Getting Started

Welcome to Testmo! 👋   If you are new to Testmo, make sure to read this Getting Started guide to learn about the basic application structure, how Testmo helps teams test their software efficiently and how you can work more productively with Testmo. In this guide we will cover:
​Testmo application structure
Learn about projects, milestones, test case repositories, exploratory sessions, test automation and how this all fits together.
​Testing software with Testmo
We explain how teams use Testmo to efficiently test their software projects and how Testmo integrates with other tools teams use.
​Productivity and working smarter
We will cover tips and point to additional resources to get the most out of Testmo.
Testmo application structure
All testing activity in Testmo is managed within projects. From Testmo's home Projects page you can see and open all projects you have access to. You can also star projects to save them as favorites to find them faster. The following illustration gives an overview of Testmo's application structure:
Projects, milestones and testing in Testmo
Projects and milestones
Projects are used in Testmo to group and manage your testing activity for a project you work on. All your software tests, including manual testing, exploratory testing and automated testing are done in projects in Testmo.
Within projects you can (optionally) create milestones to manage releases, test plans, sprints, deployments, feature updates, testing cycles etc. You can define your own milestone types so you can use any workflow with Testmo. It is also possible to create sub milestones up to two levels, so you can structure and organize your testing activity as needed.
Milestones can also be planned and scheduled in advance, making it easy for the entire team to understand the testing goals. Together with Testmo's progress forecasts and activity reports it's easy to keep track of upcoming, overdue and completed milestones.
Managing milestones in projects
It's usually best to use separate projects for all major applications and projects you work on. For example, if you are building a web frontend, an iOS app and an Android app, it's often a good idea to use separate projects for these. This usually makes it easier to organize your tests, manage milestones, assign users and report test results.
Case repository and test runs
Every project comes with a repository to manage manual test cases. Test cases can be grouped into folders so you can build a full case structure that matches your project. Test cases can also be customized with additional custom fields for each project.
When you are ready to test your cases, you start test runs within the project. A test run can either include all your project's test cases or you can select & filter a subset of the cases in your repository.
Once you've added test runs, you and your team can go through the tests, verify them and add test results. Test runs make it easy to keep track of the overall results and tests can be assigned to testers to make sure everyone knows what they should be working on.
Test runs can also be linked to a milestone so you can see the overall status and progress of multiple runs, sessions & automation at once. After you are done verifying the tests in a run, the test run can be closed to archive it. And even if you change the test cases in your repository later, a closed run always shows the original test case details.
Exploratory sessions
Sessions are used to manage, track and run exploratory and ad-hoc testing in Testmo. From the project's Session page you can plan and run your exploratory test sessions. Once added, sessions can be assigned to testers and testers can add notes to the session log, record results, paste screenshots and submit any additional details for the session.
Usually it's best to keep individual sessions narrowly focused on specific goals, changes and features you want to test and then create multiple sessions to cover a bigger scope. As a rule of thumb, for many projects it's a good idea to keep the scope of individual sessions limited to 30 minutes - 2 hours of work to complete.
Adding to the log of a session
Like test runs, sessions can also be linked to milestones to keep track of the overall testing progress together with manual testing and automated testing. Also like test runs, you can close sessions to archive them. Closed sessions cannot be updated and changed anymore.
Automation with runs and sources
Testmo also makes it easy to submit your automated test results so you can keep all your testing activity in one central place. Many teams run their automated tests as part of their CI/CD pipeline or build server and we've designed Testmo to easily integrate with such workflows. Regardless of whether you use a CI/CD pipeline, build server or manually launch your automated tests, once completed you simply submit your results to create new automation runs in Testmo.
For every automation suite your team maintains (e.g. unit tests, API tests, mobile app tests, browser tests), you would specify a different source name when submitting the results. Testmo can then group the automation runs of the same suite with sources, which makes it easy to compare test results of the same source over time.
Automation sources with results
If you would like to learn more Testmo's automation features, how to submit your test results and the best way to integrate your CI/CD or build workflow, we've created a separate documentation section to cover all this:
​Automation overview​
​CI/CD Integration​
​Testmo CLI​
​Reference​
Testing software with Testmo
To work efficiently with Testmo and to help improve your software testing efforts, let's look at some of the design goals of Testmo and how teams best benefit from its features. We design and develop Testmo with three main goals in mind:
​Unified testing to keep all your testing activity in one place
Testmo's unified testing combines manual testing, exploratory & ad-hoc testing and test automation in one platform so teams can manage and track all their testing activity and efforts in one place. Learn more about unified testing with Testmo.
​Easily integrate with your existing tools and workflow
Instead of reinventing everything, Testmo directly integrates with many popular tools such as issue trackers, CI/CD & build tools as well as any test automation tool for the best possible workflow. Learn more about available integrations with Testmo.
​Making Testmo's interface as fast and productive for testers as possible
With Testmo's optimized user interface we are making testers more productive and helping testing teams work smarter. This includes optimized workflows, smart screenshot support, power-user shortcuts, integrations & rich-text editing. See below for tips on working smarter and more productively with Testmo.
Productivity and working smarter
Testmo helps teams work smarter and more productively by providing a fast user interface with many optimizations for testers to get more done. Testing teams spend a lot of time in a test management tool to maintain test cases, execute runs, record session results and track progress, so getting familiar with Testmo's optimizations is a great way to work smarter. We've included a list of tips, pointers, articles and resources below to get the most out of Testmo.
​Optimized testing workflow & assignments
Keep track of assigned tests with the personalized My work page, balance testers' workload with smart assignment features and receive configurable notifications when new work is assigned. Test assignments and notifications help you focus on the most relevant tests across all projects.
​Working with and taking screenshots
Testmo makes it very easy to work with and add screenshots. Screenshots are a great way to communicate issues, improvement requests, error messages, rendering problems and more. You can directly paste screenshots to any rich-text and attachment field in Testmo, no additional tools or browser add-ons needed.
​Fast integration with your team's tools
With Testmo we fully integrate with existing tools your team already uses, such as Jira, GitHub, GitLab and many more. Easily push, link and look up issues directly from Testmo without ever having to duplicate your error reports. Use your tool's native issue forms for the best possible experience and fastest reports.
​Keyboard shortcuts to work faster
We are including various keyboard shortcuts for power users to work faster with dialogs, quickly enter results, navigate repository cases & run tests, to rearrange cases with drag&drop and much more. Plus, full-featured keyboard shortcuts for rich-text editing.
​Powerful rich-text editing
Testers work with and enter a lot of text, including writing documentation, specifying test cases, entering test result descriptions and writing session logs. We've integrated the best possible rich-text editing experience in Testmo with full support for advanced formatting such as tables, code syntax highlighting, image support, screenshots and more.
Rich-text editing in Testmo