AppAssessor / DevOps

DevOps-Ready, Automated Testing Solution for Salesforce

By Hamza Abib

Branded content with Provar

Revolutionize Salesforce testing with seamless integration, efficient test case management, advanced analytics, and collaborative tools for precise, efficient, and innovative quality management. 

Highlights

  • Efficiency in Change Management: Provar Manager excels in managing ongoing changes and new developments in Salesforce environments. Its robust framework ensures that updates and customizations are implemented without negatively impacting existing functionalities, thus maintaining system integrity and user satisfaction.
  • Comprehensive Testing Lifecycle Management: The tool supports all phases of testing, from planning and design to execution and analysis. It includes detailed test case management, execution tracking, and reporting, enhancing code quality and testing efficiency.
  • Integration and Automation: With seamless integration capabilities, Provar Manager connects with tools like Jira, Azure DevOps, and Provar Automation, facilitating a smooth transition from manual to automated testing. 
  • Advanced Analytics and Customizable Dashboards: Provar Manager offers in-depth analytics and customizable dashboards, enabling users to tailor reports and insights to their specific needs for better decision-making and process optimization.

Provar Manager is a game-changer in the Salesforce ecosystem, as it centralizes and streamlines quality management. Offering a real-time testing strategy overview, it integrates smoothly with various tech stacks. Its efficient test case management system allows swift creation and organization of test cases, promoting a collaborative environment that boosts organizational efficiency.

The tool’s integration feature is a real highlight, connecting effortlessly with Provar Automation and other management tools like Jira and Azure DevOps. This integration speeds up delivery, enhances accuracy, and provides deep insights into the testing lifecycle. Provar Manager facilitates centralized test execution across multiple environments and browsers, minimizing duplicated efforts and offering a comprehensive quality activity view.

Communication and collaboration are central to Provar Manager, enabling the creation of test plans, task assignments, and sharing of real-time insights. Its analytical capabilities offer in-depth, current data analysis within Salesforce ecosystems, which aids decision-making based on accurate and comprehensive data.

The intuitive dashboard increases visibility, allowing easy access to test plans, results, and quality metrics. Provar Manager also excels in test case prioritization, integration with automation tools, and effective release risk mitigation. Its centralized approach empowers informed decision-making, optimizing Salesforce testing and quality management.

Essentially, Provar Manager is vital for organizations seeking to enhance Salesforce testing and quality management, as it provides a comprehensive, efficient, and collaborative approach.

Features

Test Planning, Design, and Documentation

Many organizations are using multiple tools and manual processes, with little integration to manage their current testing process. Provar Manager, as a comprehensive Salesforce native application, offers robust capabilities for test planning, design, and documentation, ensuring a streamlined and efficient testing process. 

  1. Comprehensive Test Planning and Design: Provar Manager allows for meticulous test planning and design, covering every aspect of the testing process. This includes defining the scope, approach, and risk associated with each test, as well as any other metrics critical to your testing plan. Because Provar Manager is built on the Salesforce platform, it allows you to customize it to your needs, creating custom Salesforce fields that will allow you to record all the information that is relevant to your testing process. 
  1. Approval Processes for Test Management: Provar Manager integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, enabling the design of approval processes within the test management workflow. For instance, an approval process can be triggered, using the standard Salesforce approval process, when a test case moves to a certain status, such as ‘under review’. 

End-to-End Test Management

Provar Manager delivers an all-encompassing solution for end-to-end test management, specifically tailored for Salesforce environments – that’s for both production and sandbox environments. It simplifies and streamlines the entire testing process, covering every critical aspect from test planning and design to execution, coverage, code quality, and analysis.

