Understand characteristics

Characteristics determine which agent runs which tests. They function as labels, and they're optional.

You may need to run your tests in various environments, for example different browsers or browser versions. And you may not have all browsers or browser versions installed on all your agents.

To tell Tosca Cloud which agents can actually run a specific playlist, you define characteristics for your agents and your playlist. At runtime, Tosca Cloud forwards the playlist only to agents with matching characteristics.

Characteristics for team agents

Team agents have the following default characteristics:

  • Platform=Win32NT: operating system/kernel information of the agent machine.

  • Runner=TBox and Runner=PowerShell: test execution technology on the agent machine.

  • AgentIdentifier=<identifier>: agent name based on what you defined during the setup.

  • AgentVersion=<version number>: agent version number.

Administrators can define additional, custom characteristics during the agent setup. If you want to add, change, or remove custom characteristics after the setup, you have to restart the agent.

Keep in mind that characteristics function as labels. They don't have any direct technical relation to the specifications of your agent machine. Admins can create a Chrome characteristic for agents that don't have Chrome installed. The opposite is also true: the agent may have Chrome installed, but this doesn't mean it automatically receives the corresponding characteristic.

Characteristics for cloud agents

Cloud agents only have default characteristics:

  • Agent-type=Cloud-agent: agent type. Set this characteristic on all playlists that you only want to run on cloud agents. Typically, if you have a mix of team agents and cloud agents.

  • Browser=Chrome and Browser=Edge: browser type. Set the respective characteristic on all playlists that require this specific browser. Typically, if you have a mix of team agents and cloud agents, but none of your shared agents have Chrome or Edge installed. Tosca Cloud then forwards these playlists to the cloud agent. Cloud agents always use the latest version of Chrome and Edge.

You can't define any additional characteristics for cloud agents.

Example

Let's say you have three playlists: Playlist 1 requires Chrome v97, Playlist 2 requires Edge, and Playlist 3 requires the latest version of Chrome.

You also have three agents:

  • Agent A is a team agent with Chrome v97 installed.

  • Agent B is a team agent with Chrome v97 and Edge installed.

  • Agent C is a cloud agent, which means it has the latest version of Chrome installed.

You've set the necessary characteristics on your agents and on all your playlists. At runtime, Tosca Cloud processes your tests like this:

  • Playlist 1 goes to agent A or B, because both agents have matching characteristics.

  • Playlist 2 goes to agent B, because it’s the only agent with the Edge characteristic.

  • Playlist 3 goes to agent C, because it’s the only agent with the latest Chrome characteristic.