Scheduling Testers and Automating Engagements
See who is testing what each week, give an engagement nobody holds to a tester with a free week, and let engagements start and complete on their dates, with clients reminded to send credentials in time.
Most delivery problems in a testing firm are scheduling problems: a tester booked twice, an engagement that should have started yesterday, a client whose credentials arrive the morning testing begins. Pental keeps the week in one view and does the routine moves on time without anybody remembering to.
The testing calendar
Calendar, in the sidebar, is the delivery week at a glance: each tester’s engagements laid out by day, for everyone or just you, and the week after with one click. Clicking an engagement opens it.
Underneath, engagements nobody holds yet wait for a lead. Choose a tester with a free week from the list beside one and confirm, and they are told by email if you want them to be. The engagement is theirs from then on, on their calendar and their dashboard.
If your firm does not plan this way, the calendar can be switched off with the other modules under Settings, Feature Modules, and leaves everyone’s navigation: switching off the parts of the platform you do not use covers each one.
Engagements that start and complete on their dates
Settings, Automation moves engagements on their dates so nobody has to:
| Setting | |
|---|---|
| Auto-Start Assessments | A booked engagement becomes active at its start time on its start date, once a lead tester is assigned. One with no start time of its own starts at the default you set. |
| Auto-Complete Assessments | An active engagement is marked completed at its end time on its end date. Nothing goes to QA until the tester submits it. |
| Credential Reminders | The client’s contact is emailed before an authenticated test starts while their credentials are still outstanding, on each day you list (7,3,1 sends three: a week, three days and a day before) and at the time you choose. It stops as soon as they submit. |
| Working Days Only | Nothing starts or completes at weekends: an engagement dated a Saturday or Sunday moves on the Monday, at its own time. |
Every time on the page is read in your Automation Timezone, which also decides when your day rolls over. Times are to the quarter hour, because the schedule runs every fifteen minutes, on the quarter hour, whether or not anybody is signed in. Each engagement says under its dates when it will start or complete on its own, or why it will not yet: one with no lead tester waits for one.
Knowing it ran
The Automation page says when the schedule last ran, with Run now beside it. And if somebody signs in to find an engagement started for them that was due well before, the portal says so plainly, with when it was due, rather than calling it on schedule; an administrator is told why the schedule had not run. Engagements are never left waiting: whichever comes first, the schedule or the next person to sign in, moves them.
For the preparation clients should do before testing starts, see how to prepare for a penetration test, and for setting expectations on length, how long a penetration test takes.
Set Your Working Week
Settings, Automation on the trial: your time zone, your working days, and when engagements start and complete.
Also Worth Reading
What Your Clients Actually See in the Portal
The client portal shows a client their own engagements, the findings you release, the documents you deliver and the checklists you share, and nothing else. What is on each screen, and what controls it.
WorkflowImporting Scanner Output as Findings
Bring a Nessus, Burp, OpenVAS, Qualys, Nmap or SARIF export into a phase of an engagement as findings: one for each issue with every host listed, in your library’s wording where it has the issue, and nothing written until you have seen it.
WorkflowChecklists and Runbooks for Every Phase of a Pentest
A library with one checklist for each kind of phase, suggested on matching phases, ticked by your testers, shown to the client if you choose, and moved in and out as Excel, Word or JSON.
Setup guide
Prefer to watch it?
The whole setup recorded, with chapters you can jump to: registering, your own domain, your own database in any of three places, your own mail server, branding, the first sign-in, updating the database on Supabase Cloud, and moving the database if you change your mind.
- 0:00 · Registering, signing in, and the free trial
- 0:51 · Your name and your firm’s name
- 0:57 · Custom domain
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