AQuA/Keynote webinar Q&As
The following questions came up on the AQuA / Keynote Device Anywhere webinar in November 2013. View the four-part recording of the webinar
Q: Do you need to modify the device for remote display access?
A. The device is hardware integrated in to our hardware technology. This means that we electrically connect to the screen, device buttons, data cable and sim card but we under no circumstance touch the device OS to interact with it. Once it is integrated our software platform connects to our hardware and interacts with the device electronically.
Q: Gester, smart scroll and smart stay kind of features. How would KDA help in emulating these?
A. KDA (Keynote DeviceAnywhere) does not emulate any feature on the phone, it actually replays the action on the real device. We support Swipes, Long Key Presses and Clicks on the screen
Q: Do you have option to test NFC functionality?
A. Unfortunately because our devices are integrated in to our hardware it is quite difficult to get the phones to physically be within distance to perform NFC functions.
Q: Do you make sure that I get the same iPhone/iPad to test my app again and again, as I need to get the UDID added to the provisioning profile, and I won't add multiple UDIDs of your devices?
A. It is possible to continuously use the sam device for testing purposes. Our customers have the ability to reserve the same device during their testing periods and in fact they prefer to do this for the very reason of having to only add one UDID. We also now have the option to automatically sign apps with our own developer license so you don’t have to sign the App with individual UDIDs.
Q: How do you install your (my) app on the devices?
A. We have three options to deliver an App to the device, via Data Cable, Via an SMS containing a download link or using a service like TestFlight to download OTA the app to the device. We can now also automatically sign Apps using our own developer profile so you don’t have to.
Q: Can I install apps on these?
A. Yes you can install your own apps on the device, please see response above
Q: Audio testing. Is the microphone accessible? How much ambient audio does the enclosure create?
A. Using our tool you have the ability to access the microphone. The devices are in a data centre which can be fairly loud at times but we have customers that still use this feature without much problem.
Q: Will there be testing for windows phones apps in the future?
A. We already support Windows 7 and 8 phones in our service for manual an automated testing.
Q: I missed where the data centres are located. Could you please repeat?
A. Data Centres are located in the US, UK and Germany.
Q: And can somebody bring an nfc tag near my device?
A. For private systems it is possible to place NFC tags near devices but getting devices close enough to each other to use NFC is unfortunately not possible.
Q: Does device work with Proxy, like Charles?
A. Customers do have the ability to setup a proxy on the phone if the phone supports this. The DA Studio client also supports access via a proxy if you are behind one.
Q: Do you face USB disconnection (e.g. with the android debug bridge)? - How do you deal with that?
A. We do not rely on the Android Debug Bridge to access the device, we actually have a physical hardware connection via the data cable. We then create a virtual USB connection to give you access to the Android Debug Bridge if needed
Q: How responsive is the device when making clicks/swipes?
A. Is there significant lag from an end user perspective? The responsiveness of the devices is dependent on the users internet connection and geographic distance from the device. As we are streaming the video from the phone itself there is introduction of some latency, however we overcome this by allowing the user to compress the video coming from the device to increase responsiveness but reduced video quality.
Q: One of the AQuA criteria was behaviour when radio connection is lost. Is there a way to accomplish this in Deviceanywhere?
A. The only way to achieve this as discussed on our webinar is putting the phone into Airplane mode. This simulates the effect of radio loss.
Q. What about cross-browser testing?
A. Users of our system can install various browsers on to the phone via the App store, thus giving them the ability to do Cross Browser testing for their sites.
Q: How do we test rotating the device?
A. Like changing to portrait view – Our devices allow you to rotate the accelerometer of the device making it believe it has changes orientation.
Q: Is there any way we can use these devices for running automation test suites?
A. Yes, we have our own automation environment to create test, see the extended webinar focused on this type of testing. We also give you the ability to use integrations with HP UFT and Rational while also allowing you to call our tests externally through other tools using our CLI (Command Line Interface) or the Java API. Please also see http://www.keynotedeviceanywhere.com/KDA_Enterprise/automation.php# and http://www.keynotedeviceanywhere.com/KDA_Enterprise/scriptobjects.php for more advanced details.
Q: Is the end user interface purely manual, or is there some interface that would allow scripting or automation?
A. Yes we have our own automation environment, please see the response above.
Q: How can we automate test cases? Do we have any kind of report of the tests? Performance, Battery consumption, data usage, timing, etc?
A. Please see responses above for automated testing, with regards to timings and performance you can create java timers in our tool to capture these metrics. Unfortunately we don’t have the ability to do battery drain testing.
