Quality assurance and end user testing

ThoughtFarmer Development and QA approach

Agile development

ThoughtFarmer's Development and QA team follows an Agile approach to software development. Agile development is a widely accepted and effective approach to project management within the software development and testing community and is characterized by a highly focused and rapidly iterative software process. The Agile process practiced by our engineering team is based on the principles laid out in the Agile Manifesto.

We use Jira to manage the development tasks and issues raised by the QA team. Each ticket is developed and tested in an isolated branch, allowing the QA team to be confident that the code they are testing is the only change. Our build process uses pull requests to ensure that releases contain only the changes that meet our high standards for code quality. Pull requests also allow us to track the history of code changes and provide release notes.

Secure development approach

An application is only as secure as the code it depends on. Our development team follows the work of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) with a focus on its list of top 10 security vulnerabilities. During development, we use code review software to ensure not only the correct implementation, but also that the code is not susceptible to security issues. Wherever possible we use secure frameworks, such as the Microsoft AntiXSS framework, to eliminate entire classes of vulnerabilities (e.g. XSS and CSRF) from our application.

ThoughtFarmer QA methodology

Some engineers on our team have been working on ThoughtFarmer since its conception in 2006. With the full ThoughtFarmer history and an exceptionally strong knowledge of the product, ThoughtFarmer QA engineers support our team of developers by diligently testing each ThoughtFarmer release that is built.

In addition to all of the testing performed by the development team, we also use new builds of ThoughtFarmer internally. Our intranet runs on ThoughtFarmer, and we are able to test and provide feedback on new features early in the development process. Before a release ever makes it to a customer, we have used it heavily internally.

Our team combines automated tests with manual testing, as outlined below.

ThoughtFarmer testing methods

What can you do to test your ThoughtFarmer site and its content? 

Before launch and after your content migration is complete, you may want to perform some additional testing with your team. While our team is very thorough in ensuring the ThoughtFarmer product passes all our Quality Assurance tests, we aren't able to test the site with your unique content in place. Below are some areas of ThoughtFarmer we recommend you verify before going live.

If you run into certain areas that are not behaving as expected and require assistance, please contact us through the ThoughtFarmer Helpdesk and one of our friendly support team members will help you out.

1. Browser and environment
   • When testing your intranet, ensure you are using the specific operating systems, devices, and browsers that your end users and intranet administrators will be using. 
   • You may want to run some bandwidth testing on your site, especially if you are planning to stream videos on the intranet. For hosting videos, we recommend using an external service such as YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia.
2. Content
   • Ensure all content is formatted correctly and adheres to your organization's internal brand standards and guidelines. Working with your content authors, ensure all content adheres to your Intranet Style Guidelines. 
   • Ensure that all content is searchable through the ThoughtFarmer search (regular search and predictive search from the main search bar).
   • Ensure that all users show up in the employee directory.
   • If you are setting up Groups and you are using News from Subscribed Groups on your homepage, verify that all content feeds are going to group pages and the homepage.
   • If you are feeding in external RSS feeds into any intranet page, verify the RSS content is coming in and the RSS post thumbnail images are displaying as expected.
3.  Images & videos
   • Do a spot check of videos (if posted) to ensure they play correctly. Test on different browsers if your users use a variety of browsers.
   • Do a spot check of a few news articles to ensure the thumbnail images display correctly.
4.  Security permissions
   • Do a spot check of major sections on the intranet to ensure the security permissions have been set up correctly. If needed, set up a test user to ensure they see the correct content or turn off admin mode if you're an admin to verify how your content displays for an end user. Don't forget to delete or deactivate your test user if you no longer need it afterward, to avoid using an extra user license.
   • Check to ensure all required security groups have been created via the Admin panel: Users & security section > Security groups page.
5. Customizations
   • Do a spot check of all the custom cards on your intranet (if applicable). 
   • If you are using any custom code in your theme, make sure it is working as expected. Custom theme code can be found in Admin panel: User interface section > Theme page > [your theme] > Custom HTML, CSS and JavaScript tab.
6. ThoughtFarmer Analytics
   • Check that ThoughtFarmer Analytics is running via the Admin panel: Logs & statistics section  > ThoughtFarmer Analytics page (if requested).
7. Users
   • Ensure all users that require access have been added. If they don't appear, and you are syncing with an external location such as Active Directory, you can check the Admin panel: Users & security section > Employee directory connector > [your external user store] > Synchronization Settings tab to check which group you are syncing with. Ensure users that require access are members of that group.
   • If you are syncing with an external location, ensure all field mappings that you would like to include have been added. Field mappings are located in the Admin panel: Users & security section > Employee directory connector > [your external user store] > Field Mappings tab.
   • If you use regular users, you can double check the Admin panel: Users & security section > User management page to see which users have already been added.
   • If you are setting up SSO on ThoughtFarmer, include this in your user testing. If Windows SSO is not working, you may need to make changes to users' browser settings.