Reliance on Salesforce for enhancing business operations and customer experience is common among businesses. The scaling of business requires multiple integrations, custom workflows, and frequent updates. Maintaining quality performance with quality efficiency, speed, and accuracy in such scenarios becomes challenging.
This is where Salesforce automation testing plays a key role. It helps accelerate releases and meet evolving business demands. But how to prepare for Salesforce automation testing? We answer your question right here.
Understanding Salesforce Automation Testing
Salesforce offers Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and other business applications such as marketing automation, commerce, and service clouds, and much more. These tools ease the business operations and support the organization in offering quality deliveries. Now, these applications can be automatically tested across different test scenarios to ensure proper and improved performance. This endeavour of automatic testing is referred to as Salesforce automation testing.
It helps enhance the user experience and assess the functionality of Salesforce applications. The automated testing is a time-efficient method that allows focus on more fruitful and important tasks. The Salesforce automation testing also ensures accuracy while enhancing test coverage.
Flow of Salesforce Automation Testing
Salesforce automation testing is of different types. Here are the types arranged in sequential order from low to increased level of complexity:
Unit Testing: It is done by developers while coding. Unit testing measures code coverage. It assesses the proper functionality of codes.
System Testing: It is performed by Salesforce business experts. It evaluates functional aspects of the systems for issues related to workflow, assignment, and validation.
User Acceptance Testing: It is performed by end-users. It helps validate if the system meets real-world business needs through practical scenario-based testing.
Production Testing: It is a type of system testing that runs in a live production environment. It confirms smooth deployment from the Sandbox without errors or performance issues.
Regression Testing: It is performed to check the impact of code changes or new updates on existing Salesforce features and processes.
Salesforce Automation Testing Checklist
Now, performing Salesforce automation testing involves proper planning and preparation to carry out the steps and to obtain desired results. Hence, here are the insights into what to do:
Performing Manual Testing
Identifying the issues via manual testing helps identify why to test and what exactly needs improvement. Thus, before proceeding with automation testing, perform manual testing first. It assists in assessing the system behaviour and identifying relevant issues.
It also contributes to generating accurate automation scripts while understanding the user experience. Manual testing also helps recognise and separate the test cases suitable for automation testing and the ones requiring manual intervention.
Defining the Objectives
Before beginning the Salesforce Automation testing, gain insights into why it needs to be tested and what results you would expect. Thus, identify the testing goals and scope. Also, set the acceptance criteria and detailed insights into the results for clarity.
Choosing the Automation Tool
There are numerous Salesforce automation tools available. The optimal choice is possible only after knowing the exact testing you need to perform. Accordingly, compare the functionalities among the available options to make the best choice. Consider key factors like scalability, ease of use, integration capabilities, and support for different industries as well.
Selecting the Test Cases
Focusing on test cases is essential. Here, you need to ensure the comprehensiveness of the list by including both positive and negative test cases. While positive test cases are necessary, the negative test cases help assess the blocking and restriction functionalities of the Salesforce applications. Prioritize the available test cases depending on the business impact.
Data Preparation
Data will determine the quality of the result. Preparation, like cleaning the data to remove duplicates, incomplete records, and inconsistencies, is necessary. Include real-world user profiles and transaction scenarios to mimic actual usage patterns. An effective method is to set a data baseline for similar test cases to maintain consistency in results.
Regular review and update are crucial to keep up with evolving business processes and market conditions. Additionally, to ensure data security, adopt data masking and anonymization techniques. It protects sensitive information during testing.
Setting up Test Environment
Testing in the Salesforce Sandbox test environment allows for evaluation without impacting the live users. However, there are different types of Sandbox environments. It includes Developer, Developer Pro, and Full Sandbox. The suitability of each varies and is stated as follows:
- Developer Sandbox: For development and testing of applications in an isolated environment
- Developer Pro Sandbox: For integration testing, unit testing, and large-capacity development and quality assurance
- Full Sandbox: For performance and load testing, and staging
Establish Testing Process
The testing process should be carried out with a proper standardized workflow. Plan the test, generate scripts, execute the tests, and report the same to the relevant authorities. Ensure the team selected for automation testing is skilled and experienced.
It is recommended because familiarity with developing test cases, principles, and methodologies to be used, the ability to select relevant tools, and other capabilities is essential. Maintain documentation and set milestones during planning to ensure smooth collaboration and minimal errors. Set the test KPIs too, for effective monitoring of the progress.
Conclusion
Salesforce automation testing helps maintain workflows while supporting scalability. It enhances the business performance and user experience, supporting the growth of the organization. But the automation testing process requires planning and a thoughtful approach. Developing a checklist allows for performing the overall process efficiently and without errors. It also helps plan each aspect that can go wrong if not performed without essential considerations.
Lynn Martelli is an editor at Readability. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and has worked as an editor for over 10 years. Lynn has edited a wide variety of books, including fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, and more. In her free time, Lynn enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with her family and friends.
