April 12, 2022

Hello Katalians! Katalon Studio team here with some great news: Our latest release of Katalon Studio (8.3.0) is now available, and it is one of our best releases yet. This release introduces changes to the licensing model and focuses on an enhanced user experience, security compliance, reporting and insights, integration with Katalon TestCloud, and much more. As you can see the list is vast, so without further ado let’s dive right into the details.

Much Simpler Licensing Model

Building on the promise to provide users with an easier way to test, the new licensing model offers a more straightforward purchasing and onboarding experience and enhances the way users interact with the Katalon platform. 

Starting on March 8, 2022, the following changes took place on the licensing model for Katalon Studio Enterprise (KSE) and Katalon Runtime Engine (KRE):

• KSE moved to a new per-user licensing model, and we stopped issuing new node-locked and floating licenses. 
• KRE is now available as a floating license only. We’ve also added the option to obtain monthly floating licenses.  New node-locked licenses will not be issued. 

To learn more about these changes, check out our pricing page which provides detailed information on the benefits of the new licensing model.

Better Mobile Testing User Experience

In our quest to make testing as easy as possible for you, this release makes the setup process for mobile testing much easier, has more available actions to the Mobile Recorder, and expands the support for built-in keywords for testing common scenarios and use cases.

Easier Installation

You spoke, we listened. We minimized the steps required to set up mobile testing in Studio 8.3.0 and added a troubleshooting utility for when applications fail to start for recording so you can accelerate your testing tasks. These improvements allow us to take care of all the heavy-lifting like outdated drivers and dependencies that are required for iOS testing while you focus on delivering awesome software

Additional Mobile Keywords

Studio 8.3.0 also allows you to increase mobile testing coverage by expanding the available keywords that you can use. We have added performTouchID and setFingerprint to simulate fingerprint touch on iOS and Android mobile phones, respectively. Also, toggleWifi is available to provide you with a better Wi-Fi switch control experience. 

Stronger Security

It’s likely you’ve heard the news about the recent issue with Log4j. In case you missed it, here is a quick recap: a vulnerability was found in Log4j that allowed malicious attackers to execute code remotely on any computer that they targeted. We don’t want this to be a cause of concern to you, so we have upgraded to Log4j 2.17.1 on our latest Studio release. Now you can continue testing without worrying about your environment becoming a target for any hacking attacks. 

Enhanced Data-Driven Testing (DDT)

DDT is a software testing method that saves testers much effort due to its utilization of test data in either tabular or spreadsheet form. With data binding on Katalon Studio, testers can apply DDT easily on their test suites. 

In Studio 8.3.0 we stepped up the capabilities of this feature by adding support for data binding at the test case level and making it compatible with test suites and dynamic test suites.  Conducting data-binding at the Test Case-level keeps the binding unchanged regardless of which Test Suite and Test Case it is added to. This new feature in Studio 8.3 makes the binding more convenient for Test Cases that have a fixed set of data points to run with.

This new feature makes use of the GUI of data binding at the test suite level for the "Test Data" and "Variable Binding" sections. When a test suite and one of its test cases have their own variables and bindings, the options for users to choose where to provide data binding will appear from the test suite's perspective.

Enhanced Email Notifications

Katalon Studio offers email notification features that have been enhanced over the years, for example:

• Studio 7.5 introduced the ability to send email reports after executing test suite collections.
• Studio 7.7 enabled the use of global variables to change email settings in terms of senders and recipients, report names, etc. The ability to override the values of the global variable at runtime via CLI was also added.

We know the value of email as a channel of communication when it comes to test execution results. In this release, we’ve added more flexibility to the email settings so you can add more execution details to the report, and we also increased the flexibility of the report’s global variables so you can add more information tailored to your needs. Further,  you now have the ability to adopt multiple SMTP authentication types.

Wrapping Up!

We are thrilled about the latest enhancements to Studio 8.3 and we hope you are too! We encourage you to download Studio 8.3 to start taking advantage of its many new features and improvements.

For a complete list of new features, improvements, and fixes, please visit the release notes. As always, please post any questions, ideas, or concerns on our community site, we are eager to hear from you.