Zeta Test Management Online documentation

Working with reports

Reports help you to extract, prepare and export information. Reports are usually PDF documents that are dynamically generated from Microsoft Office Word documents.

To generate reports, follow these steps:

  1. Select the element (e.g. a test plan or a test run) from the structure view of the main window.
  2. Right-click the element.
  3. Select the sub menu "Reports" from the context menu.
  4. Depending on the element, you will find zero or more reports in the sub menu.
  5. Click on a report to let Zeta Test generate and display the report.

Please note:
Not all elements in the structure view of the main window provide reports.

Internal workflow during report generation

PDF reports are generated dynamically by a flexible mechanism:

  1. A Microsoft Office Word document with mail merge placeholder fields is loaded for a report.
  2. Zeta Test dynamically builds an internal application context with a set of mail merge placeholder fields and values.
  3. The mail merge fields in the loaded Microsoft Office Word document are replaced and expanded.
  4. The Microsoft Office Word document is then converted internally into a PDF document.
  5. The PDF document is displayed.

Please note:
You need no Microsoft Office and no Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer in order to generate the reports; Zeta Test already ships with all the functions.

Creating and customizing reports

You can customize the report generation process by personalizing the Microsoft Office Word documents we ship or by creating an infinite number of completely new Microsoft Office Word documents by yourself.

The storage location of the Microsoft Office Word documents is relative to the "Resources" folder of the Zeta Test installation in the sub folder of the language you have set ("ENU" or "DEU"). There, it is in a folder with the name of the element type in the structure view in the main window: e.g. the sub folder "TestPlan" contains the reports for test plans.

In addition to the global storing of reports, you also can store reports on a per-project basis, relative to the base folder of the project in the same manner as described above.

In order to create a new Microsoft Office Word document for a new report, create a Microsoft Office Word document in the ".doc" format (".docx" is currently not supported) and store it in the desired folder.

Use the following naming scheme: "report-<NameInContextMenu>.doc": i.e. "<NameInContextMenu>" is the name that will be shown later in the "Reports" context sub-menu in Zeta Test: e.g. if you would call your report "report-My first report.doc", the respective element in the context menu would be called "My first report".

Please note:
The best way to understand how to create your own reports is to take existing reports, copy them and customize them.

The next chapter shows you how to access the available mail merge fields in your own reports.

Reference of available mail merge fields

An overview of all available Microsoft Office Word mail merge fields for creating reports is directly available within Zeta Test:

  1. Click on the "?" main menu, then click on the "Diagnostic center" menu item.
  2. Click on the "Hints" tab.