A beloved mabl tradition is our annual hackathon, where mablers dedicate time to brainstorm and build new innovations in low-code test automation. It’s a valuable opportunity for the team to bond, build, and even address requests from the Friends of mabl community. Since its inception in 2020, the mabl hackathon has grown from a single day to a three-day extravaganza with dozens of mablers. 

This year’s hackathon theme: the journey to quality engineering. What features and capabilities can help mabl customers mature their quality engineering practices? 

The 2023 hackathon took place January 23rd to 25th, and I’m delighted to announce that our winning feature, support for MFA logins, has just entered early access for all customers and free trial users. The new feature gives quality engineering teams the ability to expand software testing strategies across the customer journey with mabl’s user-friendly low-code test creation process. 

Celebrating Innovation at the mabl Hackathon 

This year’s hackathon was judged by an esteemed panel of mablers and quality engineering leaders from across the industry. 

  • Gregory Goldshteyn, QA Manager at FOX Networks Group
  • Rohit Kelapure, Director of Application Modernization at Google Cloud 
  • Russell Schwager, Director Engineering at Chewy 
  • Katie Staveley, Head of Marketing at mabl 
  • Kirsten Vonck, Customer Success Manager at mabl

The panel evaluated submissions from six teams of mablers. Each team had two dedicated days to develop their feature ideas. The key criteria: innovation, mabl customer impact, theme alignment, and how well the team demonstrated mabl’s core values

Chart showing the names of each mabl hackathon team

The team with the punniest name was given bonus points

It was a close contest, and every team did an incredible job of ideating, building, and presenting useful features to help enterprises mature their QE practices. But in the end, a few teams stood out for their impressive work. The 2023 mabl hackathon winners were:

  • First prize: Hack-auth-0n, for developing support for MFA logins
  • Second prize: Team Limbo, for dedicated parameterized JavaScript snippets that expand mabl’s low-code capabilities 
  • Third prize: Talk mabl to me, for training natural language processing models intended to help convert English sentences into mabl test steps. 

Huge thanks to our judges, team leaders, and contributors! As always, the mabl hackathon was an inspiring and exciting experience that has delivered value to our user community. 

Hackathon Impact: Support for MFA Logins

As much as the mabl team is energized by the hackathon, the true impact shows when features created during the event are shared with our users, the Friends of mabl. Thanks to the efforts of the Hack-auth-0n team and the rest of mabl engineering, I’m proud to say that support for testing Multi-Factored Authentication (MFA) has now entered early access. 

Ensure Quality Across More Secure Customer Journeys 

77% of consumers now report using MFA when available on apps and websites, up from 50% in 2019. The surge coincides with an increasing awareness and demand for better security features across all digital experiences. 

Mabl’s support for MFA logins helps software development organizations meet this demand and ensure seamless, more secure customer experiences by incorporating MFA testing into their existing automated testing strategy. Two types of MFA logins are currently supported: email one time password (OTP) and time-based one-time password (TOTP) authenticators like Google Authenticator. 

Automating tests for MFA logins is usually a difficult process since MFA is designed to thwart bots. Support for MFA logins in mabl now means that anyone - regardless of coding experience - can easily create automated tests that ensure quality across customer journeys that include MFA workflows. Testers can add an MFA device to the application using the QR code that will appear on their screen. Example QR code from MFA authentication setup

Example QR code 

Once the new login credential is associated with the test plan, mabl users can record the login flow and save it as a test step. This allows quality engineering teams to automate testing across an even greater range of the customer experience, improving test coverage and ensuring their users have a great experience every time they login. 

Building the Future of Software Quality, Together

Support for MFA logins is going into early access for all customers and trial users, meaning we want to hear from you about how we can continue improving this new feature. Check under Settings > Labs > MFA Authenticator to see if your team has access and tell us about your experiences. Together, we’re empowering software organizations to respond to consumer needs with quality. 

Access to MFA login support will begin rolling out to all mabl customers and those registered for a free trial soon. If your customers rely on MFA to access your application, register for a free trial to ensure they have a quality experience.