Grouping participants
Loadero allows grouping participants together, which helps achieve any or all of the following:
- ensuring that everyone in the group begins test execution at the same time - this is beneficial for when a participant starting the test by itself does not bring much value, e.g., a conference call with only one user, or when you want to stress the concurrency handling of your app;
- alternate the value of a user-defined variable in the script depending on the group, e.g., by utilizing a list data structure containing relevant values for each group and then using the unique group ID Loadero constant as an index for that list;
- defining totally different behavior depending on what group the participant belongs to, e.g., via if-else statements.
For example, in a service that provides conference calls, it may be necessary that only the hosts activate their microphones. By editing the test script it's possible to provide different flows for specific groups, allowing one group to join as hosts and activate their microphones, and other groups to join as listeners. Additionally, if you wanted the test to automate various calls happening in parallel at the same time, you could provide each group with a different conference ID to connect to.
Manipulating the test script to enable different behaviors for groups can be done through the use of two Loadero constants - group name and group ID. These variables are defined automatically at the time of the run's initialization before the actual script itself is executed, and you can then use them inside the actual script.
It is also possible to set up different behaviors on a participant-by-participant basis rather than a group-by-group basis by using other automatically generated Loadero constants, such as participant name, participant ID, and participant global ID. Read more about Loadero constants here.
Group count
Group count is the number of identical copies of the specific group to be added to the test. Each copy will contain exactly the same participants configurations.
Consider a group consisting of 3 participants: User A and User B from US, User C from EU. With a single group, there would be a total of 3 participants in the test (given that this is the only group). If group count is increased to 3, then there will be total of 9 participants joining the test - 6 from US and 3 from EU.