Testlio iOS App – Hello, World!

, Kristel is Testlio's co-founder.

Today we’re excited to make a special announcement. Testlio now has an official iOS app! This app aims to simplify the lives of our testers and increase the overall quality of the work we produce.

We have decided to distribute the application directly to our testers. This allows us to iterate faster and expose functionality that otherwise would not be available if it were on the App Store. As a tester, you can download the app from the active test cycle overview of any iOS project. It will even install the app automatically for you if you tap the link on your iOS device. The app is available for iOS devices running iOS 8.3 or newer.


Why?

First and foremost, the release of this application does not mean the web application will cease to exist, nor does it mean everything is duplicated in an iOS app.

The main role of this app is to serve as a companion, in other words making the tester workflow easier. In the future, we would also like to use the app to introduce tools to help us produce more meaningful reports for our customers. We view the iOS application as another tool in our testers’ hands, enhancing the existing workflow and making you more efficient.

In the first iteration, the application aims to simplify the installation of builds that need testing. Compared to the old workflow, the iOS app streamlines the installation process significantly. We have simplified it down to just two steps – opening the app to the correct project, and clicking Install next to the desired build.


We chose this feature for two reasons:

  1. It is a critical step for any tester. Up to this point it has always assumed that you knew how to install an app from a PC to your iOS device. Up until now, this has involved a wired connection to a PC, something that made the installation process needlessly more complicated.
  2. This affects all testers. Because this has such a big impact this serves as a perfect starting point. Your feedback will be integral to shape the future of this app.. It is important to us to make sure the app serves our testers the best way it possibly can.


What’s next?

Being distributed outside of the App Store allows us to iterate fast. While this is subject to change we intend for the next major feature of the application to revolve around issues submission, again, focusing on enhancing the existing workflow to increase the quality of reported issues. While we work to better understand the problems we are trying to solve, we also plan on releasing a few minor updates here and there, aiming to make our processes more transparent.

However, we would love to hear from you on what you see as the next logical steps for the app and use-cases we may have missed. We want to emphasize that this application is meant to serve you, the tester, and as such is fully open to your feedback.

In the longer term we want to experiment with capturing additional metadata during testing, which could help give the customer a better overview of what and how went wrong during testing. We are also actively investigating how to simplify some of the more advanced parts of reporting issues and testing an application, which up to this point have often required the use of 3rd party tools.


Onwards

Getting the first version of any app out to users is a significant event (we should know), so it is extremely exciting to see what you think of it. We love our community and we hope releasing this app is a step towards making it even better. Make sure to check out the app and let us know what you think!