buddha says “Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.” Ugyen Dorji diligently follows his process despite the continuously changing WordPress environment.
Periodically, updates are required to the plugin to add new functionality or to integrate with WordPress updates. Both plugin updates and WordPress updates mean that testing is required. WordPress is updated between 1 and 4 times a month and each time, Ugyen Dorji retests the full functionality of the plugin to make sure it is still working optimally. Ugyen Dorji is not happy unless he is confident of the quality of the plugin and that it is valuable to our users.
The three step Quality Assurance process:
· Testing
· Issue Capture
· Reporting and Resolution
Testing the functional and non-functional requirements of the plugin
Prior to the release of an update to the plugin and for each WordPress release, Ugyen Dorji tests against all functional and non-functional requirements. The plugin is tested for each step of the process to import and export a website, ensuring that no data is missed in any database, media, post, pages, plugins and themes. The plugin is then tested for the compatibility of all the extensions that connect the plugin to the various cloud storage services and by FTP. Ugyen Dorji tests the plugin by authenticating each cloud extension and the FTP extension. An import and export is conducted with each of the services, and ftp is tested first just with ftp, then sftp with password and sftp with private key. Another aspect that makes the testing even more complicated is that each aspect is tested on Windows OS, Mac OS and Linux.
Ugyen Dorji then tests the plugin with our proprietary service, http://traktor.servmask.com that confirms that each hosting provider generates a valid backup.
During the testing Ugyen Dorji ensures that all plugin functions are maintained. He checks that the backup settings are retained and that the most recent backup is displayed correctly. He also checks the configuration of the backup schedule to ensure that the plugin displays the next backup date correctly, as well as the backup scheduler options, so that you can choose if you want your website backed up hourly, daily, weekly or monthly.
Ugyen Dorji also verifies the compatibility of the All in One WP Migration plugin by testing each wordpress.org plugin with our base plugin.
Through this process Ugyen Dorji assures all of the non-functional and functional requirements of the plugin.
Capturing and recording issues found
We have invested in TechSmith quality assurance products to identify and capture issues; Snagits to captures screenshots and Camtasia to record the screen. The video editing functionality in Camtasia is valuable to explain the further details of any issue. We use Screencast.com to share the recorded video links. This process helps us to investigate any issues by reproducing each case for our technical team and WordPress support.
Reporting of plugin errors, faults, failures and defects
The final part of the Quality Assurance process is to report plugin issues to our software development team. Any new issues, such as plugin bugs, fatal errors, incorrect steps or server issues that are detected during the Quality Assurance process need to be fixed. Ugyen Dorji collates all screenshots, screencasts and detailed findings into a detailed Quality Assurance report and shares it via Google Drive with the software development team. When the software development team rectify the issues and release an update to the All in One WP Migration plugin, Ugyen Dorji’s Quality Assurance process starts again from the beginning.
This article was first published in June 2017 on artplusmarketing.com