Sharing and Consuming Tests

Manage recurring tests and their requirement assignments centrally and share and consume these tests across projects.

If your project is configured to consume tests from a specific project that is sharing tests (see Adding Projects), you can reuse these tests into your project by selecting them through the selection UI.

To insert shared tests into your project:

In the menu, click Tests > Details View .
Right-click on the test container or the test folder into which you want to insert the shared tests.
Select Shared Tests.
Select Insert Shared Tests. The Browse Tests dialog appears.
Select the tests that you want to insert.
Tip: To narrow down the displayed test set, either set some criteria in the Search field or select a pre-defined filter from the list.
Click OK. The selected tests are inserted. The test properties contain a Shared Test Reference, which means a link to the shared test.
To detach a consuming test from a shared test, click in the Shared Test Reference field.
Note: To remove a reference to a shared test, you require the Tests and Executions - Manage assets permission.
After removing the reference to a shared test, the test will no longer have any connection to the shared test. Updates will therefore no longer be pushed and received between the shared test and the consuming test.

To see all tests that are consume a specific shared test, click Tests > Details View in the menu and select the Usages tab.

When consuming tests, consider the following:

The project that consumes the tests must be configured to reuse tests from the project that is sharing the tests.
You can only insert tests into an existing test container.
The actions Accept Changes and Push Changes to Shared Test handle differing test types between a consuming test and the corresponding shared test, by resulting in the same test type being used in both tests.
When accepting changes from a test which uses shared steps, keywords, business components, or flows, the corresponding libraries must be visible in both the project that consumes the test and the project that shares the test.
To retain assigned requirements, the project that consumes a test must either use the same requirements integration or the same Word or Excel import file as the project that is sharing the test.
You can only update a requirement from Excel for which a unique external ID is defined in the Excel import file. Silk Central requires this ID to identify which requirement needs to be updated.
Data-driven children, test package children, and linked test containers cannot be shared.
Inherited test properties, parameters, and attributes are not considered in consuming tests. Such tests will inherit what is inherited in the consuming project. Accepting changes from the original test can lead to properties, parameters, and attributes being removed in consuming tests if inheritance is being used, as these properties, parameters, and attributes might not be available in the consuming project.
Assigned issues are not copied to consuming tests.
If you use test attributes, they must have the same name and type in both projects.
When copying or baselining a consuming project, the references to the project that is sharing tests are retained. However, these references are deleted when exporting a consuming project.
The bulk export/update interface and the web services do not yet consider links to original assets.
You can also insert folders, including their complete hierarchy.