A scenario is a thing you want to test — e.g. “Hire a US employee into an active position” or “Terminate an employee with future-dated leave.” Scenarios are grouped into categories like Hire, Termination, Job Change, Happy Path, or Negative / Validation.This module gives you two superpowers:
Generate scenarios with AI — click a button, the AI reads your workbook and proposes 20–40 scenarios organized by category. You review, approve, edit, or reject.
Reuse scenarios across test cycles — categories live at the project level. The same “Hire” category can appear in Cycle 1, Cycle 2, and a regression cycle — no duplication.
You get two layers of categories, automatically:
Layer
Where it comes from
Examples
Baseline (10 universal categories, instant)
Built into TestFactors — present on every project
Happy Path · Negative / Validation · Permissions · Workflow / Approval · Integration · Edge Case · Data Variants · Audit · Concurrency · Mass Operations
Functional (15–25 categories, 10–15 seconds)
AI reads your workbook and proposes them
Hire · Rehire · Termination · Promotion · Job Change · Pay Rate Change · Leave of Absence · Position Management · …
The functional categories are unique to your workbook — they reflect what your HR config actually does.
A processed workbook in this project. If you haven’t uploaded one yet, see Workbooks.
A test cycle picked. Categories are scoped to a cycle — same category can be reused across cycles, but generation happens for one cycle at a time. If you have only one cycle, it’s auto-selected.
About 5 minutes for the generation + your initial review.
From the project’s left sidebar, click Scenarios. You’ll see categories grouped by SF module (Employee Central, Compensation, etc.).
Scenarios tab with module groupings on the left and a category empty state on the right.
2
Pick a module
On the left, click the SF module you want to work in (e.g. Employee Central). The right pane shows that module’s categories. First time? It’s empty — that’s normal.
Empty state for Employee Central module showing the central 'Generate Categories' call-to-action.
3
Click Generate Categories
The empty state has a primary button: Generate Categories. Click it.Within ~1 second you’ll see 10 baseline categories appear (Happy Path, Negative/Validation, etc.) — these are universal and come instantly.Below them, a small progress banner appears:
⟳ AI is reading your workbook… Added 0 categories so far.
Module pane immediately after clicking Generate: 10 baseline categories visible and a progress banner at the top.
4
Watch functional categories stream in
Over the next 10–15 seconds, AI-generated functional categories appear one by one — Hire, Termination, Job Change, etc. The banner counter updates live.Each AI-generated category has a small [AI] badge so you can tell them apart from baseline ones.
Module pane with 28 categories total (10 baseline + 18 AI), each AI row marked with an [AI] badge.
If you have no workbook knowledge yet (you uploaded a workbook but the parser found nothing testable), only the 10 baseline categories will appear, and you’ll see a small message offering to upload a workbook or add categories manually.
5
Review the proposed categories
For each category you have three choices:
Keep (do nothing — it’s already Active)
Edit — rename, change description, change position
Demote — hide it from this cycle without deleting (you can restore later by clicking Generate again)
Category row with action menu open: Edit, Demote, Link to other cycles, Delete.
If you accidentally demote categories you wanted, just click Generate Categories again. TestFactors restores demoted categories in a single click (no AI tokens spent — it’s free).
6
Open a category to add or generate scenarios
Click any category name. You land on the Category detail view, which lists scenarios in that category.For each scenario you can:
Generate scenarios with AI — same pattern as categories, but for individual scenarios. The AI proposes 5–15 scenarios per category in ~10 seconds.
+ New scenario — write one manually
Reorder scenarios with drag-and-drop
Category detail showing 8 AI-generated scenarios and the central 'Generate Scenarios' button for adding more.
That’s the core loop. Once your categories and scenarios look right, the next step is generating test cases from them. See Test Cases.
Every generation surface in TestFactors has a chat panel on the right where you can refine the output in plain English. After categories or scenarios have generated, try:
“Add more edge cases around international transfers”“Group the termination scenarios by reason code”“Skip the mass-operation scenarios for now — we’ll handle those in Cycle 2”“The ‘Hire’ category is too broad — split it into ‘New Hire’ and ‘Rehire’”
Category detail with a chat panel open on the right; user has typed a refinement and the AI is proposing changes.
The AI proposes changes — you approve or reject each one before they take effect.
