Most test management tools charge per seat. Every project manager, client, auditor, or executive who needs visibility into testing is another paid login - even if they only check in once a quarter.
We have been chipping away at that for a while. Test plans got public links. Release readiness got public links. Now the project dashboard - the highest-level view of everything happening in a project - has one too.
Three public links cover the most common "I just need to see status" requests. None of them cost a seat.
Public project dashboards are live
Open any project's overview page, click Share, and you get a signed public URL that anyone can open. They land on the same dashboard you see, except read-only:
- Pinned report widgets
- Test case status pie chart
- Recent activity feed
- Defect status breakdown
- Error-prone test cases
- Overall counts and trends
Toggle the share off in project settings and the link stops working. The URL is tied to a token bound to that one project, so it cannot be used to fish around your other projects.
The full picture: project, test plan, and release
The new public project dashboard rounds out a set of three:
| Surface | Public link | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Project dashboard | NEW | "How is testing going overall on this project?" |
| Test plan | Already shipped | "What is the status of this specific test cycle?" |
| Release readiness | Already shipped | "Is this release a GO or a NO-GO?" |
If you have not seen the release readiness dashboard yet, it computes a live GO/NO-GO verdict for every release based on configurable thresholds. The public version is the same dashboard, minus the actions.
Why this saves you money
Most test management tools charge $25-50 per user per month. For a typical mid-sized engineering org, the people who need testing visibility but never actually run a test add up fast:
- Project managers tracking 3-4 projects each
- Clients or external partners who want a status check before a meeting
- Compliance and audit teams who review milestones quarterly
- Executives who want a release readiness signal once a sprint
- Customer-facing teams answering "is feature X tested yet?" questions
For teams that also want push-style updates without seats, external email notifications cover the gap: stakeholders get an email when a plan finishes, is delayed, or approaches its deadline.
Who each public link is for
- Project dashboard share - PMs, sponsors, and stakeholders who want a continuous read on a project. Drop the link in a Confluence page or Notion doc and it stays current.
- Test plan share - QA leads sharing a specific cycle's progress with developers, or a tester sharing a reproduction trail with someone on a release call.
- Release readiness share - Engineering managers and release captains during go/no-go meetings. The verdict is computed from your actual data so nobody can argue with the numbers.
Also shipped recently
A few other things landed in the same release window:
- Configurable plan completion statuses - Decide which test execution statuses count as "done" for a project. If your team only considers Passed cases finished, the plan can stay in progress until Failed cases are re-run and pass.
- Issue to test case traceability for inbuilt defects - The inbuilt defect manager now shows which test cases each issue is linked to, both as a column on the issues grid and on the issue detail page. Filter and CSV export both include the link.
- Defect notifications V2 plus CSV export - Email notifications fire when an issue is created or its status changes, with assignees pulled from user-type custom fields. Both defects and issues now have a one-click CSV export with a column picker.
- Spreadsheet uploads in QA Copilot - When generating test cases from requirements, you can drop in a CSV, XLSX, or ODS file alongside images and PDFs.
- Step progress ring on test runs - The status icon next to each test case on a run now shows a ring of per-step pass/fail/skip/block counts, useful for spotting cases that "failed but mostly worked."
Get started
If you are already on TestCollab, the public project dashboard share is on every project's overview page. Click Share, copy the link, send it to your stakeholders.
If you are not yet on TestCollab, start a free trial and see how many seats you do not need to buy.