  1. Comprehensive Testing Lifecycle Management: The platform is adept at handling the complete testing lifecycle. It allows for detailed test planning, design, and execution, ensuring comprehensive coverage and high code quality. 
  1. Customizable Test Metrics: Provar Manager provides the functionality to define and track a broad spectrum of metrics related to test planning. Teams can precisely set the scope, approach, and risk associated with their testing activities. This includes any tracking related to test issues linked to JIRA, a tool used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management. This feature is instrumental in managing the quality maturity of the testing process, allowing teams to continuously monitor and evaluate their progress and effectiveness.
  1. Historical Test Execution Data: A standout feature of Provar Manager is its capacity to track historical test execution data. This feature offers critical insights into the timing, environment, pass rates, and duration of past test executions. 
  1. Automated Test Execution Scheduling: To further enhance testing efficiency, Provar Manager includes automated test execution scheduling. This feature facilitates the setting up and running of test plans on a cloud-based execution platform, ensuring consistent and precise execution with minimal manual intervention.

Holistic Support for Manual, Automated, Unit, and Exploratory Testing

Provar Manager, specifically engineered to cater to Salesforce environments, offers robust support for various types of testing, including unit tests, manual testing, automated testing, and exploratory testing. This versatile approach ensures comprehensive coverage and high-quality results across all testing methodologies.

  1. Unit Testing: Provar Manager’s ability to manage and orchestrate unit tests, particularly within Salesforce, makes it a valuable tool for developers. It supports the creation, execution, and analysis of unit tests, ensuring that individual units of source code function as intended.
  2. Manual Testing: The platform is equipped to handle manual testing processes efficiently. Users can create manual test cases and execute them within Provar Manager. This includes writing detailed test steps, marking them as passed or failed, and attaching necessary screenshots for enhanced clarity and traceability.
  3. Automated Testing: Provar Manager integrates seamlessly with Provar Automation, providing a robust environment for automated testing. This integration allows for the synchronization of test cases between Provar Manager and Provar Automation, facilitating a smooth transition from manual to automated testing. The tool’s design ensures that automated tests are easy to set up and execute, enhancing the overall efficiency of the testing process.
  4. Exploratory Testing: While the primary focus of Provar Manager is on structured testing approaches, its comprehensive data collection and analysis capabilities also support exploratory testing efforts. Teams can leverage the insights gathered from various tests to explore and identify potential issues or improvements in their Salesforce applications.

DevOps-Ready Integration

This solution stands out as a DevOps-ready solution, seamlessly integrating with a variety of DevOps tools and environments. This integration capability is a fundamental aspect of Provar Manager, ensuring that it aligns with and enhances the efficiency of your software development and deployment processes.

  1. Seamless Connection With Salesforce: The tool is designed to connect effortlessly with the Customer’s Salesforce environments to orchestrate test execution and coverage reporting activities.
  1. Integration With Various Solutions: As a Quality Hub, Provar Manager can integrate with different solutions like Salesforce DevOps Center, Jira, and other DevOps tools such as Copado and Flosum. This integration collects all relevant information and makes it available at a central location, enabling you to organize, analyze, and optimize your data effectively.
  1. Plugin Support for Enhanced Functionality: Provar Manager boasts a wide range of plugins that extend its capabilities. These plugins allow Provar Manager to connect with various release management and DevOps plugins, including those for code quality testing.

Defect Management

Provar Manager offers robust defect management capabilities, crucial for maintaining the quality and reliability of Salesforce applications. This feature enables teams to efficiently track and manage defects, ensuring a high level of software quality and performance, as well as accountability to those managing and resolving defects.

  1. Easy Defect Logging and Traceability: When a test case fails, Provar Manager provides detailed logs explaining the failure, enhancing the understanding of the issue. Teams can directly raise defects from the test case where the failure occurred. This defect then gets automatically linked to the specific test case, ensuring traceability and ease of reference for future test executions.
  1. Holistic Testing and Reporting Process: Provar Manager is designed for simplicity and ease of use, allowing for the creation of manual test cases, test cycles, and executions. Teams can document each step, and in case of a failure, attach necessary screenshots and raise defects directly.
  1. Integration With Jira for Enhanced Traceability: Provar Manager integrates seamlessly with tools like Jira, further enhancing the defect management process. This integration allows for the import of user stories or bugs from Jira into Provar Manager, as well as sending defects to JIRA as issues (e.g. bugs) from the Defect record itself, providing a centralized view of all testing-related activities and their outcomes.

