Roadmap 2026

This roadmap outlines the key areas we plan to invest in for Step in 2026. Our focus will be to strengthen Step’s core capabilities while accelerating AI & agent enablement.

Note: This roadmap reflects our current plans and priorities and may evolve based on feedback and delivery learnings.

AI & agent enablement

Goal: Enable AI agents to safely and effectively assist with designing, running, and improving automation in Step.

• MCP server for agent connectivity
  Provide an official Model Context Protocol (MCP) server so AI agents can interact with Step through a supported, purpose-built interface.
  Benefits: more reliable integrations, consistent capabilities, safer automation around Step.

• Native AI agent support in Step
  Build central capabilities that help agents assist with authoring, execution, and fixing automation (e.g., guided actions, structured feedback loops).
  Benefits: faster test creation, quicker failure triage, reduced maintenance burden.

Authoring & lifecycle of automation packages

Goal: Make it easier to create, edit, and operate automation packages, from first project to enterprise-scale delivery.

• Local Automation Package Editor (visual + DevOps workflow)
  Combine a friendly visual editing experience with a “local-first” workflow (develop locally → version with Git → run centrally in Step). Benefits: faster iteration, better reviewability, safer changes, and broader adoption across technical and non-technical users.

• Automation Package Creation Wizard (CLI + local editor)
  Provide an interactive wizard in the CLI and the upcoming local editor to create new Automation Packages from scratch (scaffolding, structure, templates, initial configuration).
  Benefits: faster project bootstrapping, smoother onboarding, fewer setup errors, and consistent foundations across teams.

• Improved Automation Package descriptor syntax & schema
  Simplify the descriptor syntax and improve the underlying schema to make descriptors easier to write and maintain in IDEs (better validation, autocompletion, and inline guidance). We also plan to provide richer/custom schemas that include more context for authors.
  Benefits: faster authoring, fewer configuration errors, improved developer experience, and more consistent package definitions.

Execution & third-party integration

Goal: Reinforce Step’s position as the industry’s most versatile orchestrator for modular, reusable automation at scale across heterogeneous technology stacks.

• First-Class Native Process Support
  Integrate “run any process” as a first-class, native capability in Step, matching the depth and ease-of-use of our dedicated tool connectors. This provides a built-in path for teams to execute bespoke CLI tools or custom scripts without the need for external plugins. Benefits: faster onboarding for 3rd-party tools, “bring-your-own-tool” flexibility, and consistent capture of logs, metrics, and attachments across any execution type.

• Import and reuse entities across packages
  Make it simpler to reuse and share keywords and other entities from external automation packages to reduce duplication and encourage standard building blocks.
  Benefits: more reuse, faster delivery, better standardization.

Reporting & evidence management

Goal: Keep Step’s interactive reporting strength while improving shareability, auditability, and flexibility.

• Static report export (document-style)
  Export execution results into a static report format (e.g., HTML) for CI pipelines, archiving, and sharing with stakeholders who don’t need full interactivity.
  Benefits: easier distribution, better compliance/auditing, improved CI integration.

• More built-in attachment viewers
  Extend out-of-the-box viewers for common artifact types (structured documents, HTML reports, and tool-specific outputs such as traces).
  Benefits: faster investigation, fewer downloads/context switches, better “evidence in one place”.

• Customizable report views
  Make the execution report layout configurable so users can create views that match their workflow (e.g., troubleshooting, audit, management summary).
  Benefits: higher productivity, role-based reporting, less noise.

• Generalized reporting inside keywords
  Extend reporting granularity beyond “keyword call” level to support richer sub-steps within keywords when needed.
  Benefits: better visibility into complex keywords, improved diagnostics without rewriting flows.

Observability & operations

Goal: Empower platform teams with richer operational insights and seamless observability integration for large-scale Step environments.

• OpenTelemetry (OTel) integration
  Provide out-of-the-box tracing so Step executions can participate in end-to-end observability across systems.
  Benefits: faster root-cause analysis, unified traces across services, better production monitoring.

• Improved self-monitoring for Step administrators
  Add platform health and operational insights to support day-to-day administration in large deployments.
  Benefits: reduced MTTR, proactive detection, smoother operations for platform teams.

