Configure object identification

Relevant for: GUI tests and components

When OpenText Functional Testing learns an object, it learns a set of properties and values that uniquely describe the object within the object hierarchy. In most cases, this description is sufficient to enable the test to identify the object during the run session.

If you find that the description used for a certain object class is not ideal for the objects in your application, or if you expect that the values of the properties in the object description may change frequently, you can configure the way that objects are learned and identified. You can also map user-defined objects to standard test object classes and configure how to learn objects from your user-defined object classes.

By default, a predefined set of properties is learned for each test object. If these mandatory property values are not sufficient to uniquely identify a learned object, assistive properties and/or an ordinal identifier might be added to create a unique description.

Mandatory properties are properties that are always learned for a particular test object class.

Assistive properties are properties that are learned only if the mandatory properties learned for a particular object in your application are not sufficient to create a unique description. If several assistive properties are defined for an object class, they are learned one at a time, until a unique description is created for the object. If assistive properties are learned, those properties are added to the test object description.

If the combination of all defined mandatory and assistive properties is not sufficient to create a unique test object description, the value for the selected ordinal identifier is learned as well. For details, see Ordinal identifiers. If a specific test object relies mainly on ordinal identifiers, you can also define visual relation identifiers for that test object, to help improve identification reliability for that object. For details, see Visual relation identifiers.

When you run a test or component, it searches for the object that matches the learned description (without the ordinal identifier). If no object matches the description, or if multiple objects match the description, the Smart Identification mechanism is used (if enabled) to identify the object. In many cases, a Smart Identification definition can help identify an object, if it is present, even when the learned description fails due to changes in one or more property values. The test object description is used together with the ordinal identifier only in cases where the Smart Identification mechanism does not succeed in narrowing down the object candidates to a single object.

Use the Object Identification Dialog Box to configure the mandatory, assistive, and ordinal identifier properties to use when creating descriptions of the objects in your application, and to enable and configure the Smart Identification mechanism. The Object Identification dialog box also enables you to configure new user-defined classes and map them to an existing test object class so that objects from your user-defined classes can be recognized when you run your test or component.