...

A general setting, available in Global Preferences, allows you to globally opt-in or opt-out for this feature. If the Automated Steps Library is not enabled, users can still specify Cucumber Scenarios/Backgrounds, although lacking the autocomplete ability.

Key concepts 

The Automated Steps Library provides a per project organization for all the steps used in automated (Cucumber only) Tests and Preconditions Pre-Conditions belonging to that project.

In other words, the library provides a centralized point to manage all Gherkin sentences (i.e. the Cucumber "steps" ) of all the Tests and Preconditions Pre-Conditions of a given project.

Steps are automatically added to the Automated Steps Library of a project whenever a Cucumber Test/Precondition Pre-Condition of that project is created or updated. Likewise, they're automatically removed if they are not being used by none of those entities, in that project.

Steps are always, and indirectly, automatically created in the library whenever creating/editing a Cucumber Test/PreconditionPre-Condition. Steps cannot be created within the Automated Steps Library itself.

...

• refactor steps, by easily renaming them (i.e. changing their specification)
• refactor steps, by merging similar steps and avoiding duplicated specifications & associated code
• see which Tests/Preconditions Pre-Conditions are using a particular step
• label steps, so they can be categorized, to ease their management and the step autocompletion during Test/Precondition Pre-Condition edition

In the Automated Steps Library you cannot:

• create/remove steps (this is done automatically, whenever creating/editing/removing Cucumber Tests/PreconditionsPre-Conditions)

Steps

Steps, from the current Automated Steps Library perspective, correspond to Gherkin sentences used by Cucumber Tests/Preconditions Pre-Conditions (i.e. Cucumber Scenario, Scenario Outline, Background).

...

Gherkin reserved keywords (e.g. Given, When, Then, And) are not stored in the library, so these two following steps are equally stored as "I have a calculator":

Given I have a calculator

And I have a calculator

I have a calculator

Steps can be updated/refactored in the Automated Steps Library; they can also be implicitly updated or created whenever editing or creating a Cucumber Test/PreconditionPre-Condition.

However, they cannot be created from within the Automated Steps Library UI, in order to avoid dummy/unused steps. In other words, if a step appears in the Automated Steps Library then most probably it is been used by some entity. Exceptions may arise though, specially if the library is disabled somewhere in time or if for some reason Xray was unable to process an update/creation Jira event.

Integrity Checker, or a specific option in the project settings, may be used to force a per-project synchronization of steps, in case you find orphaned or missing steps in the library.

Explore