Manual testing is a quality assurance process that works much like it sounds: QA officers go through front-end workflows and manually test functionality to smoke out bugs, performance issues, and unintended behaviour. This may be part of a QA process in staging before a feature release, or part of a regular testing cadence in production.

Manual testing is usually based on a test plan that guides the QA through a set of scenarios and variations. For example, a plan for testing an eCommerce site's checkout flow might instruct the QA to attempt a transaction with every payment option and on every browser, and document the results.

Noibu's session recordings can be a powerful tool during manual testing. While you can see what's happening on the front end during the test, the session timeline will document unseen issues, poor web vital scores, and undesirable session symptoms. Even better, the session recording allows you to rewatch the test after the fact. Even the most diligent QA may miss something during a manual test, but you can review a session recording for up to 90 days after it enters your Noibu console.

You can associate your testing session to its recording in Noibu with use of your session's Help Code. In this guide, we'll walk you through adding help code and session recordings to your manual testing flow.

Prerequisites

• Ensure the NoibuJS script is implemented in the domain in which you're doing manual testing.
  • We recommend Implementing NoibuJS on a Staging Domain so you can catch issues before they enter your production environment. Adding a staging domain is quick work, and it's free!
• Divide your test plan into small tasks. While you could record the entire test in a single session, it's more manageable to record a series of short sessions that each focus on a single task or set of tasks. For example, if you're manually testing the checkout flow, consider examining each payment option in a separate session.
  • Note: We'll cover how to reset your session recording later in this guide.

The Manual Testing Flow

1. Complete the first task in your test plan. This might be completing a transaction with a specific payment type, navigating to a page on a specific browser, or adding a product to your cart using a specific operating system. We encourage you to move slowly and deliberately to make your actions obvious on the session recording.
2. Once the first task is complete, generate a help code to identify the session. To generate a help code, add #helpcode to the end of your URL, and hit enter. The code will appear in a modal.
   
   [help-code-url]
   
   [help-code-modal]
   
   • Note: Some Noibu users create Frontend Buttons to generate help codes.
     
3. Document the help code in your test plan documentation, or another task management tool, and mark the task as done.
   • Note: It will take a few hours for the session recording to appear in the Noibu console.
     
4. Reset your session recording by clearing your browser's cache or opening a new incognito window. This ensures your next task is recorded as a new session with a new help code.
   
   
   
   
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for each task in your test plan.

Analyzing the Session Recording

Once a few hours have passed, you can retrieve the session or sessions associated with your manual test through Noibu's Sessions page.

1. Open Sessions in your Noibu console.
   
   
   
   
2. Filter the Index by Help Code to pull up session recordings from your manual test. You can enter help codes one by one to pull up each task individually, or enter a comma-separated list to pull all sessions recorded as part of the manual test.
   
   [help-code-filter]
   
   
3. Open a session, and examine any issues, poor web vital scores, or session symptoms recorded in the session timeline. Through this process you may uncover opportunities for performance optimization or UX improvements, or discover hidden bugs that may impact revenue down the line.
   
   
   [session-timeline]
   • Learn more about the Session Playback and Timeline.

You can also use session recordings to Monitor Webpages for Shopper Friction and Performance Issues.