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Re-explore your app after it changes

Refresh your TestOptim knowledge base after your app changes: clear the old knowledge, start a new exploration, and decide what happens to test cases.

Updated 3 min read
In this article

To re-explore your app in TestOptim, open Knowledge, click Clear knowledge, then click Start exploration again. It takes two steps because Start exploration only appears while the status is Pending, and a finished exploration is Approved.

Before you start

  • Owner, Admin, QA Lead and QA Engineer can clear and explore.
  • Re-exploring uses your monthly page budget again. See Track your usage.
  • The project must not be archived and no other job can be running.
  • Changes you made by hand in the knowledge base are replaced. Note down anything you want to keep.

Steps to re-explore

  1. Open your project and click Knowledge.

  2. Click Clear knowledge at the top right. A menu opens with two options.

    The Clear knowledge menu with Rebuild everything on next run and Clear knowledge now
    Rebuild everything is a checkbox, Clear knowledge now is a button

  3. Decide whether to tick Rebuild everything on next run. Most of the time you should leave it off. See the next section.

  4. Click Clear knowledge now. You see "Knowledge cleared. You can start fresh exploration."

  5. The badge goes back to Pending, the counters show 0 and the Start exploration button is back. Nothing has started yet.

    The Knowledge page after clearing: Pending badge, empty counters and the Start exploration button
    Cleared and waiting for a new exploration

  6. Click Start exploration (or pick a profile from Explore as...). Follow it as described in Explore your app.

Note

Clear knowledge now does not start an exploration and does not touch your test cases or issues.

If an exploration was stopped or failed part way, the status is already Pending. Start exploration is available and Clear knowledge isn't shown, so you can simply start again.

How often should I re-explore?

Re-explore after changes that add, remove or reshape pages or flows, such as a redesign, a new feature or a changed sign-in. Small copy or styling changes don't need it. Each exploration uses your monthly page budget, so on a small plan don't re-explore for every release.

What "Rebuild everything on next run" does

This is a checkbox, not an action. It only takes effect when you click Start exploration afterwards. When you do, before the crawl begins:

  • Test cases are deleted permanently and can't be recovered. The warning text says "generated test cases". In practice the project's test cases are removed, so treat any you added by hand as gone too.
  • Issues are retired. They keep their history and comments and can be restored.

Use it when your app has changed so much that the old tests and issues are mostly noise. Then generate test cases again from the new knowledge base.

Warning

If you only want an up-to-date knowledge base, leave Rebuild everything on next run off. Without it, your existing test cases and issues are kept, and re-exploring only replaces the knowledge base.

What happens next

  • The new run replaces the pages, flows and entities. When it finishes you get the Exploration Complete dialog.
  • Exploration can raise issues it already reported. It de-duplicates by title and reopens them where it can.
  • If you changed your app a lot, open Test cases and review them. Run changed only is a faster way to retest what moved.

Tip

You can have exploration run on every push to your repository. See Re-explore automatically on every GitHub push.

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