What is Salesforce Testing? – Guide on Testing Salesforce

In this article, we are going to explore more about What is Salesforce Testing? And the related tools and techniques for it.

Salesforce testing is an area of Salesforce development that’s often overlooked, but which greatly affects the success of your projects and customers using your app.

To make sure that you’re checking off all the boxes when it comes to Salesforce testing, here’s what you need to know about Salesforce testing and how to do it properly.

In this guide, we will cover everything you need to know about Salesforce testing so that you can build an effective and efficient testing strategy when validating your configuration and customization.

What is Salesforce Testing?

Salesforce testing is a validation of the configuration and customization performed in vanilla SDFC.

Although most testing is not performed on Salesforce itself, there are certain types of tests that are an integral part of a complete Salesforce testing strategy.

It is a challenge to make sure that a tester is checking the customized code rather than standard Salesforce functionality.

This can be accomplished by performing different configurations on vanilla objects at different phases during SDLC phases.

In order to ensure that your customized code does what you want it to do, it is important to test it thoroughly against vanilla Salesforce.

Because testing against Salesforce is a regular part of sales operations, there must be close coordination between sales and test teams in order for successful results to be achieved.

Related Article: Salesforce Workbench: A Comprehensive Guide

Why is Salesforce Testing Important?

When you’re creating custom objects for your Salesforce business applications, what types of testing are you performing to validate that your custom code is being implemented properly and with desired results.

These checks will help you catch bugs before they cause issues in production or make their way into live usage by users.

If a customized element of your application isn’t working how it should be, user behavior may change causing unforeseen consequences.

The success of your application depends on ensuring proper functionality at all times, With proper salesforce testing, you can avoid costly errors down the road.

Salesforce Testing for Validating, Configuration, and Customization

Before you invest money and time into building the perfect customizations for your Salesforce org, you need to first test those customizations.

The idea behind Salesforce testing is to ensure that the code which has been customized in place of built-in salesforce functionality works as expected.

As Salesforce continues to evolve, so do its testing needs, and it’s the responsibility of the tester to ensure that they are using the best methodologies and tools to perform those tests.

To do this effectively, testers must be familiar with what salesforce testing is, how it’s different from other testing types, and how to perform this type of testing correctly.

Once you learn about what salesforce testing is and how it’s executed correctly, you can begin your validation process with confidence that you’re testing accurately!

Types of Salesforce Testing and its Usage

Salesforce validation testing can be broadly classified into vanilla SDFC (Salesforce Development Foundation Classes), VisualForce testing, and Apex unit testing.

Testers have to plan and conduct tests as per defined criteria and test coverage as mentioned in SIT (Salesforce Integration Test) manual.

Many factors need to be considered before starting with a specific type of test execution.

The primary factor is whether automation or manual execution of a particular type will give a better outcome for your project, This also depends on team resources available for each type of test.

For example, if you have very skilled resources available who can automate tests then you should prefer automated testing over manual testing.

However, if you do not have skilled resources available then it would be better to go ahead with manual execution of tests than doing nothing at all.

Unite Testing:

• Unit tests are basic building blocks for any type of software development.
• In short, they test a single unit (class or method) in isolation from other classes or methods.
• They validate the work of that individual component as expected with given inputs, outputs, and execution paths.
• There are two types of unit tests: the white box and the black box.

System Testing:

• This is a testing process done by Salesforce consultants
• In this testing, the most complete system gets tested from starting to end
• This testing complete automation gets tested and validates the rules

UAT Testing:

• Once code is written, QA teams can begin their salesforce testing to ensure that each component is functioning as it should and has not caused any unforeseen errors in other areas of functionality.
• UAT testers should work with both development and production teams to ensure full integration with back-end systems and data as well as no third-party issues.
• Any new or modified processes must be tested for reliability before being implemented for end users.

Production Testing:

• When testing production functionality, you’re trying to replicate your environment in a testing environment.
• This allows testers to perform functions exactly as they would be performed in live production, without any of the critical nuances which may affect these tests.
• Production testing is often done with multiple customers or end-users providing inputs.
• It’s rare that you’ll ever find yourself alone when testing production functionality.

Regression Testing:

• Regression testing (RT) is a software validation technique.
• It serves to check whether new changes to source code, its structure, or data have broken existing functionalities (aka regressed them).
• Regression testing usually requires both manual and automated efforts and is typically performed after new features are implemented in an application but before it is released to customers.
• This helps ensure that previously working features continue to work as expected.
• Regression tests can be run manually by developers at any time, but they can also be scheduled automatically by a regression-testing tool.

Salesforce Testing Process

The test cycle for a production-ready system is usually divided into two phases: integration testing and functional testing.

The first phase of testing involves validating individual components of an application (or modules) for their functionality.

This process involves isolating each module from others to understand how a single module works when integrated with another module or two, but without dealing with multiple modules at once.

In other words, it’s all about validating that each module performs as expected when integrated with other modules within a system.

It’s also worth noting that integration testing can be performed both manually and automatically using specialized tools such as SOAtest.

