What's New in UFT One 2021 R1

The many new features and enhancements included in UFT One 2021 R1 are described below.

What's New video

Watch the What's New video to learn about the new features included in 2021 R1:

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AI-based testing enhancements

UFT One's AI-based testing continues to evolve. UFT One 2021 R1 introduces the following enhancements when running AI-based tests.

Enhancement Description
AI models updated

AI-based testing now offers even better accuracy and performance.

In addition, table identification is improved.

Automatic scrolling

This version includes the following updates to automatic scrolling:

  • If you run AI-based tests with the automatic scrolling enabled, the test report includes the amount and direction of scrolling used to find each step's object.

  • Automatic scrolling on mobile applications is now faster, but is supported only when working with UFT Mobile 2021 or later.

New AI object methods

Use new AI object methods to fine-tune your test steps:

  • Use various click methods on AIObjects, AITextObjects, and AITableCell objects:

    LongClick, RightClick, MultiClick, and DoubleClick.

  • Set the text value of AIObjects and AITableCells using SetText and SetTextSecure.

  • Retrieve the number of visible rows and columns in an AITable using VisibleRowCount and VisibleColumnCount.

  • Take a screen capture of any AI object in your application using CaptureBitmap.

See the AI-based testing section of the UFT One Object Model Reference for GUI Testing.

AIRunSettings enhancements

You can now switch between the UFT One OCR settings and the AI OCR settings during a test run.

You can also use the AIRunSettings object during a test run to retrieve the current runtime settings, enabling you to restore any values you change during the run.

See the AIRunSettings Object in the UFT One Object Model Reference for GUI Testing.

Remote AI Service connection

You now have more flexibility when setting up the access to your remote AI service:

  • Configure proxy settings, if required by your network.

  • Use the Test Connection button to verify your settings and detect connection errors earlier.

See Configure the remote AI Object-Detection service connection.

Running AI-based mobile tests in parallel

You can now run all AI-based mobile tests in parallel by using Parallel Runner. See Run UFT One tests in parallel.

Contained objects (tech preview)

In the AI Object Inspection window, you can now add a relation to the description of an object inside a table or calendar container.

See Add AI-based steps to your tests.

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Web testing enhancements

UFT One 2021 R1 provides the following updates for web testing:

Enhancement Description
IE mode on Chromium Edge
  • You can now spy and record on web applications in IE mode on Chromium Edge.

    For more information, see IE Mode in Edge .

  • When running tests on web applications in IE Mode on Chromium Edge:

    The browser's number of tabs property is now correct.

    Each Browser.OpenNewTab step is listed once in the run results.

Progressive Web Apps UFT One now can identify web objects in Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) running on Chrome and Chromium Edge.
Web-based SAP applications

You can now test more types of Web-based SAP applications on Firefox 91, ESR 91, or ESR 78.

See Web-based SAP support.

Chrome device emulation

The list of emulated devices UFT One offers for selection on the Record & Run Settings > Web pane has been updated.

See Web Tab (Record and Run Settings Dialog Box).

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PDF Add-in enhancements

The PDF Add-in is now fully supported and includes the following updates:

Enhancement Description
Create a page checkpoint that checks the image sources

You can manually create a page checkpoint to check the image sources on a selected PDF page during a recording or editing session.

See Filter Image Check / Filter PDFImage Check Dialog Box.

Open multiple PDF documents at a time

You can now open multiple instances of the PDF Testing Utility, enabling you to test more than one document at a time. For example, you can retrieve text from one document and use it in another.

See PDF Add-in.

PDFText object

PDFText objects are now supported, providing the following functionality:

  • Add PDFText objects to the local object repository.

    Use properties to define a PDFText object in the object repository or use the Add PDFText Object to Local toolbar button. Select an area in your application that contains text and UFT One creates a corresponding text object. See Work with PDFText test objects.

  • Create and run steps on PDFText objects.

  • Use common methods such as Highlight.

  • Use the GetText method to retrieve an object's text.

See the PDFText object in UFT One Object Model Reference for GUI Testing.

Record and Run Settings You can now customize record and run settings for PDF tests. See PDF Tab (Record and Run Settings Dialog Box).

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GUI testing enhancements

UFT One 2021 R1 provides the following updates for GUI testing:

Enhancement Description
Object Identification Center updates

The Object Identification Center (OIC) is now fully supported and enables the following functionality:

  • Compare two spied objects or compare a spied object with an existing object in your object repository.

