CRM is one of the fastest-growing enterprise software categories, especially as the focus on driving better customer interactions and elevating customer experience increases. Salesforce has emerged as a formidable force in the world of CRM, positioning itself as one of the global leaders in CRM. It holds a , 19.5% market share, nearly three times that of its competitor, Oracle.
With a sharp focus on customer success, Salesforce offers services to 99 of the 100 companies on the Fortune 100 list. More than 150,000 companies globally use Salesforce to improve their business.
While there are multiple reasons for the success of Salesforce, one of the most common reasons for its success is that the CRM is extremely configurable and customizable. Enterprises can build whatever advanced features they want, implement workflows, create custom input fields, and add third-party implementations to meet specific business demands. This puts a lot of focus on salesforce testing and salesforce test automation.
Why Salesforce needs Test Automation
Every Salesforce implementation can be different from the other. Testing Salesforce implementations thoroughly ensures that
- They deliver on productivity and performance.
- The Salesforce workflows function seamlessly across the entire application portfolio and touchpoint.
- The team productivity and customer interactions remain optimal.
Automating testing is essential to add speed and agility to the Salesforce testing processes. The complexities of Salesforce demand that testing is rigorous and fast. Apart from the application, Salesforce updates and new releases also need testing post-integration into the enterprise.
While Selenium Salesforce test automation has been a popular choice, today, there are several tools for test automation tools. Here is a look at a comparison between the two.
SUGGESTED READ - Top 3 challenges in testing Salesforce applications with Selenium
Selenium Salesforce Test Automation
Selenium has been a popular choice for automating Salesforce testing.
It offers several benefits such as:
- It is a free and open-source tool that supports multiple operating systems, programming languages, and browsers.
- Users can modify it according to their needs.
- It provides robust community support through its large network of users.
- It allows for many integration options that enable things like parallel testing and reporting.
- Selenium frameworks with the right design increase test coverage and save time.
Challenges with Salesforce Test Automation with Selenium
Selenium ends up becoming a test automation paradox. Automating tests is almost synonymous with programming. This means that testers need to know a programming language such as Python, Java, or C#.
Selenium needs the test automation scripts to be written and then also tested and verified. It can also become a gargantuan task to maintain the test automation suite.
Along with this, while being a popular, open-source tool, Selenium is not an exceptionally intuitive tool. It also needs expertise. So those wanting to drive Salesforce Selenium test automation will have to ensure that they have access to Selenium experts. This impedes the velocity of testing.
Selenium Salesforce test automation plans also have to navigate some other challenges to drive QA and have to address challenges like:
Dynamic Tables:
Table handling becomes complex using Selenium since Salesforce applications have different database-driven tables with dynamic rows. It becomes challenging to select active tabs performing actions such as ticking a checkbox. Commands such as driver.switch_to.window and send_keys may also not work reliably.
Dynamic content execution:
Salesforce contains dynamic elements that do not have a static ID, name, class (or) CSS attributes. This makes it difficult to hard code the element locator. Detecting the fixed part of the locator is usually not straightforward with Selenium. Additionally, even the slightest change to the Salesforce UI can cause the tests to break since Selenium identifies elements using fixed IDs.
Navigating through frames:
The Salesforce front end has inbuilt dynamic frames that allow the application to load the content independently in current HTML documents. However, Selenium does not have direct access to this content. This makes it extremely challenging to navigate through frames. Testing teams then need additional tools and need to switch to a Selenium Web Driver to perform these functions. Actions to be executed outside of the frame also require explicit instructions to Selenium. Frames handled by Selenium require a lot more effort and time. It is also especially more tedious to deal with nested or hidden frames.
Shadow DOM:
Shadow DOM and pop-up windows complexities become hard to test with Selenium. It does not support these elements and requires a significant amount of custom coding. Additionally, Selenium scripting on these is not compatible with continuous testing.
Apart from these, Selenium does not allow test case generation. It needs manual effort to drive reusability and modularity. It also does not deliver in-built test management with requirements-based traceability and test readiness.
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Salesforce Automation with Codeless Tools
One of the solutions to address the challenges with Selenium Salesforce test automation is by making testing more accessible and rapid while accounting for the specific needs of the applications.
Codeless test automation tools can add agility to the Salesforce test automation process while capably increasing the testing footprint.
Benefits of Codeless Test Automation for Salesforce
Given the complexities of Salesforce, developing these capabilities become important for improving test automation outcomes while reducing effort.
Some of the advantages of using codeless tools over Selenium can be highlighted as follows:
Ease of creating tests
Codeless test automation tools make the process of test creation faster, easier, and more agile.
- These tools do not have any scripting needs and hence do not require testers to be aware of programming languages or scripts.
- Codeless tools enable fast, error-free test execution.
- They enable manual testers to test the application easily and comprehensively.
Test reliability
Codeless tools take away the pain of writing and testing scripts.
- Even the most non-technical users can address different levels of Salesforce testing such as Unit testing, UAT, System testing, Production, and Regression testing.
- Since these tools allow code-free automation, users do not have to worry about test reliability.
- Anyone with an understanding of business logic can create test models and testing scripts without worrying about the reliability of the tests.
- These tools are easy to use and allow testers to set up test cases from day one.
- The tools offer pre-built Codeless Test Assets with real-time Salesforce release alignment.
Fully automated objects and core business processes
Codeless test automation tools help in the automation of all core business processes and objects. However, it is important to evaluate the codeless tools ecosystem and ensure that these are optimized to meet the needs of the dynamic elements of Salesforce.
An AI-driven codeless test automation tool can be optimized to deliver on this front and enable robust test automation for Salesforce-specific dynamic technology. Managing dynamic elements & iframes test automation becomes simpler, easier, and faster.
Enable continuous testing
Codeless test automation tools also enable continuous testing.
- These tools can address all functional and API-related testing needs.
- They can auto-generate test cases for all permutations and combinations of test data according to the business rules.
- They can automate the entire quality lifecycle and help organizations achieve higher quality in their Salesforce implementations.
Drive end-to-end validation
An AI-powered codeless test automation tool can enable end-to-end validation. It does this by testing Salesforce UIs and APIs in the same flow without any programming needs.
It also becomes easier to enable automation of other ERP applications integrated with Salesforce. This ensures complete business process validation.
Certain codeless test automation tools can also allow for sprint automation through intelligent abstraction for Salesforce workflows.
In conclusion
Improving the capacity to test fast, comprehensively, and often emerges as a critical skill in the Salesforce universe. Codeless test automation tools like ACCELQ emerge as winners. They make testing fast and continuous, and it is also easier to maintain tests and testing suits. Additionally, these tools provide Salesforce support with Lightning, Classic, and Visual Force pages.
When choosing between Selenium and other codeless test automation tools it is crucial to assess the length and breadth of testing that can be accomplished with ease. The Salesforce test automation tool selection should make testing lightning-fast and easy, just like Salesforce itself.
GEOSLEY ANDRADES
Director, Product Evangelist at ACCELQ.
