Salesforce Testing Tutorial: Most Fundamental Steps for Beginners

Updated : Oct 15, 2024
Guide to Salesforce Testing

Quick Rundown: It’s time to prevent costly errors and ensure a seamless user experience with a safety net called Salesforce Testing. From understanding the basics to mastering advanced techniques, this guide will equip you with actionable insights to become a Salesforce pro. Read on to learn how Salesforce testing can transform your enterprise.

Any business’s main objective is to fulfill its customers’ requirements.

Businesses spend a lot of time and energy focusing on quick and effective customer interactions to satisfy their client base, which eventually emphasizes the market’s demand for effective CRM systems.

Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, is a methodology businesses employ to manage interactions with current and potential clients. CRM development assists businesses in streamlining operations, strengthening customer relationships, boosting sales, enhancing customer service, and increasing profitability.

Furthermore, each CRM available in the market today offers a unique set of advantages due to the abundance of options accessible. But when it comes to assisting customers efficiently, Salesforce, the first cloud-based CRM in the world, continues to lead the way.

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On This Page
  1. What is Salesforce?
  2. What is Salesforce Testing?
  3. Why is Salesforce Testing Significant?
  4. Different Types of Salesforce Testing
  5. What are the Different Testing Levels in Salesforce?
  6. What is the Salesforce Testing Process?
  7. Challenges Faced During Salesforce Testing
  8. Best Practices for Salesforce Testing
  9. What are the Roles and Duties of Salesforce Testers?
  10. Conclusion

According to the Salesforce Press Release, on May 3, 2022, Salesforce declared that it had been named the topmost CRM provider by International Data Corporation (IDC) in its most recent Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker. Salesforce, thus, has the number one CRM ranking for the ninth time in a row.

As Salesforce development has become one of the most popular and widely used enterprise application development strategies worldwide, rich and consistent Salesforce testing is also a necessary strategy. However, a lot of organizations neglect Salesforce QA today. And as a result, several flaws creep into the system, negatively affecting how people generally interact with the platform.

The task of Salesforce testing must be carried out if you want to ensure that your Salesforce solution operates at its peak efficiency.

Wondering what is Salesforce testing?

Okay! So, in this article, we’ll take you through various aspects of testing Salesforce solutions, starting from the basics.

Let’s get started!

What is Salesforce?

What is Salesforce

Salesforce was the first cloud-based CRM system in the whole world. Marc Benioff and Parker Harris launched SFDC (Sales Force Dot Com) in March 1999. Cloud-based Salesforce services were created to assist users in selling, marketing, analyzing, and connecting with their clients affordably and conveniently.

Additionally, many common capabilities of SFDC can help you manage your relationships with customers and prospects. Moreover, the SFDC testing may help your Salesforce solutions work with peak efficiency. The features coming with SFDC also allow you to interact and work with business partners and employees to keep the data safely in the cloud.

If you’re interested in knowing more about Salesforce and how it differs from the major platform known as ServiceNow, you can visit our article on Salesforce vs ServiceNow .

What is Salesforce Testing?

A big aspect of Salesforce management and development is Salesforce testing. And these testing Salesforce approaches should be applied to each specialist’s area of expertise.

As you wouldn’t serve any dish without tasting it first, you should never publish a Salesforce solution without going for proper Salesforce performance testing.

The Salesforce environment is both complicated and adaptable. You and your customers will experience fewer challenges if you care to prevent upgrades and feature updates from corrupting or compromising other parts of your environment with the help of Salesforce customization and configuration.

So, for a project to be deployed smoothly and effectively, Salesforce testing is essential. The point is particularly true with Salesforce automation testing of functions, where some elements that popped up during the development process may not have been considered due to all the integrated and connected components within Salesforce.

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Why is Salesforce Testing Significant?

Mentioned are the prime reasons for opting for Salesforce testing:

  • It helps you evaluate whether the final output can support the client’s business strategies.
  • It enables you to verify that the setup and code are working.
  • It helps in early problem detection and simple problem rectification.
  • It helps in validating that the system’s initial build complies with the specified requirement.
  • You can use workflows to test the functionality of time-based events.
  • The process builders can check the system’s functionality and behavior.

Different Types of Salesforce Testing

To understand Salesforce implementation more appropriately, we need to understand the different types of Salesforce testing.

Let’s go through them one by one:

  1. Manual Testing – The Salesforce.com App is tested manually as part of the software development lifecycle. Happy path testing, regression testing, functional testing, system testing, and integration testing can all be carried out by the QA team utilizing Salesforce manual testing.

  2. Automated Testing – A computer program is used in automated testing to assess Force.com or Salesforce.com app. It’s done using automated Salesforce testing tools such as Assure Click, Selenium, QTP, etc.

What are the Different Testing Levels in Salesforce?

Mentioned are the testing levels that Salesforce generally utilizes:

1. Unit Testing

  • Apex developers carry out the unit testing procedure. It involves writing code clauses that do coverage tests automatically.
  • To ensure that the code runs efficiently in that context, it lets you determine how many data records are affected.
  • Your code coverage ratio must be at least 78% to release Apex code into a production environment.

