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Salesforce has emerged as one of the favourite cloud based CRM software suites that companies have adopted to bring in efficiency, better cross functional synergy, gauging productivity, better management of sales, marketing and vendors, help in data migration, and to address the most important component of all – the end customers, among other diverse objectives. Cloud based Salesforce implementation prevents businesses from buying costly CRM softwares and related infrastructure thus leading to savings. Under the overarching umbrella of Salesforce, businesses can develop customised applications (four million by the latest count) to better manage their resources, functions, vendors, and customers. It goes without saying that the successful run of such applications can lead to a company being competitive in the market driven economics of today. This calls for Salesforce testing, not by a typical QA tester or his team but by a certified Salesforce tester and his team only.

Most companies operating on Salesforce platform leverage continuous integration / development / deployment of applications and Agile or DevOps methodology. In such operational ecosystem undertaking, manual testing by a Salesforce tester can be self defeating for the following reasons:

• Slow in developing, testing and implementing an application
• Not able to test the entire gamut of input scenarios
• Difficult to synchronise testing where data is distributed across geographies
• Delay in identifying errors
• Missing out on identifying errors due to human limitations in conducting repetitive checks
• Missed out errors leading to botched outcomes and bad user experience
• Human resources are tied with the tedium of testing, who otherwise could be deployed elsewhere for optimal use

Thus, implementing Salesforce test automation can eliminate the above mentioned shortcomings, besides realizing better ROI for companies. However, companies are still wary of applying Salesforce test automation owing to the following reasons:

• Requirement of specialised Salesforce tester and his team to write automated scripts for carrying out Salesforce testing iterations
• The automated test scripts are needed to be updated for every version of application a la regression Salesforce testing
• Dependence on Salesforce tester and his team grows as the scripts get complex with time

Notwithstanding the above mentioned challenges to implement Salesforce test automation by companies, the advent of open source tools such as Selenium has brought about a sea change. As platforms such as Selenium, Provar, etc., are browser and language independent, writing automated codes by Salesforce tester and his team gets greatly facilitated. In fact, Salesforce testing processes such as unit testing, system testing, functional testing, and production, regression & user acceptance testing can achieve greater effectiveness should automation of Salesforce testing is carried out.

Criteria to choose automation tools for Salesforce testing:

Flexibility: The tool should not require unnecessary codes to be written by a Salesforce tester, but possess pick and click interfaces, besides able to operate across platforms, architectures, browsers, and languages.

Integration: The tool should be able to leverage resources such as databases and emails to ensure better end to end integration.

Generation of reports: The tool should conduct automated tests at pre specified times as designated by a Salesforce tester before generating reports and sending them by emails.

Lightning compliant: The Lightning design system within the Salesforce ecosystem offers a user friendly interface, wherein one can easily develop applications. Hence, any tool to implement Salesforce test automation should be able to work with it.

In Conclusion

 By using tools to write automation scripts for Salesforce testing, companies can quickly develop better quality applications with Salesforce thereby ensuring increased ROI.

Michael works for Cigniti Technologies, which is the world's first Independent Software Testing Services Company to be appraised at CMMI-SVC Level 5, and an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified organization.