Reporting and Analytics

Provar Manager is equipped with advanced reporting and analytics capabilities that can provide in-depth insights into the entire testing lifecycle within Salesforce environments, enhancing decision-making and process optimization.

  1. Insightful Analytics With Customizable Dashboards: Provar Manager offers a variety of customizable dashboards and reports for in-depth analytics. These tools are designed to collect, report, and analyze all data related to your tests, their executions, and coverage. As a Salesforce application, all objects, fields, and layouts are editable, allowing teams to update and personalize them to fit their specific requirements. This ensures that the reports and dashboards can be tailored to the unique demands of different teams and projects.

Import Industry Standard Test Results

Provar Manager supports the importation of industry-standard test results, ensuring flexibility and compatibility with various testing methodologies and formats.

  1. Importing Manual Test Cases: Provar Manager allows the importation of manual test cases in formats such as CSV. Utilizing Salesforce’s standard importing mechanism, these test cases can be easily uploaded into Provar Manager. Once imported, they are converted into Provar Manager test cases, retaining their original format and details. This is usually done during the initial migration to Provar Manager from other testing management solutions. 
  1. Ease of Use and Conversion: The process of importing test cases into Provar Manager is straightforward and user-friendly. This feature ensures that manual test cases, regardless of their original format, are seamlessly integrated into Provar Manager, enhancing the overall testing strategy and execution.

Provar Manager’s ability to import industry-standard test results, particularly manual test cases in various formats, demonstrates its versatility and adaptability. It ensures that teams can easily transition to using Provar Manager without losing valuable historical data and can continue to leverage their existing test cases within a more advanced testing framework.

Use Cases

Practical Use Cases

Exploring the practical applications of Provar Manager reveals its transformative impact in diverse Salesforce testing environments:

  1. Streamlining Complex Project Testing: In scenarios involving intricate Salesforce projects with multiple components, Provar Manager’s cohesive framework becomes a linchpin for coordinating and tracking diverse testing activities, ensuring consistency across various stages of development.
  2. Agile Response to Changing Test Requirements: Ideal for dynamic project landscapes, Provar Manager allows rapid reassignment and adaptation of test cases. For instance, when project priorities shift, Provar Manager enables quick realignment of test resources to new focal points, ensuring agile testing that keeps pace with project evolution.
  3. Longitudinal Performance Analysis: Beyond immediate test results, Provar Manager’s historical data tracking empowers teams to conduct longitudinal studies of their testing efforts, identifying long-term trends and areas for continuous improvement.
  4. Enhanced Test Automation for CI/CD Pipelines: Particularly in CI/CD environments, where testing needs are continuous and time-sensitive, Provar Manager automates and schedules test executions, significantly reducing manual overhead and accelerating delivery cycles.

Diverse User Profiles: Catering to a Wide Range of Provar Manager Users

Provar Manager’s flexibility and comprehensive features make it an essential tool for a variety of users involved in Salesforce testing. Here’s a look at how different user groups can leverage Provar Manager:

  1. Salesforce Administrators and Developers: They leverage Provar Manager for thorough testing of new developments and efficient management of ongoing changes, ensuring customizations and updates don’t impair existing functionalities.
  2. Quality Assurance (QA) Professionals: QA teams require robust tools to manage extensive test cases and analyze results. Provar Manager supports these needs with its detailed test case management, execution tracking, and in-depth reporting capabilities.
  3. Project Managers and Team Leads: Responsible for overseeing project timelines and deliverables, these users can utilize Provar Manager to track testing progress, manage resources effectively, and ensure that quality benchmarks are met consistently.
  4. Business Analysts: Engaged in bridging the gap between business requirements and technical solutions, business analysts can use Provar Manager to verify that the Salesforce implementations align with business needs and function as expected.
  5. IT and Operations Managers: These users focus on the overall efficiency and effectiveness of IT processes. Provar Manager aids them in ensuring that Salesforce systems are reliable, and any updates or new features are introduced without disrupting business operations.
  6. End Users/Stakeholders: While they may not interact with Provar Manager directly, stakeholders are interested in the outcomes of testing processes. They benefit from the assurance that the Salesforce platform remains robust and functional, contributing to smooth business operations.