2. System Testing

  • A skilled group of Salesforce specialists carries it out.
  • It involves verifying the technical functionalities of the system from start to end. It also uses test scripts based on respective outputs.
  • It allows you to evaluate issues with the system’s automation rules, such as validation, assignment, workflow, etc.

3. Testing UAT

  • Customers utilizing the application need to conduct this test.
  • It checks the system’s capacity to support business processes.
  • UAT testing is based on a test script that accounts for business events.
  • The outcome should be the customer’s confirmation that the system is appropriate for its intended use.

4. Production Testing

  • It is a repetition of system testing in the production environment.
  • Salesforce production testing allows you to check whether the configuration and code are efficiently implemented from the Sandbox to the production environment or not.
  • The client should rerun UAT scripts post-deployment if there is still time before the final project launch.

5. Regression Testing

  • Its primary goal is determining whether code and configuration releases impact the system’s current user workflows.
  • It is implemented when any rectification or modification is introduced to production.
  • The user offers a list of modifications that might influence their current operation.

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What is Salesforce Testing Process?

The methodology for testing Salesforce software is quite similar to testing web applications. The tester should thoroughly know all the adjustable components during the testing process.

It lets them focus on the updated code rather than the Salesforce functionalities included in the base version.

Moreover, to complete their tasks, developers and testers must utilize the Sandbox environment (test environment). Any piece of code that functions in the Sandbox environment gets sent to production. A Salesforce quality assurance analyzer needs to comprehend the basics of Salesforce syntax.

Challenges Faced During Salesforce Testing

Salesforce Testing Challenges

Nothing comes too easy!

The same is the case with Salesforce testing, as it is not an easy process. The Salesforce QA software tester encounters many obstacles along the process.

Let’s go through some of them:

  • Testing complex functions like Salesforce, Visualforce, or Service Cloud Console is challenging.
  • Despite not being utilized, some standard features cannot be removed.
  • All of your test environments should be able to support automated tests.
  • For the lightning UI, you must rerun all of your previous tests.
  • When we shift to the test environment, GUI tests are not functional.
  • Some field IDs vary between organizations, which causes problems when establishing field locators for the Salesforce interfaces.

Best Practices for Salesforce Testing

They are pointless if you don’t know how to put your knowledge and expertise into implementation.

So, let’s understand these Salesforce testing best practices for an efficient implementation:

  • Utilize tests with real user profiles.
  • The testing approach must incorporate Salesforce functional testing, regression testing, system integration testing, and UI testing.
  • Utilizing tools like HP Unified Functional Testing and Selenium, Salesforce automation testing should be carried out.
  • User roles and responsibilities must be created and tested utilizing workflows.
  • To verify the functionality of the reports, Test Data should be generated.
  • Salesforce testers should consider both positive and negative flows.
  • A web page’s elements might not load at once, so the dynamic nature of visual force pages needs to be considered.

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What Are the Roles and Duties of Salesforce Testers?

Salesforce testers have the following significant roles and responsibilities:

  • To ensure that all of the key functionalities are working as required, they should be able to conduct Smoke testing.
  • Have the ability to perform Boundary Value Analysis and Equivalence Partitioning.
  • The development team and the tester should communicate efficiently.
  • The tester must carry out role-based test cases to guarantee the consistency of the data.
  • Create test scenarios that are both favorable and unfavorable.
  • Additionally, testers must use the application and become familiar with its feature to generate a functional map.
  • The testers should be aware of the Salesforce app’s customizability features.
  • Testers should also run a compatibility test in case Sales should additionally run a compatibility test.
  • The tester should be knowledgeable about load testing software like JMeter to verify the complicated flows in Salesforce and produce inconsistent results.
  • Have a thorough understanding of the basics of Apex.

ConclusionNowadays, businesses are becoming more and more user-centric, and effective CRM software assists in sales and profitability. Salesforce is an extensively utilized CRM integrated with a wide range of built-in functions with the ability to modify and customize additional features and meet the organization’s end-to-end needs. Now, it’s not enough to just concentrate on the development stage. Testing the code and functionalities before they’re configured and customized is also crucial. Salesforce testers need a strong technical background and a comprehensive understanding of the different Salesforce jargon.You can find tons of materials to support your Salesforce journey, whether you’re just starting or want to advance in Salesforce learning and implementation. Or you can just save yourself some time and trouble by choosing a well-known Salesforce app development company like Radixweb. Radixweb, thereby, specializes in Salesforce development and Salesforce test automation. We’ll help you create scalable applications to meet all your business objectives and fulfill your client’s requirements in terms of enhancing sales, profitability, marketing, and customer service functionalities.Contact us right away!

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Jigar Shah is the Sr. Content Lead at Radixweb. He is an avid reader and tech enthusiast. He’s capable enough to change your world with his words. A cup of tea and a good book make an ideal weekend for him.