What is end-to-end functional test automation?
End-to-end functional test automation (or E2E Test Automation) is about automatically reproducing real user journeys across your applications: logging in, searching for a product, filling out a form, confirming a payment, downloading a document, and so on.
Unlike unit tests, which verify a small piece of code, or integration tests, which ensure technical components communicate correctly, E2E tests operate at the level of the full experience. They answer a simple question: “Can a user actually complete their task, from start to finish, without being blocked?”.
In modern organizations, these journeys rarely live in a single application:
- a public website interacts with a back-office and a payment service provider;
- a mobile app relies on APIs and third-party services;
- business processes combine web apps, legacy systems, desktops and physical devices.
The goal of E2E automation is therefore twofold: prevent functional regressions at every change, while reducing manual effort and reliance on a few experts who “know how to test everything by hand” before each go-live.
Why automate your end-to-end functional tests?
1. Reduce regression risk at every release
As your applications evolve, the volume of tests required before each release explodes. Manual campaigns become time-consuming, expensive and, in reality, incomplete.
Automation lets you replay full sets of scenarios in minutes that would have taken hours or days manually, and secure your critical journeys every time you change code, configuration, or a third-party service.
2. Accelerate time-to-market without sacrificing quality
Product and IT teams have to ship more features, faster. Without a solid base of automated tests, every release becomes a trade-off between speed and risk tolerance.
With Ekara, E2E scenarios run automatically in your CI/CD pipelines. A new version that breaks a critical journey is detected immediately, before it impacts end users.
3. Align QA, Product, Ops and Business teams
Journeys tested in Ekara are defined in business language (steps, screens, actions), which allows QA, Product and business teams to share a common view of what must work, without diving into technical details.
These same scenarios can also be reused as synthetic monitoring, creating a direct link between what you test before go-live and what you monitor 24/7 when the application is in production.
4. Better steer application quality over time
Automating tests is not just about running scripts – it is about measuring how your journeys behave over time. Ekara provides consolidated indicators per application, per version and per test type, to track functional stability and the impact of changes.
Functional test automation with Ekara
A scenario studio focused on business journeys
Ekara offers a scenario studio that lets you describe a user journey step by step: open the app, enter credentials, select a product, complete a form, confirm a payment, etc.
The approach is no-code / low-code: the emphasis is on understanding the business journey, not on the syntax of a test framework. QA teams can go further by adding conditions, loops or advanced checks when needed.
Multi-technology coverage
Ekara lets you combine several technologies in a single scenario:
- web applications (real browsers);
- mobile apps running on real devices (for example via Ekara POD);
- intermediate API calls;
- desktop or legacy applications in some contexts.
This reflects the reality of business processes, which rarely rely on a single system.
On-demand or scheduled execution
Once your scenarios are created, you can run them:
- on demand from the Ekara interface, to validate a specific change;
- on a schedule, at regular intervals, to track stability over time;
- automatically from your CI/CD pipelines, at every build or deployment.
Results are centralized in Ekara with status (pass / fail), detailed step logs, screenshots and performance metrics when relevant.
Reuse in synthetic monitoring
One of Ekara’s strengths is the ability to reuse the same scenario for two complementary purposes:
- upstream, as an automated functional test to validate your releases;
- in production, as a synthetic monitoring scenario to detect incidents before users do.
You are not maintaining two separate sets of journeys: the business logic is centralized, which significantly reduces maintenance effort and aligns QA, Ops and Business teams around the same scenarios.
Typical use cases for Ekara test automation
E-commerce and purchase journeys
Automatically testing search, add-to-cart, checkout, account management (account creation, password reset…) and returns flows helps secure direct revenue. Every change to your offers, CMS or PSP can be validated in minutes.
Banking, insurance and financial services
In a heavily regulated environment, end-to-end functional tests help demonstrate control over operational risks: account opening, e-signature, loan simulations, policy subscription, etc. Critical journeys are replayed every time a business component or third-party service changes.
Public sector and citizen services
For government and public bodies, Ekara ensures that online processes (applications, submissions, tax payments, rights consultation) remain accessible, reliable and performant, even during peak usage (campaigns, annual deadlines, seasonal spikes).
Integration into your DevOps and CI/CD chain
E2E tests as guardrails in your pipelines
Ekara integrates with your CI/CD tools to run test scenarios at key stages of the application lifecycle: build, integration, pre-production, controlled production rollout. Depending on the test results, the pipeline can proceed or be stopped.
Dev and QA teams get fast, automated feedback on how changes impact business journeys, not just technical components.
Data-driven quality metrics
Execution results (success rate, execution time, error breakdown by app, version, journey type) feed consolidated dashboards in Ekara. They can also be exported to your existing BI or observability tools.
This gives you a clear view of the maturity of your automated tests and how functional quality evolves over time.
FAQ – Functional test automation with Ekara
What is the difference between E2E functional tests and synthetic monitoring?
E2E functional tests are mainly run in test or pre-production environments to validate a version before go-live. Synthetic monitoring replays similar scenarios in production at regular intervals to detect incidents before users. With Ekara, a single scenario can be used for both use cases.
Who is concerned by Ekara’s Test Automation capability?
Ekara’s Test Automation capability is designed for QA, Product, IT, SRE / Ops and business teams involved in defining journeys. The no-code interface allows non-developers to contribute to scenario definition, while technical profiles can go deeper into advanced configuration and CI/CD integration.
Do I need to write code to create test scenarios in Ekara?
No. Scenario creation is designed to be no-code / low-code. Steps are defined visually and in business terms. However, advanced options allow technical users to add more complex logic when needed (conditions, data sets, API calls, etc.).
How long does it take to get started?
For well-identified journeys, getting your first E2E scenarios up and running with Ekara is fast: in a few days, you can cover critical flows (login, purchase, payment, forms) and plug them into your existing test chain. The rest depends mainly on the complexity of your IT landscape and the number of journeys you want to industrialize.
How do you handle script maintenance?
Ekara relies on robust element recognition (smart selectors, wait handling, tolerance to some UI changes) to limit breakage at every cosmetic change. Centralizing business logic in a single reusable scenario (tests + monitoring) also significantly reduces maintenance effort.
Which journeys should I automate first?
We recommend starting with high-value or high-risk journeys: conversion (purchase, subscription, payment), onboarding (account creation, activation), regulatory flows, sensitive operations (transfers, approvals, signatures). These usually concentrate most of the impact when something goes wrong.