Challenges with Continuous Integration (CI) in Salesforce

• Sometimes Continuous Integration (CI) can create more of a headache than it’s worth.
• The biggest issue with CI is that you end up with a much longer release cycle than without it.
• If you are releasing every few days, there may not be enough value in making releases often.
• Make sure your release cycle isn’t causing havoc on your business before you implement continuous integration.
• You should also make sure that any builds that pass through your build server does not contain sensitive information as they will be visible to all users with access to your build server.
• This means you should use version control systems such as GIT or SVN to manage code instead of allowing developers to check-in directly into their code repository.
• Also, consider using separate development and test environments if possible so testers don’t need access to production data.

Challenges with Salesforce Testing

• Salesforce testing can be difficult, especially if you’re trying to make sure that you’re not just testing built-in functionality, but instead the code that you customized yourself.
• To make sure that your test cases are checking out the customizations that you expect, here are some Salesforce testing strategies to help your validation efforts along the way.
• Custom coding in Salesforce can be costly and time-consuming, but it’s an essential part of the software’s platform.
• Ensuring that you’re testing the right code instead of using built-in functionality can be tricky, though.
• It’s an important part of Salesforce testing, and there are several steps to making sure that you’re testing what you think you are.

How Org is Tested in Salesforce?

How an org will be tested will largely depend on how it was configured and There are several types of configurations that need to be verified and validated during a salesforce testing engagement.

The following list details each type of configuration and their testing methodology As with all software projects, there needs to be a methodical approach to validation and verification of salesforce code.

Every step within SDFC must be thoroughly reviewed before moving on to another step or stage within SDFC.

This ensures that any errors or mistakes made during customization can be detected early on, thereby preventing them from becoming serious issues further down the line.

This process should always include unit tests as well as functional tests for every piece of code implemented into a production environment.

Related Article: Salesforce Organization – What it is and How it Works?

Roles and Responsibilities of a Salesforce Tester

What’s a good tester to do when he or she doesn’t know what specific code changes have been made in a custom environment?

What about when there are no unit tests available for verification of functionality? These situations create a challenge for testers who must ensure that their testing validates only changes made on top of base code.

• A Salesforce tester is responsible for testing functional and non-functional aspects of salesforce code.
• They also develop test plans based on requirements documentation (RAD or RFT) provided by Business Analysts.
• Additionally, they are responsible for automating tests using a tool like Selenium or Appium.
• Lastly, they work closely with Product Managers and developers to identify any bugs or defects which may be present in an application during the development phase.
• The final deliverable from a Salesforce Tester is a list of test cases written in JIRA along with a detailed report about each case along with screenshots and video recordings.
• This report will help business stakeholders make informed decisions about whether to release or delay deployment.

Key Considerations for Automate Salesforce Testing

Before you start automating your test cases in Salesforce, you will need to consider three aspects:

1. What data elements you want to use for testing purposes

2. What tools are available for automation

3. What kind of data types are available (structured or unstructured).

In addition to meeting compliance requirements through internal testing efforts, you may also be required by regulatory bodies such as FINRA or SEC.

These organizations require that companies validate their code, configuration, and customization to ensure that they’re not putting their customers at risk, This validation can be achieved through Salesforce testing.

It involves a combination of manual and automated testing techniques to validate a company’s codebase on an ongoing basis throughout development cycles.

The first step in starting any project is knowing what you want to accomplish and why you’re doing it, Once these issues have been addressed, it’s time to begin working on a test plan.

For example, let’s say that your company wants to start automating its testing efforts for compliance purposes.

You’ll want to think about things like what data elements will be used in testing; what tools are available; and what kind of information you’ll need from other departments (such as product management).

You may also want to consider internal standards such as naming conventions when creating your test plan.

Salesforce Testing Automation Tools

While functional testing doesn’t require any third-party tools, automation testing does.

There are several tools available in the market that help you with salesforce automation testing.

1. QA Force (by Quality Assurance Solutions)
2. TestComplete (by SmartBear Software)
3. Selenium-RC (open-source tool)
4. SilkTest (by IBM)

Additionally, many out of box test tools are also available such as Apex Regression Test Harness, Visual Regression Suite, and so on.

These tools provide a set of reusable UI components that can be used for automating tests.

These reusable UI components help reduce the time and effort required for writing test scripts as they support common use cases such as logging into salesforce, validating data entry fields, entering values in drop-down lists, etc.

If you want to validate if a field has been correctly populated using an input mask then it can be done by creating a reusable component with input mask validation logic already implemented into it.

There are other testing tools available for salesforce test automation that include:

1. QTP/UFT (Quick Test Professional / Unified Functional Testing)
2. Selenium Webdriver / C# Builder (Selenium is a software suite that allows developers and testers to write automated tests),
3. TestComplete (Test automation framework based on keywords) These tools allow users to create robust functional tests by recording mouse clicks and keystrokes or by writing code in an object-oriented language such as Java or C#.

Conclusion

The foundation of any good software testing strategy is its test plan. Learn how to create a test plan from start to finish, how it ties in with each stage of a release cycle, and tips for ensuring that you keep your testers happy.

You’ll also learn what to include in a test plan and some resources for creating one yourself.

By building a solid foundation for your project at launch, you can build on it over time by adding more tests as necessary ensuring that every piece of code meets (and exceeds) expectations.

Remember: It doesn’t matter if you have 10 or 100 tests it matters that they’re thorough and effective.

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