FAQ
Short answers to the questions we hear most. Each one links to the fuller guide if you want more.
How do I create my first test?
Section titled “How do I create my first test?”Point OttoTester at your app, describe what you want to check in plain English, and it plans, writes, and runs the test for you — no code to write by hand. The fastest path is the guided walkthrough.
Learn more: Quickstart
What’s the difference between an application, a variant, and a test?
Section titled “What’s the difference between an application, a variant, and a test?”They nest. An application is the product you’re testing. A variant is one running copy of it — say your staging and production environments are two variants of the same application. A test checks one behavior, and it runs against whichever variant you choose. So you write a test once and run it against every environment.
Learn more: Glossary · Applications · Variants
My test failed — what happened, and what is “healing”?
Section titled “My test failed — what happened, and what is “healing”?”A failure usually means one of two things: the app genuinely behaves differently than the test expects (a real bug worth looking at), or the page changed in a harmless way — a button moved or got renamed — and the test’s steps no longer line up. For that second case, healing automatically repairs the test’s steps so it keeps working, instead of failing on a cosmetic change. You can review what it healed.
Learn more: Fix a failing test · Healing and hints
How do I run tests from my CI pipeline?
Section titled “How do I run tests from my CI pipeline?”Connect your CI provider once, then trigger runs from your pipeline (for example, on every pull request) and get the results back automatically. It works alongside your existing checks.
Learn more: Run from CI · Connect CI/CD
How do I add a teammate or change someone’s role?
Section titled “How do I add a teammate or change someone’s role?”Invite people to your workspace by email, and give each person a role that decides what they can do — from viewing results to managing billing. You can change a role at any time.
Learn more: Roles and permissions · Managing users
How are my data and credentials handled?
Section titled “How are my data and credentials handled?”Sign-in details — usernames, passwords, and any two-factor secret — are saved as credentials, encrypted on the variant. They’re never written into a test script, and never shown back in plain text once saved. A fixture (a small sign-in helper) reads them at run time so your tests start already signed in. The values your tests type in are kept separately as Test Data.
Learn more: Set up authentication · Fixtures and test data
Still stuck?
Section titled “Still stuck?”If your question isn’t here, email the team at support@ottotester.ai and a real person will help.