The purpose of test definition is to create and organize test cases for use in test plans and test executions. A test case is a Jira issue in a project that has been activated for T4J. Therefore the terms “issue”, "test", and “test case” are used synonymously in this documentation.

The Jira issues are extended by T4J with features that support testing. All operations provided by Jira for working with issues also work with test cases, including searching, linking, exporting, importing, etc. Additionally, test cases can contain test steps and test parameters. All operations for the definition of a test case can be accessed from the issue detail view, including the management of test steps and parameters, as well as the execution of the test. 

Every test project has its own definition tree

in which test cases are hierarchically organized. The tree is the framework for creating test plans

including the test cases in the

tree. (Note that a given plan may include test cases from multiple projects. It is also possible for a test case to be part of multiple definition trees

in different projects.)

A test case represents a single executable test that exercises some aspect of an application. It describes the purpose of the test, what has to be done, in which order and the input data to be used by the test. It can be executed on its own or as part of a test plan.

A test step represents a single action that is to be carried out and evaluated as pass or fail during test execution. A test step has a name, a description and an expected result. Test steps are specific to test cases. They are executed in the same order in which they are displayed in the issue view.

A test parameter is a key-value pair and is used to input execution specific data to test steps, without the need

to modify the test case itself. The keys and their default values are specified in the test case. When a case is executed, the default values of the parameters can be retained or they can be overwritten with execution-specific values. The values, either default or overwritten, are then substituted for occurrences of the keys in the test steps.