If your workbook gets updated (new sheets, new fields, a corrected spec), you can re-run the AI to pick up the changes without losing your existing categories:
1
Open the module pane
Click the module on the left of the Scenarios tab.
2
Click the Refresh menu
Top-right of the module pane is a small menu: ↻ Refresh from workbook ▾. Click it and choose Re-run AI suggestions.
Refresh dropdown showing 'Re-run AI suggestions' option.
3
Confirm
A dialog confirms what will happen:
This will read the latest workbook knowledge and may add new functional categories on top of what’s already here. Existing categories won’t be removed or renamed.
Click Re-run AI.
4
Watch for new arrivals
Same progress banner as the initial generation. When polling stops, a toast shows how many new categories were added (often 0–5; the AI dedupes against your existing list).
Categories aren’t locked to one cycle — they’re project-level entities you can link to as many cycles as you want.
1
Open the category
Click the category name in any cycle.
2
Click Link to other cycles
In the category’s action menu, choose Link to cycles…. A multi-select picker shows every cycle in the project.
Category 'Link to cycles' picker with three project cycles selectable.
3
Pick the cycles
Tick the cycles you want this category to appear in. The category (and any scenarios under it) become visible in those cycles too.Each row shows a small badge: Used in N cycles.
4
Unlink when you don't need it
To remove a category from a specific cycle (without deleting it from the project), use Unlink from this cycle from the same menu.
This is how you build a regression cycle: link every “stable” category from previous releases into it, then add only the new categories for what’s changing in this release.
Even if you know exactly which categories you want, generate first — the AI’s proposals often surface categories you’d have missed (Concurrency, Mass Operations, Audit).
Don't overthink the first pass
Demote what you don’t need, keep what you do. You can re-generate any time. Spending 30 minutes “perfecting” the first pass is wasted effort.
Use the chat for bulk edits
Asking “merge the two Termination categories” in chat is much faster than doing it manually in the UI.
Categories are reusable, scenarios less so
Link a category to a regression cycle freely. Reused scenarios are valuable too, but they often need cycle-specific tweaks — review before reuse.
Promote good rejections to feedback
When you reject an AI-proposed category, take 5 seconds to type why. That feedback trains the AI to do better on your next project.
Cap your scope early
A cycle with 60 categories is usually too broad. Aim for 10–25 categories per cycle, each with 5–15 scenarios. Bigger than that = split into more cycles.
The Generate Categories button is missing or greyed out
Most likely your role doesn’t include scenario_categories:write. Roles that do: Project Manager, Client Manager, Org Admin, Test Manager. Ask your Project Manager to update your role or to generate on your behalf.
I clicked Generate but only 10 categories appeared (no AI ones)
This usually means TestFactors couldn’t find functional context for this module in your workbook. Three things to check:
Did your workbook actually upload successfully? Open the Workbooks tab — the workbook should say “Ready” with a sheet count.
Did the module get scanned? In the workbook detail, the Knowledge tab should show extracted facts for this SF module.
Is the module right? If you tagged the workbook as “Compensation” but you’re generating in “Employee Central,” the AI has no source material. Check the workbook’s SF Module tag.
Fix any of those, then click Generate again.
I see 'Categories already generated' when I click Generate
This is normal — TestFactors won’t burn AI tokens re-running on a cycle+module that already has AI categories. Use ↻ Refresh from workbook → Re-run AI suggestions instead to explicitly re-run.
Generation is stuck on 'AI is reading your workbook…'
Typical generation takes 10–15 seconds, never more than 60. If it’s longer:
Refresh the page — sometimes the progress banner is stale. Categories will be there.
Try once more. Click Refresh from workbook → Re-run AI suggestions.
If it keeps stalling, contact your Admin with the project name and timestamp.
I demoted a bunch of categories by mistake
Click Generate Categories again. TestFactors restores any demoted categories in this cycle+module in a single click — and shows a toast “Reactivated N categories that were previously demoted.” No AI tokens are spent on the restore.
I want to delete a category, not demote it
Open the category, click the ⋮ menu, choose Delete. Deletion is permanent and removes all scenarios under it. Use Demote instead if you might want it back.
The AI keeps proposing the same category name I rejected
Two things help:
Demote (don’t delete) the unwanted category. Demoted rows are passed to the AI as “don’t propose this name.”
Use the rejection feedback box to say why — the AI uses this signal on the next run.