Each user group can find unique value in Provar Manager, whether in managing complex testing scenarios, ensuring high-quality deliverables, or maintaining the overall health of Salesforce systems. This diversity in application underscores Provar Manager’s role as a comprehensive solution for Salesforce testing needs across various roles and responsibilities.

Impact

Provar Manager revolutionizes Salesforce testing lifecycle management, offering a flexible, adaptable framework tailored to your organization’s needs. Emphasizing adaptability, it allows for extensive customization, from adding new Salesforce objects and fields to integrating unique UI components and automation. Its design prioritizes seamless interoperability within your existing toolchain, ensuring a harmonious fit. 

Beyond its adaptable nature, Provar Manager excels in delivering actionable insights, converting data into meaningful, decision-driving information. This robust tool not only enhances testing processes but also elevates overall user experience, making it an indispensable asset in your Salesforce environment.

Setup

Getting started with Provar Manager involves a few straightforward steps to ensure that your team is ready to maximize its comprehensive quality management capabilities. The first step is completing the installation of the Provar Manager managed package from the AppExchange listing

Licensing

Once the app has been installed, you will need to enable users in your Salesforce environment to access Provar Manager by assigning Provar licenses. Navigate to Setup > Apps > Packaging > Installed Packages in Salesforce. Here, under Package Name, locate Provar Manager and click on Manage Licenses to assign or remove licenses as needed.

Permission Assignment

Users also require the Provar Manager permission set to access the application fully. This permission set, aptly named “Provar Manager”, grants complete access to licensed users.

Installing Manager Plugins

Provar Manager functions as a Quality Hub, designed to integrate with other tools in your tech stack, such as release management, DevOps, or code quality scanning applications. 

The Plugins tab on the Provar Manager Setup page is your gateway to enhancing Provar Manager’s functionality. Here, you can browse through various plugins, access detailed information (including release notes), and install them directly into your Salesforce organization. If plugins are not available, customers can create their own custom integrations to external systems.

These initial setup steps lay the groundwork for Provar Manager to become an integral part of your quality management strategy, offering a customizable, integrated, and user-friendly experience right from the start. After it has been installed and configured, you can also follow the user guide for more details on how to configure and use Provar Manager. 

Support

Provar offers the Provar Success Portal for immediate support and expert assistance – a one-stop resource for users which provides easy access to essential information, written documentation and user guides, the latest software updates, and direct expert communication. New Provar customers receive an activation link via email, providing individual login credentials for secure, collaborative access. 

The portal is user-friendly, with options like Latest Download, My Cases, and Help, and raising a case is straightforward – simply log in, click View/Raise Case, followed by New. Then simply provide your issue details or use the quick Raise Case link for faster service.

For any queries or to ensure continuous access, reach out to support@provartesting.com. The Provar Success Portal is designed to make your testing journey smooth and even more efficient.

Pricing

Provar offers different pricing structures based on your requirements. All products include access to the Provar success portal, Provar Forum, University of Provar certification, a training portal, professional support service, and many more features. Further details can be found on the Provar Manager pricing page.

Summary

Provar Manager stands out as a comprehensive solution for Salesforce testing, expertly handling the complexities of modern software development and quality assurance. It offers a full-spectrum solution for the testing lifecycle, including planning, design, execution, and detailed analytics, catering to administrators, developers, QA professionals, and project managers. 

Its features, such as automated test execution, historical data analysis, and customizable dashboards, streamline the testing process and provide teams with actionable insights for accurate and efficient outcomes. 

To fully appreciate its capabilities, consider a demo or trial to see how its intelligent features can simplify and enhance your own Salesforce testing strategy.

The Author

Hamza Abib

Hamza is a Lead Solution Engineer at Own. He is 24x Salesforce certified with many years of experience demonstrating technical solutions from Salesforce ISVs and SIs.

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