Last week, I got an opportunity to play with a plugin meant for outlook, through 99tests.com. Lot of testers logged remarkable bugs. I did not want to leave my observations unshared, hence posted it.
To get an acquaintance about Outlook plugins, please read Outlook_add-ins. To note, here I have cited cases that are applicable for COM plugins for Windows. As we know, types of testing that are eligible for any plugin depends upon its domain & functionality, since this is a general feed, I waived those cases.
So here are the few notable pointers
- Validate properties of Add-In
- Navigate to outlook->options->Add-Ins page. Check for the foll properties
- Name – Caption or title of the plug in
- Publisher – Name of the organization or publisher
- Location – Path of application, mostly the dlls
- Compatibility – Usually this field won’t be available for predominant applications
- Description – A one liner, that calls out the functionality or usage
- Check load behavior of Add-In
- Manage Add-Ins - Dialog has options to, manage
- Location: Path of application, mostly the dlls
- Load Behavior: When to load the application
- Unloaded
- Load on Demand (not currently loaded)
- Loaded at startup
- Valiidate availability of plugin under Ribbon or Toolbar
- Navigate to outlook->options-> Customize Ribbon/Quick Access Toolbar
- Plug-in shortcuts should not clash with outlook standard keystrokes
Of-course not to mention the followings are mandatory
- Must co-exist with Outlook and Windows versions.
- Should not alter existing functionalities of Outlook.
- Outlook data loss is not acceptable.
- Must comply with Outlook protocols
These
pointers many not be fresh for voluminous, but still it could be a checklist
for testing newbie. Share your learnings, am definite it will be supportive to
someone. I consider "in doing & sharing, we learn".