Roadmap 2025

The 2025 roadmap builds upon the latest advancements introduced in Step 27, released on the 17/03/2025. This roadmap continues our commitment to expanding executions and reporting capabilities while also exploring AI-driven features and refining the overall user experience.

Core

• Enable real-time streaming of keyword outputs and attachments to better support long-running keyword executions [Completed]
• Simplify integration of third-party solutions with native, flexible process execution capabilities [In progress]
• Extensible report artifact ingestion — including out-of-the-box support for standard tools (Cypress, Playwright, Cucumber, etc.) with the flexibility to support custom formats [In progress]
• Enable transfer of keyword-specific resources to agents [Completed]
• Enhance platform diagnostics with a controller and agent log downloader and improved system self-monitoring [Postponed]

Reporting & Analysis

• Further enhance the reporting experience with new views and insights, customizable reports, and export features — continuing the complete redesign of the reporting views initiated in Step 27 [Completed]
• Introduce dedicated viewers for specific report attachments (e.g. Playwright Trace Viewer, videos, log files…) [Completed]
• Introduce a metric explorer to facilitate the creation of custom analytics dashboards [Postponed]

AI Integration

• Explore AI-powered enhancements in Step to assist users across key workflow stages:
  • Investigate the potential for natural language interactions, enabling users to describe automation scenarios in plain text and receive AI-generated plan structures [Completed]
  • Leverage AI for intelligent test result analysis, automatically identifying trends, errors, and inconsistencies [Postponed]
  • Implement anomaly detection mechanisms to highlight deviations, improve debugging, and enhance test reliability [Postponed]

DevOps & CI/CD

• Enhance the developer experience for building Automation Packages directly within IDEs [Postponed]
• Simplify YAML syntax for improved readability without limiting flexibility [Postponed]
• Enable deployment of Automation Packages directly from artifact repositories (e.g., Nexus) via the Step UI, allowing users to fetch and deploy packages seamlessly [Completed]

UI / UX

• Enhance onboarding for new users with guided tours and direct access to samples and best practices [In progress]
• Simplify plan design with improved controls, contextual documentation, and inline keyword creation [Postponed]
• Improve overall UI responsiveness for a smoother experience [Completed]

Roadmap 2024

SaaS

• Auto-scaling of Step Agents [Completed]
• Single Sign-on for Step SaaS [In progress]

DevOps and CI/CD

• Support of all Keyword types in Automation Packages [Completed]
• Support more Automation Package types (i.e. archives, exploded folders…) [Completed]
• Dedicated CLI for Automation Packages in addition to the maven plugin [Completed]
• Improved support of Automation Package’s YAML descriptor in IDE [Completed]
• Native reporting in CI/CD pipelines [Completed]

Analytics & reporting

• Full redesign of the execution report views [Completed]
• Automatic report generation [Postponed]
• Further development of the analytics dashboards [Completed]

UI / UX

• Redesign of the visual plan editor [Completed]
• Support mobile form factor for relevant views [Postponed]
• Customization of tables [Completed]

Core

• Streaming of Keyword’s output and attachments [Postponed]
• WebSocket communication between controller and agents [Postponed]
• Controller and Agent Logs downloader [Postponed]
• Custom execution parameters per plan [Postponed]
• Replacement of the notification module [Completed]

Plugins

• Embedded Playwright trace viewer [Postponed]
• Cypress video and multi browsers support [Postponed]
• Playwright keyword library [Completed (as sample)]
• Support of Selenide [Completed (as sample)]
• .NET agent upgrade to .NET 8 [Completed]

Roadmap 2023

SaaS

• Implement Single Sign-on for the Step SaaS and Enterprise [Postponed]
• Implement auto-scaling of Step Agents (required agents will start when initializing an execution) [Postponed]
• Add a Step wizard to easily create common scenarios [Completed]

