Leave management is one of the most critical HR processes and also highly time-consuming. However, managing the entire process for hundreds of employees manually can be a tedious task for your HR department, as it involves keeping track of and maintaining huge quantities of data on Excel sheets. Hence, organizations across the globe have switched to an automated leave management system to improve efficiency of the HR department and bring in a boost in employee happiness and satisfaction.

The new age automated leave systems are designed to provide end-to-end solutions, making the entire process paperless and remotely accessible. Let us have a look at the most popular software available today that you can use to automate the leave process in your organization.

1] ADP

ADP software claims to redefine the payroll for your organization with an end-to-end automation of the leave process. It offers support for various leave types, such as paid leaves, LWPs, short term and long term leaves and vacations. It is a web-based solution and its key features include easy report generation, online leave transactions, workflow notification and customized policies.

Link to the website: https://www.adp.com/solutions/services/human-resources-management.aspx

2] Digital HRMS

Designed to help both small and medium to large organizations implement a seamless and paperless leave management process, Digital HRMS relieves the HR personnel of the tedious work. It’s a modular HRMS software and its automated leave system allows the following key functions:

Customize leave types
Configure policies
Manage multiple holiday calendars
Integrate data from Biometric devices
‘Do-It-Yourself’ employee modules
One of its key features is the dashboard that offers leave history at a glance.

Link to the website: http://www.digitalhrms.com

3] GreytHR

A very easy to use web-based software, greytHR is an automated leave system designed for businesses. With features like attendance tracking, public holiday lists, mobile time tracking, automatic time capture, annual processing and email notifications, it also allows the HR and the respective employee to view leave history. The tool can also be used to generate reports for one or more employees.

Link to the website: https://www.greythr.com/

4] SumHR

A really popular software out there, sumHR offers a host of features, which include balance counters, configuration of policies, list of public holidays and tracking of employee attendance. One of its key features is the FAQ section, which helps HR save time and efforts. It also allows you to import your leave history from spreadsheets.

Link to the website: https://www.sumhr.com/

5] Timelabs Professional

Timelabs Professional is a popular leave management system for companies with offices in multiple locations. It allows the following functions:

Configure leaves and holiday calendars for different locations
Centralize the leave, attendance and payroll data of your employees at one place
Manage attendance of employees
Employee self service
Link to website: https://www.timelabs.in/

New age automated leave systems are designed to help your HR professionals save time and efforts and make your employees happy. If your organization is still managing the process manually, it’s time you gave one of these software a try. Do you know of any other software that should be included in this list? Let us know in the comment box below.

This is informed by the fact that close to 90 percent of the population, which translates to 6 billion people, have access to mobile phones. As a CEO, if you want your brand to get closer to your consumer, mobile application development should be part of your short-term or long-term business strategy. Here is what you need to know about mobile app development strategy.

Enhancing data securityIf you want your mobile applications to be trusted and your venture to be successful, you need to capitalize on data security. Some of the common problems that application developers have to deal with constantly include:

Insecure data storage
Weak server-side controls
Broken cryptography
Unintentional data leaks
As a developer, you have to understand that users are not particularly careful about data security when they are using apps and that you have to worry about that on their behalf. To achieve this, you need developers who use encryption and SSL certificates to protect the most crucial information.

The monetization strategyBusinesses have realized that mobile app development has the potential to bring in millions of dollars in revenue. When creating the applications, you have to think of monetization strategies such as in-app purchases and in-app advertising. When your mobile app developer structures your application in an intelligent manner, you will be in a better position to convert users into buyers of what you are selling. One monetization strategy which works all the time is the freemium strategy where all the basic services are provided in the free version of the application, but if you need advanced features, you have to subscribe to the premium service. Sponsorship is another technique which achieves the monetization strategy. Here, companies will sponsor your efforts to develop applications and then use the apps to advertise their products. There is also the rewards strategy where the customers are rewarded by advertisers for completing certain actions in the app.

Continuous engagement instead of downloadsThe success of mobile applications has in the past been measured in terms of the number of downloads that the application gets. When mapping your app development strategies, stop focusing only on how many millions of downloads you want it to achieve and instead, look into how much engagement the users will give. You can have the team incorporate analytic tools which will tell you how much time users spend on the app and what they like doing the most. This will help you refine the application and deliver what is on demand. In fact, this is the best indirect way to get raving app reviews and more downloads.

