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Something has changed, and IMHO has broken attachments

TestRail Discussion
#1

I have several complaints about how image attachments are now handled, versus how they used to be handled. Apparently, something changed in the past few months and it has made my user experience worse.

(1) My old test results, that used to have screenshots showing in TestRail, no longer show those screenshots. The actual text of the comments section shows that the attachment is still referenced, but they do not show up when viewing the test.

image
image1024×459 34.1 KB

(2)
It used to be that when I uploaded an image (usually a screenshot) into a comment, the screenshot image itself was referenced in the comments, but did not show up as a separate attachment in the test results. Now, however, each attachment results in a separate attachment, which - when multiplied over several screenshots in a single comment - results in a very messy view:

image
image346×799 40.4 KB

(3)
It used to be that I could copy over an image’s reference from one test results / comment to another, making it faster to document multiple tests that referenced the same screenshot/image. For example, I could upload a single screenshot image, which would result in something like " " in the comments. Then I could just copy and paste that into other comments/results boxes and the screenshot would how up there, too. Now, however, this no longer works. The comment with the original screenshot shows the image, but the copies do not show the image. This slows down my workflow, and also makes it so that your servers have to store multiple copies of the same screenshots.

#2

We recently upgrades from 5.3 to 6.6.1. I noticed that there is now an entity_attachment and entity_type table that has entity id , and attachment id, and entity type. I think that it may be using this table to populate the attachment pane for the different modules (plan, test, run, etc).

I’m having the same complaints from the team on how images are being managed as attachments! We typically attach an image to expected results, using copy and paste, and these images are being displayed on the attachment pane all with “image.png”! It also seems that they are storing images as part of the history. This is very confusing, and very messy.

I didn’t find a bug open, and will probably open one.

#3

So I guess nobody from Gurock is interested in looking at this?

#4

@JavaJeff

Hey Jeff,

Apologies for the delayed response. I’m looking into it and will provide an update in a while.

Regards,
Shanu

1 Like
#5

Please me to the list. I also have this issue.

#6

@ttreat @JavaJeff @clairecoupland

Hello,

I spoke to the concerned team. To resolve the issue you’re facing, our Support Team would like to test the scenarios and investigate it further. So could you please send us an email at contact@gurock.com with all the required details?

Regards,
Shanu

#7

What details do you require other than what I shared in the original post above?

#8

@JavaJeff

Hey Jeff,

Please share the same information. I think that would be sufficient.

Regards,
Shanu

#9

Good grief. That would require me copying and pasting all the text and the images that are already captured above. The support team doesn’t have access to this post?

#10

@JavaJeff I had raised a support ticket for images not being displayed in past test runs. Request ID: 330069

There was a lot of back and forth with TestRail but the end result was

After discussing this with our product team, we came to the conclusion that these attachments are orphaned attachments and are not the part of deadwood database. We don’t have a good grasp of why these orphaned attachments are being left in the instance database. This could be due to the reason where the original attachment or entity holding the attachment was deleted. (This is because the users are only pasting a link to the original in their results or wherever else).

We already have an internal task created for this sort of database cleaning and your instance ID also included in the list. TestRail Cloud instances are managed by TestRail so there is no way for you to analyze these orphaned images as you do not have access to the cloud database.

The offered workaround was to export the test result. I confirmed when I printed to PDF the images did appear, so I’ve done this for the results I needed to check their previous executions.

But on the whole, we were very disappointed with the outcome as it called into question the integrity of our testing history in TestRail, there was no timeframe given for the cleansing of the database to fix the images, and no answer was give as to how the images became orphaned
 as it only affected some not all test results. It was definitely not due to copy pasting or access permissions on our part.

We were also advised that we have a lot of projects and many test suites, and to improve our experience we should probably export old ones to reduce numbers. This wasn’t taken well by our manager as we haven’t had any advice broadcasted from TestRail as to ‘you should only have x number of projects’ or ‘x number of test suites’ etc. as a product limitation.

Best wishes that you get a better resolution to your problem.

1 Like
#11

@BEustace thank you for your response. Your feelings of disappointment are echoed here. If I cannot go back in my old test results and produce intact results for my management, why am I paying several hundred dollars a month for this service? I am asking myself: should I be looking into a different solution?

I’m also a little frustrated with the handling of my issue - it feels like I have had to be a real “squeaky wheel” in order to get some attention.

Thanks again for your detailed reply.

1 Like
#12

I did open a ticket through contact@gurock and attached JavaJeffs screen shots and details.

1 Like
#13

Hey Jeff,

Apologies for the inconvenience caused. I understand how frustrating it must be to share the same information again with our support staff in an email.

It’s just that our Support Team wanted to communicate with you directly and troubleshoot the issue for you as early as possible.

Moving forward, I’d like to resolve such situations for you in a more efficient way.

Regards,
Shanu

#14

Update:

  • I sent the email to contact@gurock.com as requested.
  • A co-worker who uses the same TestRail cloud instance, but in a different project, confirmed he is seeing the same problem.
#15

UPDATE 2020-02-28:

All of my testcases are marked with a new icon that, when hovered over, says "Test Case Deleted."

I don’t know if this is because someone has been in the DB poking around to see if they could fix my issue as reported above; or if this has to do with the new V7.0 rollout. In any case, I am not getting a warm fuzzy feeling here.

Capture

#16

Thanks for the update, Jeff.

#17

Jeff,

This is a known issue for Classic and Dark themes (with v7.0 )and our team is currently working on a fix to be released as soon as possible.

As a workaround, could you please use the ‘Modern’ theme for the time being?

Regards,
Shanu