DevOps and CI/CD

• Native integration with CI/CD pipelines (GitLab, etc) by providing a Maven plugin for Step. It will support following goals:
  • Automatically deploy keyword packages to a Step instance [Completed]
  • Trigger executions on a Step instance for Automation Packages available on an artifact repository [Postponed]
  • Directly deploy and run an Automation Packages on a Step instance [Completed]
• Native Git integration in Step: more details to come :) [Postponed]
• Support the definition of scheduled execution in Automation Packages [Completed]

Analytics & reporting

• Support full analytics based on RAW measurements and customs attributes [Completed]
• Automatic report generation with minimal customizations [Postponed]

Plugins / Community

• Implement plugin and keywords marketplace [Postponed]
• Extend and make our main keyword libraries available on the marketplace (Selenium, Playwright, Cypress, API automation…) [Postponed]

UI

• Refactoring of the execution view [Postponed]
• Improve Step UX (support multiple units for durations inputs, date picker for execution scheduling…) [Partially Completed]

Core

• Release the Step license server [Declined]
• Out of the box video recording on agents [Declined]

Documentation

• Better document the general features and key concepts (everything as code, CI/CD integration, etc…) [Completed]
• Add more tutorials, e.g. How to perform continuous performance testing with Step,… [Completed]

Roadmap 2022

Reached state as of Step 21 on 13/02/2023

Main 2022 features which were not part of the initial road map

• Access management: OpenID Connect integration added and LDAP integrations enhanced
• DevOps and CI/CD: Enhanced support for execution bundles (keywords and plans as code) for the Step Junit runner and CI/CD integration with the artefact repository
• Plugins automation: New integration plugin for Astra enabling no-code automation and for SikuliX for GUI-based automation

You will find an exhaustive list in the release notes

SaaS

• Add new type[s] of agents [Completed]
• Support main Step plugins (Azure DevOps, PDF and Image compare, JMeter, SoapUI and LogicFlow) [Postponed]
• Implement auto-scaling of Step Agents (required agents will start when initializing an execution) [Postponed]

Dashboarding & analytics

• Extension of reporting functionalities (e.g. generation of reports, comparison of executions) [Completed]
• Rework of embedded visualization and analytics framework [Completed]
• Implement anomalies detection and alerting for continuous performance testing & synthetic monitoring [On-hold]

Plugins / Community

• Implement plugin and keywords market place [Postponed]
• Integrate with Jira X-Ray [Completed]
• Improve cypress plugin [Completed]

UI

• Improve usability of the visual plan editor [Completed]
  • More intuitive keyword call form (customizable form, provide available inputs with default values…)
  • Enhance UX to design plans
  • Improve controls to simplify the plans
• Rework of the execution view [In progress]
• Improve Step UX (support multiple units for durations inputs, date picker for execution scheduling…) [Postponed]
• Migration to angular; overall redesign of the UI [In progress]

Core

• Support versioning of Step entities such as plans and parameters [Completed]
• Support additional JSON databases [Completed]
• Enhance the Step keyword API [Completed]

Administration

• Move relevant configuration items from file to the UI [Postponed]
• Add Possibility to retrieve settings and logs from the UI [Postponed]

Documentation

• Tutorials:
• How to setup large scale on-demand test automation project with Step [Completed]
• How to perform continuous performance testing with Step [In progress]
• How to perform synthetic availability & performance monitoring with Step [Completed]

Roadmap 2021

Reached state as of Step 3.18

Cloud

• New cloud offering of Step as Kubernetes app on Google Cloud Market place [Declined]
• Auto-scaling of Step Agents in Kubernetes [Declined]
• Public Helm chart for Step OS [Declined]

Dashboarding & analytics

• Deep rework of existing dashboards (improved configurability, user-friendliness and look&feel) [Completed]
• Extension of reporting functionalities (e.g. generation of reports, better exporting) [Postponned]
• Integration with Grafana and Grafana Dashboards on central repository [Completed]
• Integration with Prometheus and TimescaleDB [Completed]
• Integration with JDBC and log ingestion pipelines (logstash, splunk, etc) [Completed]

UI

• Further improvements of the visual plan editor [Completed]
• Plan refactoring features (find Keyword usage, batch operations, etc) [Completed]
• Bi-directionality between plain text plan and visual plan editors [Partially completed]
• Improvement of tables (filtering, multi-selection, etc) [Completed]
• Design and prototyping of STEP 4.0 with complete redesign of the UI [Completed]

