Highlighting the Challenges in Salesforce Test Automation

Salesforce is a globally recognized customer relationship management software that helps enterprises in managing and recognizing user’s communication or interaction throughout the lifecycle.

Salesforce also helps enterprises in achieving agility. Salesforce can be customized and get integrated with a range of third-party applications to support unique business processes.

To support agility and continuous innovation, Salesforce also rolls out seasonal updates that consist of hundreds of innovative features.

However, there is a catch! Whenever you enhance your Salesforce instance by customizing it or integrating it with third-party app, or whenever you enables seasonal updates, you need to test your instance before putting changes in the production. Otherwise, it may lead to business disruption.

However, testing Salesforce is not a walk in the park. Basically there are two approaches which are used to test Salesforce (i) Manual Testing & (ii) Automation Testing.

Although manual testing approach is still prevalent, it cannot be considered as viable. There are several reasons for it.

• Manual testing approach consumes lot of time, can be weeks if not months. If enterprises stick manual testing, then they will lag behind in the competition.
• Salesforce can be customized and integrated with third party apps. Moreover, it offers role-based permissions. Manually Writing test cases with different roles and covering every nook and cranny in the time available is not feasible.
• Salesforce is a complex application with too many moving points. With manual testing, adequately checking every possible regression can be daunting.

Problems with Salesforce test automation

• The front end of Salesforce is built with dynamic frames in which content loads independently in the current HTML document. To test automate these frames, lot of effort is required in finding the right attributes and script.
• Salesforce app features dynamic elements that don’t have fixed ID, name, class or CSS attributes. Even minor UI changes can break test scripts, leading to unstable test results.
• Salesforce has database driven tables in which rows are created dynamically. Automating active tabs may be daunting.

Although numerous Salesforce test automation platforms are available in the market, however, it is not necessary that they may help you in test automate Salesforce.

Given below are some points that you should consider while selecting test automation framework for Salesforce.

No Code Test Automation – Low or no-code test automation platform helps QA teams to create and change test scripts quickly. Business users can be used to create test cases, freeing up developers for more important tasks.

Self-configuration – Finding out existing business configurations is a daunting task. Enterprises need to embrace Salesforce test automation framework that can autonomously set existing configurations and eliminate the guesswork.

Autonomously healing – Due to dynamic elements, the test scripts for Salesforce get broken. Select the test automation platform in which test scripts get maintained without requiring human intervention.

Continuous Change Analysis – Embrace a tool that can analyse the impact related to the changes and helps IT managers to identify risks associated with the release.

Autonomous Test Recommendations – Salesforce test automation framework should recommend test cases based on the risks, helping enterprises to execute “risk-based testing” to ensure adequate coverage.

Conclusion

With right Salesforce test automation framework, enterprises can achieve agility and ensure digital success. Test automation framework will speed up the innovation while keeping business risks at bay.