What is the Need for Continuous Testing of Salesforce?

The market is in an unprecedented period spurred by the need to reinvent the relevance of brands and customer participation. There are many businesses that have joined the race to provide the best and most connected customer experiences. However, it is not just about delivering the product or service in a timely manner. As the world’s number one CRM platform, Salesforce helps companies connect with customers in a seamless manner and enable them across the various touch points of the business, such as marketing, sales, and much more.

Salesforce has evolved from a CRM tool to an all-pervasive MXDP (Multi Experience Development Platform). Still, businesses face a challenge in delivering Salesforce customization fast and at scale. This has led the companies to adopt continuous deployment practices. However, it is not possible to scale the CI/CD ecosystem without automation testing Salesforce.

Need for Continuous Testing and Test Automation for Salesforce

When the company grows its digital footprints, they often require consistent configuration changes and custom development within the SFDC confines to meet the complex requirements of the business. Sometimes, the complexity of operations increases a lot in Salesforce organizations, and as a result, the scope of mature deployments is minimized. Due to all this, Salesforce DevOps is used by organizations that benefit from features, like Salesforce CLI. However, also keep in mind that for the success of DevOps, continuous and automation testing Salesforce is required.

What is Continuous Testing of Salesforce?

It is the process of executing tests (mostly automated)  so that quick feedback can be obtained and business risks can be recognised earlier. The continuous testing of Salesforce minimizes the feedback waiting time and enables the developers to continuously monitor the testing environment with ease.

However, it is also important to note that without effective automation testing Salesforce, continuous testing just can’t succeed.

Challenges in the Test Automation of Salesforce

The applications built on Salesforce are driven by metadata and are complex in nature. There are open-source tools like Selenium that can be used to test the Salesforce application, but because the dynamic front end changes with the changing configuration, it becomes difficult to test them with the tools like Selenium because of some challenges that are given below: –

Technical Challenge

Salesforce comprises nested frames and dynamic frames that can lead the content easily in the existing HTML document. Handling frames is difficult with Selenium as it cannot access the content directly.

Salesforce comprises the dynamic elements that do not have a fixed ID, class, name, or attribute in CSS. So, it becomes tedious to perform the hard code on the locator of the element. Even minor changes like the user interface can make the automation testing Salesforce flaky.

Complex Interface

The multiple nested iframes, Quick Actions, the Side Panel, tabs, and custom components made the service console of Cloud Automaton tough.

Handling of Dynamic Tables

The application of Salesforce possesses tables that are database driven. The rows are created in a dynamic manner and can be regulated by different tabs. So, actions like tapping up the checkbox with Selenium are quite difficult and error-prone.

Shadow DOM and Dynamic Pop-Ups

The complexities like pop-up windows and shadow windows cannot be easily handled by Selenium, as it does not support these elements directly and requires significant skills in coding.

Key Pillars for Continuous Testing of Salesforce

Before establishing the continuous salesforce testing framework, it is better to do some groundwork. Here are some prominent tips that every successful Salesforce automation testing Salesforce organization follows.

No Code Test Scripts

It enables the team to build and change the test in a fast manner without over-engineering. It empowers functional testers and administrators to participate in the process of automation testing Salesforce, freeing up the developers.

Integration of the DevOps Toolchain

The testing tool can be integrated with tools like CI/CD tools. It should encompass the 360-degree visibility of the entire life cycle so that the releases can be made more predictable.

Uninterrupted Change Analysis

Go for a tool that can provide a seamless and singular interface to assess the changes in the salesforce organization. The tool can offer an environment so that continuous analysis of test impact can be monitored. This will bring transparency to the risks that may arise due to changes.

Synthetic Test Data

Build the context-specific test data so that it can mimic the use cases of the real world. The modeling of context-specific data eliminates the need for data scrubbing, masking, and production data. It will also help to make the tests more real by increasing the chances of finding the data.

Opkey: A Platform for the Continuous and Automated Testing of Salesforce

Opkey is the continuous testing platform for Salesforce-like applications. It is the industry’s first risk-based platform for testing that combines predictive impact analysis on zero-code test automation for Salesforce.

Moreover, Opkey provides the right testing interface so that everyone in the team can participate in the automation testing Salesforce.  It also integrates technology like  artificial intelligence so that test scripting can be accelerated and maintenance efforts can be minimized.

In a nutshell, Opkey, with its unique automation testing Salesforce tool, provides the best environment to instantly discover unique configurations and legacy tests.