sound
Description
The sound commands are an interesting set of commands. They are not designed for automation as one would traditionally consider as automation. Instead, they are designed to enhance one’s automation execution by providing audio notifications.
Consider the following: Supposed you have an automation script to test out a long list of functionality. The entire script takes hours to complete. Instead of checking the status of the execution every now and again, a more efficient way would to have the automation tool inform you of critical statuses - the classical pull versus push model. Some examples of such notification would be:
- Notify me when an error occurred
- Notify me when my script is started
- Notify me when my script is complete
- Notify me when
${total_order}is more than 500
All these examples, and many more, are the impetus for designing such sound commands, which drive at using audio as notification of the execution progress or critical events. By using different sounds (Predefined Audio Library) one can create distinguishing audio cues for different events such as “start”, “failed” or “complete”. Another advantage of using audio notification against the more common, GUI-based notification is its less invasive nature. UI notifications, such as pop up windows, alert dialogs, status bar bubbles, toast messages, etc. are designed to interrupt one’s focus. At times this can be rather jarring and counter-productive, esp. if one’s reading something on the computer screen. Using audio notification, there isn’t any shift of vision focus (i.e. nothing’s blocking one’s view) and yet it provides similar level of usefulness even when one’s turned away from the computer.
Zero-Touch Environment
When executing under a zero-touch environment - CI environment like Jenkins - the sound commands will automatically skipped over since it does not make sense to play audio notifications remotely. Besides, in all likelihood, the CI host is likely configured any sound cards or audio out (such as AWS EC2 or Azure VM). The execution result should show a “SKIPPED” result for any sound commands executed in a zero-touch environment.