Core

• Redesign of the controller for enhanced scalability [Completed]
• Support and documentation of REST APIs [Completed]
• Protection (encryption) of sensitive business parameters (SUT passwords, etc) [Completed]

Documentation

• Tutorials:
• How to setup large scale on-demand test automation project with Step [Completed]
• How to perform end-to-end load & performance testing with Step and Selenium [Completed]
• How to perform continuous performance testing with Step [Postponed]
• How to perform synthetic availability & performance monitoring with Step [Completed]

Roadmap 2020

Reached state as of Step 3.15

Step Core

• Deep improving ergonomy and out-of-the-box end-user, dev & admin support [Completed]
• Redesign of the execution reporting views [Partially completed]
• Change tracking of entities in STEP UI [Completed]
• Additional analytics capability and new dashboards [Completed]
• REST API enhancement [Completed]

CI/CD

• Managed executions and stateless controller [Completed]
• Deep exports/imports of entity bundles [Completed]
• Testing SDK [Completed]

Performance testing

• Performance testing specific assertions [Completed]
• Continuous performance testing support [Completed]
• New performance testing controls [Completed]
• Extended performance test dashboards [Completed]
• API for automatic performance test reporting [Dropped]

Integration plugins

• Azure devops integration [Completed]
• Extension of the Jira Zephyr support [Completed]

Step Libraries & Samples

• Extension of the Step Library [Completed]

Roadmap 2019

Reached state as of Step 3.12

Step Core

• Project overview dashboard + labeling and/or coloring of executions in executions list [Completed]
• Cloud-ready interface (resource upload via drag & drop and resource manager) [Completed]
• Artefacts publication in Maven, NuGet, npm [Completed]
• Batch keyword import via Annotation detection (@Keyword) [Completed]
• Improved bundling (export & import of all Step objects, including keywords) [Completed]
• Keyword API decoupling / externalization [Completed]
• New documentation in the form of a modern knowledge base + case studies, white papers, etc [Completed]
• New error visualization tab in execution view [Completed]
• Applicative Logout feature [Completed]
• Google Sheets as dataset [Completed]

Ops & Administration

• Business-aware housekeeping (deletion of specific executions & related objects, drop all except..) [Completed]
• Admin view improvements [Completed]
• Self-monitoring (first via add-on tutorial, then built-in directly) [Completed]
• Moving config files to db [Partially completed]
• Placeholder support in remaining config files [Declined]

Monitoring

• Scheduler-based monitoring view: provides an overview of the execution status of each job [Completed]
• User-customizable dashboarding [Completed]
• Notifications plugin [Completed]
• Cron presets for common use cases [Completed]

Performance testing

• Performance report & dashboard with throughput, error rate, avg response times table, response time overview & error breakdown [Completed]
• Better RTM integration & dashboarding capability [Completed]

Plugins

• Major refactoring of .NET agent with library transfer support, logging, PDB’s, timeouts and improved exceptions management [Completed]
• Monitoring view for Event Broker [Completed]
• Improved PDF file transfer in PDF comparison plugin [Completed]
• On-the-fly report synchronization with ALM [Completed]

Downloadable Bundles

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 keywords package & tutorial [Completed]
• Android & Appium keywords package & tutorial [Completed]
• AutoIt & Office integration keywords & tutorial [Completed]
• exense’s internal Selenium toolkit [Completed]

