UAT & Sign-off — Frequently Asked Questions

What is UAT in QAEverest?

The Acceptance menu runs user acceptance testing from start to finish. A QA lead plans a cycle, the people who know the business run its cases, defects are triaged, and approvers sign off on the results, with a report and a sign-off certificate at the end.

• UAT Cycles — plan and run cycles, and manage their cases, defects and approvers.
• UAT Overview — every cycle in a project you belong to, if your role has the Plan UAT cycles permission. On a personal account, your own cycles.
• My UAT Tasks — the cases assigned to you.

How do I plan a UAT cycle?

Open Acceptance → UAT Cycles and create the cycle, with its environment and dates if you need them. Copy in cases from your own suites, Test Sets or generated test cases, or write them by hand. AI can also write UAT scenarios from a story's acceptance criteria, charged per scenario.

Every case starts as a must-have, and the owner switches off the ones that aren't.

Who can run the cases?

The owner assigns cases to people in the project, one person per case. In an organisation, the ready-made tester role suits business users. It holds three permissions: view projects, view execution reports and run assigned UAT cases.

How does a tester record results?

Testers work through My UAT Tasks one case at a time, recording pass, fail, blocked or skipped. A fail or a block has to say what they saw.

What happens to a failed or blocked case?

The owner or the assigned tester can rate it, and file it to a connected Jira or ClickUp from the cycle's Defects list.

How does sign-off work?

Approvers review the results, then approve, approve with conditions or reject, and type their full name. Conditions have to be listed, and a rejection has to say what must change. The exit criteria inform the decision and don't stop a sign-off.

Can someone without a QAEverest account sign off?

Yes. Project members who approve need the Sign off UAT cycles permission, and anyone else can be named by email, with no account. When the owner requests sign-off, each approver who still owes one is emailed. A project member signs in to sign off. Someone named by email gets a link good for up to 14 days, and signing needs a one-time code sent to their own address. A new request replaces their earlier link.

Why does a sign-off say it is out of date?

A sign-off counts only for the results it was given against. Record a result, add or remove a case, or change a case's assignee or must-have flag, and the results version moves on, so earlier sign-offs read as out of date until they are given again. Each sign-off is kept with the counts it saw.

What reports can I download?

• Cycle report — a PDF or Excel file of the cycle, for the cycle owner and signed-in approvers.
• Sign-off certificate — a PDF the cycle owner and signed-in approvers can download once any listed approver has answered. Its banner says where sign-off stands, and it lists each approver's decision, the name they signed as, when, the results version and whether that sign-off still stands.

What does UAT Overview show?

Progress per cycle and per tester, what is overdue and where sign-off stands, for the newest 500 cycles, plus a burndown for any one cycle. In an organisation it needs the Plan UAT cycles permission.

How does UAT affect a release?

Six of the eighteen release gates on the Quality Center are about UAT. By default, among cycles touched in the last 30 days, one in progress holds the release until every listed approver has approved the current results, and so does a current rejection from a listed approver. If the owner closes a cycle without sign-off instead, it becomes a warning, unless a listed approver's rejection still stands, which keeps holding the release.

The traceability matrix also shows each requirement's UAT status and can filter by it.

Does UAT use credits?

Only when AI writes the scenarios, which is charged per scenario. Planning a cycle, recording results, signing off and downloading the reports use no credits.