Q: Do your scripts interact at the object layer?
A. Yes, we have Native (Android and iOS) Object control and also HTML Object Level interaction
Q: Is the automation feature included in standard subscriptions or is this an additional charge? More info here would be great.
A. Automation is only available in the Test Centre Enterprise Interactive solution, you can find more details by looking at the responses above.
Q: Would like to see more demo on automation
A. Yes apologies this was not covered in the original webinar, but we have recorded an extra session where this is available and you can get more information by viewing the responses above.
Q: Do you provide integration with Microsoft TFS?
A. Unfortunately we do not have an integration with TFS, but we do have a CLI (Command Line Interface) and Java API which would allow you to call our tests created in our interface through TFS.
Q: What happens if we are notified and we are not available to use it how is that useful?
A. Customers have the ability to reserve the device and if there is an issue with the device there are multiple copies of each device allowing customers a flexible solution.
Q: How can we emulate approaching our device to an NFC tag?
A. Unfortunately this is not possible as our devices are fixed within racks and their own boxes.
Q: How do you handle clearing the apps off of the devices?
A. We have automatic clean up scripts that run after every users use, the user also has the ability to manually remove these apps.
Q: Can you do pinch zoom with device anywhere?
A. Yes, some of our devices that support pinch have hardcoded buttons to allow you to do this.
Q: How are UDIDs handled for iOS installs. Are the UDIDs of the devices available to be included in build profiles?
A. Yes, under properties of the device you can locate the UDID, alternatively our 24x7 support team can locate the UDIDs for you or you can download a UDID app viewer also.
Q: Can installing an in-development application be demo'd on the iphone?
A. Yes it is possible to install a Pre-Production app on to the phone as we also give you the ability to automatically sign the App if it is iOS.
Q: Would it be possible to use a physical pad to send touch to the device?
A. I am not sure what type of pad this may be but we normally interact with the device via the computers mouse.
Q: What about coverage management? Can we reduce the level of coverage in our tests? Or are handsets always receiving full coverage signal?
A. Unfortunately this is not possible with the tool, the phones have full signal as they are using real carrier networks.
Q: With these being shared devices, how do you ensure confidentiality of downloaded apps etc.?
A. We automatically clean the devices at the end of each user session, but it is also the responsibility of the user to ensure that any sensitive information that we do not clean is removed. We also provide customers the option to rent private devices that no one else has access to.
Q: How do you handle privacy and security with the apps or personal information loaded onto the device?
A. Please see response above
Q: From the menu, it looks like you can change the orientation of the device. I assume you can't test the accelerometers or other physical sensors?
A. The tool allows you to alter the orientation of the device only, unfortunately because the phones are physically fixed into a a 2U sized box we are unable to use any other physical sensors.
Q: Are your iPhone's jailbroken?
A. No, all our iOS devices are full hardware integrated devices with no jailbreak.
Q: How do you get a pre-release version of an app onto an iOS device - do you support TestFlight?
A. Yes we support Test Flight, but we also allow you to upload pre-production apps on to the phone. Recently released in our system is a feature that allows you to upload the app and automatically sign it using our own developer id.
Q: How do you handle button smashing or rapid key pressing?
A. Simply press the keys on the device at whatever pace you like, as the button presses are simply sent as electrical signals. Meaning the system should be able to keep up with the speed of your presses via the mouse.
Q: Can you provide us a list of device functionality you support associate with what version of device?
A. You can find the list of devices for Enterprise at http://www.keynotedeviceanywhere.com/KDA_Enterprise/device_list.php and Developers at http://www.keynotedeviceanywhere.com/test-center-developer/device_test.php the features it supports are located in the device profile which you can view once logged into DeviceAnywhere Studio.
Q: As I understand, to deal with the UDID, you simply let user to reserve the device.
A. Not exactly, the user is able to request the UDID for a specific device, view the UDID via the device properties, use Test Flight to deliver the app or you can simply download a UDID viewer on to the phone via the app store.
Q: Are there time limits you can have a device checked out for?
A. In the Developer environment you are charged by time usage, but you can keep the device acquired as long as you need. In the Enterprise solution you are charged annually with no time limit on device usage.
Q: Can you boot up the RT device?
A. Apologies I was unable to show this but yes you can use the Windows RT Device in its entirety
Q: How much does this service cost?!!
A. We are able to provide free trials of the different solutions, but you can find the pricing details at http://www.keynotedeviceanywhere.com/pricing-page.php
