Using Folders Strategically with Channels

Most of the time a test belongs to one channel and runs against that one agent. But you often want the same set of tests to run against several agents — your Retell agent and your Vapi agent, or staging and production. Copying the tests into each channel means every edit has to be made several times, and they drift.

A folder solves this. It is a reusable test suite you write once and point at as many channels as you like.

What a folder is

A folder is a special kind of channel: when you add a channel, one of the connection-type cards is Folder — for organizing tests only. Pick it and you get a channel with no endpoint and no provider. You cannot run a folder directly (it has nothing to call); it exists only to hold a reusable suite of tests. You write your tests into the folder the same way you would any channel.

Note

Because a folder is just a channel with no endpoint, it does not cost anything to create or hold, and it never places a call itself. Cost is only incurred when its tests run against a real channel.

Two ways folders connect to channels

There are two directions, and it is worth knowing both.

1. Push: run a folder across chosen channels (the Suite Runner)

From a folder’s page you can run its whole suite against a set of real channels at once. Testzilla takes every test in the folder and every channel you pick and runs the cross-product: N tests times M channels.

1. Open the folder (its channel page).

2. Choose Run and pick the target channels — for example your Retell phone channel and your Vapi phone channel.

3. Confirm. Testzilla shows the maths (“N tests x M channels = T runs”) and queues them.

Each result is attributed to the target channel it ran against, not to the folder, so per-channel scores stay correct and you get a clean apples-to-apples comparison of the same suite across platforms.

Also available to code and Console

The Suite Runner is exposed over the REST API and as a TZ Console action, so you can drive a cross-platform suite from CI or from a plain-language request as well as from the UI.

2. Pull: a channel that includes a folder’s tests

When you create or edit a normal channel, there is a Shared Folders picker. Attach one or more folders and, whenever that channel runs everything (a Run All, or a scheduled run), it runs its own tests plus all the active tests in the attached folders — all on that channel’s own transport.

This is the direction to use when you have a shared baseline suite (say, safety and compliance checks) that every channel should always include on top of its own specific tests.

Scheduling and folders

A channel that pulls in folders via Shared Folders will include those folder tests in its scheduled runs automatically. Scheduling the push direction (a folder’s whole cross-channel matrix on a cron) is not available today — schedule the consuming channel instead. See Daily Monitoring Reports.

Organizing: by scenario family, or by channel?

A folder is the natural home for a scenario family — a coherent group of tests that mean something together: “booking flows,” “refund handling,” “safety and compliance.” Write that family once, then either push it across channels or pull it into the channels that need it.

Keep channel-specific tests (things that only make sense for one agent or one platform) on the channel itself. The rule of thumb: if a test would make sense against more than one agent, it belongs in a folder.

Regression packs

Testzilla has no dedicated “regression pack” object, but folders give you everything you need to build one as a pattern:

• Put your regression suite in a folder.
• Use the low-cost LLM Chat channel, billed per round-trip, as a fast gate on every deploy.
• Reserve the costlier phone and web-voice channels for nightly or pre-release runs via a scheduled run.

So “re-run the regression pack each release” is a workflow you assemble from folders, the Suite Runner, and schedules — not a single button.

Folder vs a separate project

Both group things, but at different levels:

• Reach for a folder when you have a reusable suite of tests you want to run across multiple channels without duplicating them. The tests live in one place; results are attributed per target channel.
• Reach for a separate project when you are partitioning distinct agents and their own tests — a different product, a different client — that each deserve their own roll-up and their own dashboard.

In short: a folder organizes tests you share across channels; a project organizes channels and tests that belong to a distinct thing.

Next steps

How testing works

See where channels and tests sit in the core model.

Run a suite across channels

Test Suites Across Channels goes deeper on batches and iterations.

Schedule it

Daily Monitoring Reports puts a channel (with its folders) on a recurring run.

Creating channels

Creating Channels covers the Folder card and the Shared Folders picker.