The performance of the appIf you are a regular visitor of Google Play Store or the App store by Apple, you know that what users value the most about applications which they download is their performance. Before emphasizing on graphics and other aspects of the application, the biggest question that your mobile app developer needs to answer is, does this application perform the function it was built for? If for instance, the application helps find nearby restaurants that are affordable and have good food, if a user downloads but they cannot login or the app is unable to locate hotels within their locality, you will have serious problems with the reviews. Developers should therefore take time on the why app development strategies and come up with applications which are functional and user-friendly.

Cloud technology in mobile app developmentAnother strategy that can help you succeed in app development is making use of cloud technology. The benefits of cloud technology include standardization, agility, flexibility, and reduction of operational costs. With the technology, your developers can work anywhere, including at home or when out there on other engagements, which boosts their overall productivity.

These are a few of the strategies you need to think about when mapping out your mobile app development process. The most essential thing to remember is that you are doing the development for the sake of the end-user, therefore, the user will determine how successful the application will be depending on the expectations you build with the App and whether you meet them or not.

A web application is a computer program that is accessed through a network using a HTTP connection. Web apps run within the web browser and unlike mobile apps, are not stored within the device memory. Web application testing refers to the testing of web applications. Automated web application testing is achieved when you use a tool or framework to execute the process of testing web applications for possible issues and bugs.

Some of the common issues include performance of the web app across different browsers, app security, functionality, ease of accessibility, ability to handle traffic and so on. It also includes checking if the application meets the standards defined for it.

Why Choose Selenium?

Selenium is one of the most widely used test automation frameworks across the globe today. There are several reasons behind its popularity and given below are a few of them.

It is an open source framework that is available for free.
It provides access to an online community of professionals who continuously improvise on the framework and share the new codes with other users.
Supports automated web application testing across multiple browsers, including IE, Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari.
Supports testing across multiple platforms, such as Windows, Linux and macOS.
Offers flexibility when it comes to programming languages with support for Python, Ruby, Java, Perl, and PHP.
Supports seamless integration with popular tools, including SauceLabs, QMetry & Hudson.
It is because of its multiple benefits that new age test automation tools like QARA Test, Watir, and Katalon Studio are all built on the framework.

Components of Selenium for Web Application Testing

The basic purpose of Selenium is to automate web browser interactions to automate test scripts to perform the exact same interactions with the browser as a user performs manually. Even though it’s a fact that it can perform any form of automated interaction, the original purpose of developing the framework was to conduct automated web application testing.

To understand how it works, we shall have to understand its architecture and components.

It is based on a client-server architecture and consists of the following components:

1] Selenium WebDriver API:

WebDriver was developed as a solution to the challenges of using Remote Control. It’s a library or API with methods/classes/interfaces for use various programming languages. WebDriver does not require you to start the server to execute test cases. Supports C#, Java, PHP, Perl, and Python programming languages for flexibility. It allows cross platform testing across Windows OS, Mac OS, and Linux. It also supports parallel as well as remote test case execution. With WebDriver, each browser has its respective driver, as follows:

Chromedriver for test case execution on Chrome
Safaridriver for test case execution on Safari
Geckodriver for test case execution on Firefox
Operadriver for test case execution on Opera
IEdriver for test case execution on Internet Explorer
2] Selenium IDE:

IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment and Selenium IDE is a GUI based application. This component supports Record/Playback of test cases which helps save time and efforts of QA teams. It works on Firefox browser and is available as a browser add-on or extension. It does not require any programming language and is very easy to use. Based on JavaScript, it makes test case execution easier for even the most novice users.

3] Selenium Remote Control:

Known as Selenium RC, it is the initial version of Selenium and so lacks a GUI interface. However, it includes APIs and libraries consisting of classes, interfaces and methods and these are meant to be used with different programming languages, such as Java, PHP, and Perl. Remote Control is based on Object Oriented Programming. Allows execution of test cases across different browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, and Opera.

It allows language independence as well as platform independence which means it can be used with any language and across multiple platforms, such as Windows OS, Mac OS, and Linux.

4] Selenium Grid:

Selenium Grid can be used for executing test cases in parallel and also for remote execution of test cases. It accomplishes this with the help of Remote Control or WebDriver. Talking about remote execution of test cases using Grid, it is essential that the remote machine is connected over LAN networks and this calls for the configuration of a node and a hub, where the hub acts as the server. It makes it possible to execute test cases in multiple machines connected over LAN, which helps save time and resources.

Final Takeaway

The different components offer different testing functionalities and together form a framework that serves as a powerful tool for automated web application testing. With Selenium, you can execute multiple test cases across browsers, platforms and machines, which is a great way to save time and resources. If you are looking forward to implementing automated web application testing with great results, Selenium is the way to go!