User group overview

User groups enable you to group tests in a logical order.

User groups enable you to:
The following schedule contains one user group.

Schedule with a user group called Browsers and Buyers. The user group contains five tests: Open, Browse, Open, Browse, Bid.

If you run this schedule with 10 users, they are assigned to the only user group—Browsers and Buyers. When the schedule run starts, the 10 virtual users start executing the first test in parallel. As soon as one is finished, he moves to the second test. Thus you have ten virtual users, all starting at the same time and executing each test sequentially. This does not give you much control over the run.
The following schedule contains the same tests in the same order, but they are divided between two user groups. Conceptually, this schedule is easier to understand, because the user's tasks are grouped logically—the Browsers browse and the Buyers browse and then bid on a product. But, even more important, this schedule is a much more accurate representation of the types of users on your system, because each user group contains tests that represent the actions that they do, and the proportions of the user groups (70% and 30%) represent the proportions of the users on your system.

Schedule with two user groups. Browsers group contains two tests: Open and Browse. Buyers group contains three tests:  Open, Browse, Bid.

If you run this schedule with 10 users, seven are assigned to the Browsers group, and three are assigned to the Buyers group. When the run starts, the seven Browsers and the three Buyers start in parallel. Thus you have seven Browsers, each executing two tests sequentially, and three Buyers, each executing three tests sequentially.

Parent topic: Representing workloads

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