7 Incredible Test Automation Plans for Tableau using BI Validator

It is nice to see Tableau maintain its leadership position in Gartner’s magic quadrant.

At DataGaps, this is pretty important for us as the testing automation needs for various BI platforms follow a similar trend. It is interesting that we do not see the traditional BI players in any of the quadrants but this picture is reflective of the number of BI Validator downloads we are seeing on a regular basis. Based on customer demand and experience from supporting other BI platforms, we are currently supporting the following test plans for Tableau.

Here are the 7 Incredible Test Automation Plans

Test Plan #1: Regression Testing of Workbooks / Views

Business analysts and testing teams can baseline and compare workbook PDF snapshots to identify data and layout differences. This drastically cuts down the time it takes to test for regression in Tableau workbooks.  Similar to baseline and comparison of workbooks, comparison of PDF snapshots of views is possible as well. This will identify visual as well as data differences with ease.

Test Plan #2: Upgrade Testing

This test plan in BI Validator empowers testing teams to compare pre and post-upgrade workbooks/views or across environments with ease. This is helpful for out-of-place upgrades or when folks want to compare QA environments to Product environments or similar use cases.

Test Plan #3: Migration Testing

The magic quadrant has been truly magical over the last few years. Customer preferences have been changing at a rapid pace and so is the landscape. When I saw the above image a few weeks back, I was surprised to see that the traditional BI players do not even show up in the map. Many customers have already deployed Tableau at an enterprise scale or are at least in the process of choosing BI platforms such as Tableau/Qlik for the ease of rollouts and other factors.

To aid this migration, BI Validator can come in extremely handy because you can easily compare data of reports generated by OBIEE, Business Objects, and Cognos to Tableau. This minimizes the risks associated with large-scale migration projects.

Test Plan #4: Performance Testing

Often, it is important to understand how a specific report performs over time. A performance test plan can be defined that will ensure that the report will respond within an acceptable time every time end users try to garner insights from the reports in a production environment.

Test Plan #5: Security Testing

During internal rollouts or upgrades, it is possible that the access levels of Projects, Workbooks  & Views may unexpectedly vary and it is important to understand these early in the development life cycle to prevent compliance issues or other operational oversights. This test plan can baseline and compare the access levels of Tableau Users/Groups.

Test Plan #6: Stress Testing

This is an amazing test plan that completely eliminates the need for tools such as JMeter and LoadRunner. No more scripting. You can easily simulate concurrent user load and gather view performance statistics with varying user load; did I say using a simple user interface?

Test Plan #7: End to End Testing

We advice our customers to do end-to-end testing where applicable. Using the Data Compare test plan, you can connect to your database, write a query and then compare the data set to the data in a Tableau View in a matter of minutes. This is truly remarkable.

With these 7 test plans, you are already way ahead in your testing automation journey of the Tableau Platform. So why wait?

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