  • Create an object repository for adding spied objects on ALM.

  • Add spied objects to an object repository on ALM.

    While you are adding objects to the object repository, the open application can be closed.

  • Use the Remote Object Spy in the OIC to spy on applications running in Safari on a remote Mac computer.

  • For password edit boxes in WPF and Web applications, spied password values are hidden.

See Use the Object Identification Center.

Insight test objects

To identify Insight test objects more accurately, you can add additional description properties such as skipmakeobjvisible, methodoptionorder, and ratiotestthreshold to the objects in the object repository.

See InsightObject description properties in UFT One Object Model Reference for GUI Testing.

Connect to Azure databases with MFA enabled

UFT One now lets you connect to Azure databases with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) enabled in one of the following ways:

  • Use a DSN file

  • Use a ODBC connection string provided by Azure

Both methods require you to install the latest ODBC driver. See Import information from a database with MFA enabled.

Password handling

You can now store and retrieve secret strings on a credential management service such as AWS Secrets Manager and Azure Key Vault in UFT One. This enables you to avoid hard-coding sensitive information into your UFT One tests.

  • Configure the connection to the credential manager using the PasswordUtil.Setting method or in the Credential Manager pane (Tools > Options dialog box > GUI Testing tab > Credential Manager).

  • Use the following PasswordUtil methods to connect to or disconnect from a credential management service, retrieve secret values, list secret names, and store your secrets.

    PasswordUtil.Connect, PasswordUtil.Disconnect, PasswordUtil.GetSecret, PasswordUtil.ListSecrets, PasswordUtil.SetSecret

See Credential Manager Pane (Options Dialog Box > GUI Testing Tab) and the PasswordUtil object in UFT One Object Model Reference for GUI Testing.

Auto-save tests

UFT One automatically saves copies of your open local GUI tests at regular intervals (every 3 minutes by default) as you work. This helps recover any unsaved test changes if UFT One closes unexpectedly.

The auto-save feature is turned off by default. You can turn it on or customize it in the Options dialog box (Tools > Options > GUI Testing tab > General pane).

See Working with Auto-Save.

IsPartialRun statement

To check whether your test run or debug session started from a specified step or from the beginning of the test, use the IsPartialRun utility statement.

See the IsPartialRun statement in UFT One Object Model Reference for GUI Testing.

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CI-CD plugin enhancements

UFT One 2021 R1 provides the following updates when working with CI-CD servers:

Enhancement Description
Azure DevOps

Install version 3.0.0 of the UFT One Azure DevOps extension to make use of the following enhancements: 

  • ALM Lab Management runs:

    • You can now run build verification suites in addition to test sets.

    • You can now connect to an ALM server that requires SSO authentication.

    • You can now run tests on hosts configured in the ALM Lab Management setup with the Automatch option. This is supported in addition to the previously supported specific host allocation.

  • Enhanced support for release pipelines.

  • If your Azure DevOps job fails and you choose to Rerun failed jobs, the report now clearly displays the results of each run.

See UFT One and Azure DevOps Server or Services.

Jenkins

Install version 7.2 of the Jenkins plug-in to benefit from the following enhancements:

  • Pipeline job:

    • You can now use a pipeline job to run UFT One tests from your local machine.

    • You can now use a pipeline job to publish test results for UFT One tests run from your local machine, ALM, and ALM Lab Management.

  • Test runs from ALM and ALM Lab Management, which pass with warnings, are now more accurately marked in the Jenkins console output.

  • Tests run from non-existing or empty test sets on ALM and ALM Lab Management are now handled correctly.

  • You can now choose whether to define your ALM credentials within your jobs or globally.

  • When configuring a build step for your job to run local UFT One tests, you can directly provide parameter values without preparing a batch file.

  • For test runs that time out, the job status and tests are now accurately marked in the test results.

See UFT One and Jenkins.

Bamboo

UFT for Bamboo plugin version 1.9 and later:

You can now run UFT One tests on a remote Windows machine from a Bamboo server using the remote agent even if the UFT One and Bamboo server are not installed on the same machine.

See Run tests from a Bamboo server installed on a different machine.

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UIA Pro add-in

In UFT One 2021 R1, UIAPro objects that implement the Text pattern now support the following methods:

Method Functionality
ClearSelection

Clear any text selections in an object.