Roadmap 2018

Evaluation

Evaluation done as of March 31st

Goal	Completion %	Comment/Reason	EE only
Devops/CI/CD
Common test plan format	80	Step Natural Language + PlanBuilder released. Only missing code or at least unit test generation for local debugging
New classes for client-side triggers	100	“STEPClient” released	X
Mobile
Ability to test Android apps & browser	100	Accomplished Java agent + Appium, also offered as a Cloud service
Appium integration	100	Tested and now officially supported. No need for a dedicated plugin though.
HTTP
HAR Replay	30	Achieved at a client, not officially integrated or supported yet. Official HTTP keywords offered as an alternative
Custom script generation	0	Abandoned for now. If anything happens in this department, it’ll be through the HAR replay(er).
OOTB support of SSL contexts	90	Provided via our official HTTP keyword package. Just not officially released/OS’ed yet, but in use at clients.
Gatling & co	0	Not a high priority at this point.
Keyword dev
Helper classes	60	In use internally and at some clients, not officially released yet.
API Refactoring	70	Major improvements have been done. Inputs & Outputs still expected to change. API has now be desync’d from STEP for easier maintenance
Starter kits	100	Sample projects implemented
Javadocs	100
Plans dev
Generic keywords	80	Mecanism implemented. Done in EE for broker, in progress for HTTP	X
Plan templates	100	Available for import under Libraries in our docs
Refactoring of artefacts & new artefacts	100
Previous KW output reference	100
Init hooks	0	Can be handled in other ways, low prio
Ops
Export/Import	100	Done for Plans
Data retention strategy	100	Done but can be improved
Admin view improvements	0	Could not do in time.
Self-Monitoring	50	Not published yet but new features in use as beta version at key clients.
Misc
Doc refactoring & migration	60	Should be released by May
Github status & widget	0	Low prio.
Artefact publication in Maven	0	Low prio.
Not in roadmap but done anyways
Resource manager	100
Notifications	100
Pupeteer	100
Async support	100
& much more (see release notes)…

Initial Roadmap

Additional DevOps-oriented functionality

• Introduction of a common format for test plans (with translation between Java code and persisted plans in the web app) to enable wider cross-practice collaboration
• Introduction of new client classes providing client-side triggers, remote test plan execution and remote keyword execution to provide developers with more flexibility, facilitate integration with build processes and allow developers to commit test plans as part of their projects

Mobile testing support

• Support of both native mobile applications and mobile-based browsers (as a simulation and on real devices)
• Integration with popular mobile testing frameworks, preferably based on the WebDriver API such as Appium (Selendroid a possibility)

Avanced HTTP Plugins

• Support of HAR replays
• Custom script generation
• Out of the box support of SSL contexts
• Possible integration with additional HTTP frameworks such as Gatling (to complete the existing library: JMeter, Grinder and SoapUI)

Easier keyword development

• Exposure of frequently used Helper classes for keyword input / output management and error handling
• API refactoring (including the replacement the javax json library)
• Publication of starter kits and examples of best practices for the most common types of projects
• Publication of detailed Javadocs and source jars

Easier test plan development

• Introduction of generic keywords for the most common technical use cases and out-of-the-box support of standard protocols (htttp/s, ftp/s, etc) without having to use any plugins (grinder, jmeter, etc)
• Introduction of test plan templates for the most common use cases (data-driven, load and monitoring scenarios)
• Refactoring of key artefacts such as “Set”, “Composite” KWs or “CallFunction” and introduction of new artefacts in order to enhance test plan modularity and reusability
• Automatic access to previous keyword outputs for finer linkage
• Addition of various Init/Pre and Exit/Post hooks, destined to be used primarily in parallel artefacts (For, ForEach, ThreadGroup), as a first step toward the support of a jointpoint-style Test plan API

New operational features

• Introduction of one-click import and export for most objects (in particular Test plans and Executions)
• Introduction of data retention strategies
• Enhancements in the admin view to publish all of the internal technical information (controller + agents)
• Self-monitoring (at system, middleware and client code levels)

Misc.

• Migration, refactoring and update of the documentation
• Improved project status on github (nightly buildwidget)
• Direct artefact publication to the Maven Central repo

Roadmap 2017

Evaluation

No thorough evaluation of the 2017 roadmap took place but most of the features have been shipped in v3.5 and v3.6. Roadmap was still very much subject to major changes and pretty volatile as of early 2017.

Initial Roadmap

• Plan export & import
• NodeJS agent
• New artefacts: While, Assert, Synchronized
• JSON schemas for keyword input validation and input keys autofill
• Add “previous” object reference to access the output of the last completed Keyword call
• Interactive Test Plan Sessions
• Autoclose on Session end and test end