Testing your Salesforce instance can quickly go awry without a CRM testing plan that is built around clear timelines and deliverables, as well as a comprehensive strategy for stakeholder involvement.
However, building and implementing this plan of action doesn’t have to be complicated, especially when it comes to automation. To ensure a simple and cohesive Salesforce integration testing process, consider the steps below.
Get Everyone Around the Table
In the early stages of ensuring successful Salesforce testing, gather representatives from all relevant departments around one table – literally or virtually. A solid first step is to gain an understanding of what your colleagues want from the CRM system.
Work with stakeholders to understand exactly what they need; collaborate and negotiate, and you will soon reach a place where everyone’s needs are met. Identify and troubleshoot any potential issues – ultimately, you’re doing your best to avoid issues by planning for them in advance.
Test From the User’s Perspective
Once you have all the relevant department heads around one table, the next step will be understanding requirements from the user’s perspective.
Set up test cases for multiple personas across your business to better understand the use of CRM. For example, Tony from human resources and Clare from sales will use the system in distinct ways; they may use different browsers at various times of the day and on different devices.
Users will have a preferred way of viewing or arriving at the same data. CRM testing needs to take into account diverse and unpredictable user interactions. Artificial intelligence (AI) can enable you to auto-generate and test unique user journeys that manual testing cannot perform.
Focusing on a user-centric test perspective will help you increase user adoption of the CRM system, which is critical for its overall success.
Bridge the Gap Between Technology and Business
Testing the sheer diversity and complexity of Salesforce configurations might sound like a job for experienced QA engineers. However, business analysts are often more successful at conceiving and implementing testing because they understand its commercial impact.
Modern testing solutions that take a low-code or no-code approach don’t require the technical background of a traditional tester. Testing solutions that can explore user journeys through image-based testing and optical character recognition (OCR) enable anyone to test CRM systems, regardless of technical prowess.
Add Automation to Your Testing
If you take an inventory of your Salesforce testing considerations, you will realize just how much there is to manage. For example, software configurations are complex, a variety of workflows and user journeys, data migration, third-party integrations, performance, usability, security, and much more. These considerations represent a tall order for manual testing.
This is where test automation comes in. Test automation automates repetitive, rule-based tasks, enabling teams to accelerate testing and increase test coverage. In addition, test automation can use AI to proactively search for bugs in places that manual testers wouldn’t think to look.
It’s important to note that manual testing has limited coverage and requires maintaining a library of test scripts that can break inadvertently by software updates. Manual testing may also focus on redundant processes while ignoring worthwhile test cases. The bugs that manual testing misses can have drastic knock-on effects on business-critical applications and workflows.
Choosing the Right Solution Provider for Salesforce Integration Testing
Your Salesforce testing solution needs to be robust, and capable of handling complex integrations while seamlessly supporting business continuity and delivering an exceptional customer experience. It also needs to operate equally well regardless of how users access it – whether via the web or mobile, Salesforce Classic, or Lightning.
Also bear in mind that Salesforce relies heavily on dynamically populated fields in iFrames. This extra layer of abstraction makes traditional code-based testing tools less effective. In addition, it becomes even more of an issue as firms migrate to Salesforce Lightning or toggle between Classic and Lightning, which emphasizes the importance of providing a slick visual user experience.
Companies’ focus on user experience magnifies the importance of choosing a solution provider that concentrates on testing at the front end. Therefore, traditional testing tools that work on a code level are simply not as helpful here.
Final Thoughts
There are various options out there if you’re planning to head down the automated route when it comes to Salesforce integration testing. One such option is Keysight Eggplant’s test automation software – an intelligent automated testing solution designed to handle complex CRM systems.
Through AI-powered software testing, Eggplant can:
- Automate testing for any CRM system, including Salesforce Classic and Lightning, regardless of the programming language or version.
- Undertake flexible and powerful image and OCR testing, regardless of changes in underlying behaviors and functionality.
- Boost productivity with no-code/low-code automation testing, enabling non-technical employees to run tests.
- Create non-invasive test cases from the user perspective with advanced testing powered by AI and machine learning.
- Speed up test cycles and increase test coverage across the entire testing process.
- Help future-proof your CRM system and maintain business continuity.
Discover how you can test faster, smarter, and more reliably with AI-powered automation. You can also learn more about test automation for Salesforce by downloading the eBook: A Strategic Guide to Salesforce Testing.