GetVisibleText and GetSelection

Retrieve all visible text or selected text from an object.

Select and SelectAll

Select the specified text or all text of an object.

ScrollIntoView

Scroll a text control and bring the text in a specified area into view.

See the UIAPro object in UFT One Object Model Reference for GUI Testing.

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API testing enhancements

UFT One 2021 R1 provides the following updates for API testing:

Enhancement Description
Using encrypted passwords in an HTTP request body

To protect sensitive data from being displayed in your API test, test output, and test report, UFT One now enables you to insert encrypted passwords into the body of a XML or JSON HTTP request. This is supported when you create a REST service, a SOAP service, and an HTTP request activity.

See Enter the request body directly - optional and Modify the JSON body.

Compare XMLs activity

You can now configure whether the comparison ignores white spaces. Use the option available in the Input/Checkpoints tab when you create or edit Compare XMLs activities.

Note: In earlier versions, the default was to ignore white spaces. This setting still remains in place for existing activities.

However, from UFT One 2021 R1, the default value used when creating a new Compare XMLs activity is false (do not ignore white spaces).

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Installation updates

A smaller and faster installation version of UFT One is now available.

  • When installing UFT One, you can choose not to include the ABBYY OCR engine if your tests do not use text recognition.

    If you want to install the ABBYY OCR engine at a later time, simply run the installation program again using the Change option, and select the ABBYY OCR engine on the Custom setup screen.

  • You can also download an installation package that does not include the ABBYY OCR engine files at all. To do this, select the Core UFT One DVD package on the free trial or Software Licenses and Downloads page.

    To later add the ABBYY OCR engine to your UFT One installation, download the separate OCR Expansion Pack from the same location and run the installation program's Change option, selecting the feature.

See Install UFT One with the install wizard and Install UFT One silently.

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Usability enhancements and fixes

UFT One 2021 R1 provides the following new usability enhancements and fixes:

Area Enhancement
Automatic registry repair after a Windows update

After a Windows update, UFT One automatically triggers a registry repair program that fixes registry errors caused by the update. This enables you to continue using UFT One without manually repairing the installation.

User-defined RDP resolution

When running UFT One tests over a remote connection, you can set the resolution to use on the remote computer after the remote connection is disconnected.

Do one of the following:

New look and feel of icons

UFT One includes a fresh new icon design for test objects, context menu options in the Editor and Keyword View, and Record toolbar buttons.

Terminal emulators

UFT One now correctly identifies objects' locations on Java-based Terminal Emulators such as IBM i Access or HOD when spying and highlighting.

In addition, UFT One can now recognize Java objects used in these emulators, such as menu items.

See IBM i Access - Client solutions.

Java Add-in UFT One can now open Java applications, even if the java.library.path was overwritten or is not properly defined.

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Newly supported technology versions

UFT One now supports the following technology and browser versions:

Technology versions

Note: Technology versions marked with an * are also certified retroactively in earlier UFT One versions. For details, check the relevant UFT One version's Support Matrix or Product Availability Matrix online.

Technology Supported versions
Angular 13
AutoPass

12.0.1*, 12.1.3, 12.3.0

Bamboo server

8
DevExpress WinForms 21.1
Eclipse SWT 4.19, 4.20, 4.21

Java

  • Oracle Java SE 17

  • OpenJDK 17

  • Zulu OpenJDK 17

Follow the configuration requirements in Java environment variables.

Oracle Forms Standalone Launcher (FSAL) for Oracle Forms 12c applications
PowerBuilder 2019 R3
Reflection Desktop 17.0.1*
Rocket Terminal Emulator (formerly Seagull BlueZone) 10.1 (32 & 64 bit)
SAP
  • SAP Fiori 1.96

  • SAP GUI 7.60 patch 13

  • SAP GUI 7.70 up to patch 5

  • SAP NWBC Client 7.0 up to patch 23

  • SAP NWBC Client 7.7 up to patch 9

  • SAP S/4HANA 2020

We recommend working with the latest supported patches. For known issues when working with earlier patches, see Known Issues - Windows-based SAP.

Windows Windows 11, Windows 10 21H2 update

Newly supported browser versions

Browser Supported versions
Chrome

93-97

Chromium Edge

93-97

Firefox

91 ESR, 92-96

For more details, see the Support Matrix.

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Localization updates

UFT One 2021 R1 is provided in the following languages:

English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese.

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See also: