Java · TestNG
Help desk with Selenium
Customers raise tickets (priority set by category); agents work a queue with live SLA countdowns and breach states, bulk-assign, reply with canned responses and formatting, add internal notes, and resolve with a required reason.
App under test
🎧 DeskFlow
- URL
- /apps/helpdesk
- Agent
- agent@deskflow.dev
- Password
- Desk@123
- SLA
- Urgent 30m · High 1h · Med 4h · Low 24h
Scenarios to automate
Work top to bottom — each one adds a new technique.
- 1
Derived priority
BeginnerChoosing ticket-category shows which priority the ticket will get (Technical → High).
- 2
Live SLA timers
Intermediatesla-<id> counts down each second; breached tickets have data-breached="true" and red text.
- 3
Queue filters
Beginnerstatus-filter, priority-filter, owner-filter and queue-search combine; assert queue-count.
- 4
Bulk assign
Intermediateselect-all-tickets → bulk-assign-me updates every assignee-<id> cell.
- 5
Toolbar formatting
IntermediateSelect text in reply-text, click format-bold; the sent message renders <strong>.
- 6
Internal notes
Intermediateinternal-note switch → message has data-internal="true" and doesn't count as a first response.
- 7
First response
AdvancedSending a public reply stops the SLA timer (“Responded”) and moves Open → Pending.
- 8
Resolution rule
IntermediateSetting ticket-status to Resolved without resolution-category shows ticket-error.
Sample Selenium suite
A working starting point that finds elements every way Selenium can — by role, label, text, id, name, CSS, XPath and data-testid — so you practice them all. Pick your language, switch to data-testid only to compare, or try your own in the Locator Playground.
import org.testng.annotations.*;
import org.openqa.selenium.*;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions;
import java.util.Map;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.*;
import java.time.Duration;
import static org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions.*;
// Locators in this suite: By.id ×4 · By.name ×3 · By.xpath ×5 · By.cssSelector ×3 · data-testid ×10
public class DeskFlowTicketTest {
static final String BASE = "https://www.practiceqaautomation.com";
WebDriver driver;
WebDriverWait wait;
// Small helpers: every action takes a By and waits for its element first (no Thread.sleep).
By tid(String id) { return By.cssSelector("[data-testid='" + id + "']"); }
WebElement ready(By by) { return centre(wait.until(elementToBeClickable(by))); }
void click(By by) { ready(by).click(); }
WebElement nth(String id, int n) { return centre(wait.until(numberOfElementsToBeMoreThan(tid(id), n)).get(n)); }
void clickNth(String id, int n) { nth(id, n).click(); }
// Scroll to the middle of the screen first: Selenium only scrolls an element to the edge,
// where a sticky header or a fixed bottom bar can cover it (ElementClickInterceptedException).
WebElement centre(WebElement e) {
((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("arguments[0].scrollIntoView({block: 'center', inline: 'nearest'})", e);
return e;
}
void type(By by, String text) { ready(by).sendKeys(text); }
void select(By by, String value) { new Select(ready(by)).selectByValue(value); }
void check(By by) { WebElement e = ready(by); if (!e.isSelected()) e.click(); }
void expectText(By by, String text) { wait.until(textToBePresentInElementLocated(by, text)); }
void expectVisible(By by) { wait.until(visibilityOfElementLocated(by)); }
void expectNthText(String id, int n, String text) {
wait.until(d -> d.findElements(tid(id)).size() > n && d.findElements(tid(id)).get(n).getText().contains(text));
}
@BeforeMethod
public void setUp() {
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
// Turn off Chrome's "Save password?" and "password found in a data breach" pop-ups: after a
// login they take the keyboard and mouse away from the page, so later typing and clicks are lost.
options.setExperimentalOption("prefs", Map.of(
"credentials_enable_service", false,
"profile.password_manager_enabled", false,
"profile.password_manager_leak_detection", false));
driver = new ChromeDriver(options);
wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(10));
}
@AfterMethod(alwaysRun = true)
public void tearDown() { driver.quit(); }
@Test
public void raisesATicketAndResolvesItAsAnAgent() {
driver.get(BASE + "/apps/helpdesk");
type(By.id("requester-name"), "Grace Lee");
type(By.name("requester-email"), "grace@globex.com");
select(tid("ticket-category"), "technical");
type(By.id("ticket-subject"), "Cannot export report to PDF");
type(tid("ticket-description"), "The export button spins forever and nothing downloads.");
click(By.xpath("//button[normalize-space()='Submit ticket']"));
expectText(tid("ticket-created"), "#1041");
// Switch to the agent side
click(tid("agent-login-link"));
type(By.name("agent-email"), "agent@deskflow.dev");
type(By.id("agent-password"), "Desk@123");
click(By.xpath("//button[normalize-space()='Sign in']"));
wait.until(urlContains("/apps/helpdesk/queue"));
expectNthText("open-ticket", 0, "Cannot export report");
expectText(tid("sla-1041"), "00:5");
clickNth("open-ticket", 0);
click(By.xpath("//button[normalize-space()='Assign to me']"));
expectText(tid("ticket-toast"), "Assigned");
select(By.cssSelector("[aria-label='Insert canned response']"), "greeting");
click(tid("send-reply"));
expectNthText("message", 1, "thanks for reaching out");
click(By.cssSelector("[aria-label='Internal note']"));
type(By.cssSelector("[aria-label='Reply']"), "Reproduced on staging, escalating to dev.");
click(tid("send-reply"));
expectNthText("message", 2, "Reproduced on staging");
select(By.name("ticket-status"), "Resolved");
click(By.xpath("//button[normalize-space()='Update ticket']"));
expectVisible(tid("ticket-error"));
select(By.id("resolution-category"), "bug-fixed");
click(By.xpath("//button[normalize-space()='Update ticket']"));
expectText(tid("ticket-status-badge"), "Resolved");
}
}