Nowadays, Agile and DevOps practices demand rapid iterations and continuous testing to ensure software quality. Manual testing alone can’t keep up with this speed, making test automation important to continue delivering high-quality products at a rapid rate.
Despite its advantages, test automation isn’t as simple as writing and running a few scripts. Many teams struggle with the high initial investment, test maintenance overhead, lack of test traceability, and finding the right balance between manual and automated testing, as not all tests should be automated.
These challenges can hinder automation adoption and reduce its effectiveness—but you don’t have to navigate them alone. In this blog post, based on the webinar Automation 101 with Xray: Beginner to Pro, you'll gain expert insights to overcome these hurdles.
Getting started with Test Automation in Xray
Successfully implementing test automation requires a structured approach. Let’s understand a bit more about this.
Structuring Manual vs. Automated Tests
Some tests, like exploratory or usability testing, require human judgment, whereas repetitive regression and performance tests are ideal candidates for automation.
Xray helps teams manage both manual and automated tests within the same framework, allowing for:
- A centralized test repository where teams can store and track all test cases;
- Clear differentiation between manual and automated tests through test types;
- Seamless integration with automation frameworks to execute and report automated tests directly within Jira.
Best practice: maintain a balanced approach by automating high-value tests while keeping exploratory and UX tests manual.
Organizing Test Cases for better traceability
As test suites grow, maintaining clarity on test coverage and execution status becomes a challenge. Here’s how Xray’s robust system helps teams stay organized:
📂 Folders & Test Sets – group related Test Cases for easy navigation
Having a structured repository is essential when dealing with hundreds of test cases. With Xray, teams organize test cases into folders within the Test Repository, helping testers find relevant cases quickly. They also use test sets to group related tests and reuse test sets across different test plans and executions.
📋 Test Plans – define the scope of testing for specific releases
A well-defined test plan ensures alignment between testing efforts and business goals. By using test plans, teams can focus on what needs to be tested, ensuring no critical functionality is overlooked.
🛠️ Test Executions – track results across different Test Runs
To keep up with continuous testing demands, teams need clear visibility into execution results. Xray’s test executions help with running automated and manual tests across different environments; tracking execution history and identifying patterns in test failures; and re-executing failed tests to validate bug fixes.
📊 Dashboards & reports
Without actionable insights, testing can become reactive rather than strategic. Xray provides built-in dashboards and reports to help teams:
- Visualize test coverage by linking test cases to requirements;
- Monitor pass/fail rates over time;
- Identify bottlenecks in testing and improve efficiency.
Linking tests to requirements for full coverage
One of the biggest challenges in software testing is ensuring all critical requirements are tested. Xray enables full traceability by linking tests directly to requirements, user stories, and defects.
This approach ensures:
✅ Clear mapping of test coverage – teams can see which requirements are tested and which are missing coverage;
✅ Risk-based testing – prioritize testing efforts based on business impact;
✅ Faster debugging – when a test fails, teams can trace it back to the affected requirement or feature.
Running Automated Tests in CI/CD Pipelines
Integrating test automation into CI/CD pipelines is key to achieving faster feedback loops, reducing manual effort, and ensuring continuous quality. Xray seamlessly integrates with popular CI/CD tools, allowing teams to automate test execution, track results, and make data-driven decisions before deploying new changes.
How Xray integrates with CI/CD tools
Xray provides out-of-the-box integrations with widely used CI/CD tools, enabling automated test execution and reporting directly within the development pipeline. Here’s how it works with some common tools:
- Jenkins – use the Xray plugin to automatically trigger test executions, fetch results from automated frameworks, and update test reports in Jira;
- GitHub Actions – run automated tests as part of your pull request workflows, ensuring that new code doesn’t introduce regressions;
- Other tools – Xray supports integration with Azure DevOps, Bamboo, GitLab CI/CD, and custom pipelines via REST API.
Setting up Test Execution and reporting in an automated workflow
To fully automate test execution and reporting in a CI/CD pipeline, follow these key steps:
1️⃣ Trigger Automated Tests
- Define when and where tests should run (e.g., after a commit, during nightly builds, or before deployment);
- Use Jenkins pipelines, GitHub Actions, or another CI/CD tool to execute tests.
2️⃣ Collect Test Results
- Xray supports results from multiple testing frameworks (JUnit, TestNG, Cucumber, Robot Framework, and more);
- Store test results in Xray for centralized tracking and traceability.
3️⃣ Update Jira with Test Execution reports
- Automatically link test results to user stories and requirements in Jira;
- Generate real-time reports to monitor pass/fail rates, test coverage, and defect trends.
4️⃣ Analyze & take action
- Use Xray dashboards to track test execution trends and identify areas for improvement;
- Automate issue creation for failed tests, enabling quick debugging and resolution.
Recap: the most important insights from this test automation webinar
✅ Test automation is essential for accelerating releases, reducing manual effort, and improving software quality;
✅ Structuring tests properly in Xray—using folders, test sets, and linking tests to requirements—ensures better traceability and avoids duplication;
✅ Seamless CI/CD integration allows automated tests to run as part of the development workflow, providing instant feedback to teams;
✅ Real-time reporting & dashboards in Xray help teams make data-driven decisions and continuously optimize test strategies.
👇🏼 Watch the full webinar for more details and a hands-on demo 👇🏼
