Testing is an essential aspect of properly maintaining your Salesforce environment. DevOps projects are often aimed at implementing new updates to your system in order to stay timely or producing a new product for your customers or team members to use.
These projects will only be as useful as they are reliable—so how can you be sure every line of code interacts with each other as intended? How do you maintain data security levels while introducing new functionality to your system?
Salesforce test automation takes the guesswork out of the DevOps pipeline, supports successful deployments, and ensures a satisfied end user.
Bugs and errors become more difficult and expensive to fix the later they are found in the development pipeline. Early testing is essential to keep costs low and maintain reliable quality levels.
There are three types of testing within the Salesforce environment:
- Unit Testing: Performed at the code level to verify proper functionality of individual components.
- Integration Testing: Performed after unit testing to make sure everything works together.
- Functional Testing: Addresses the Salesforce CRM to verify proper functionality.
Streamlining Salesforce DevOps processes means maximizing the efforts of your team members. Manual testing is time consuming and prone to mistakes.
Here are 6 types of Salesforce Automated Testing Tools you need to be utilizing:
1. Static Code Analysis
Salesforce test automation can be utilized from the moment a piece of code is introduced to a new application or update. Static code analysis provides complete oversight of code health, allowing developers to address issues the moment they are written into the coding structure.
Static code analysis tools help reduce technical debt, contribute to data security measures, and save developer time.
Approaching code checks with manual processes will inevitably lead to errors and bugs slipping through the cracks. A single update can include thousands of lines of code. It is nearly impossible for a team member to give each piece of code the attention it deserves to perform an adequate review. This can lead to data security vulnerabilities as well as bugs that impact the experience of the end user.
2. Continuous Integration
Multiple layers of testing are required to ensure complete coverage for an update or application. Static code analysis is an essential link in this chain, but it is not the only one. Numerous tests on your lines of code will provide thorough insight into the stability of your projects.
Continuous integration (CI) is another piece of test automation that is an essential aspect of an optimized Salesforce DevOps pipeline.
CI automatically integrates code from multiple developers into a singular software release. This speeds along the process of deploying a DevOps project, but that’s not all. It also monitors the code repository and runs unit and integrations tests to help identify and resolve errors.
Even the best developers are liable to make mistakes—particularly in multi-developer teams. Multiple layers of code checks ensure these discrepancies are resolved before they become large problems.
3. Application Security Testing
Data security needs to continue to be a major aspect of your DevOps releases. This is why we recommend moving beyond a DevOps mindset and into a DevSecOps mindset—one which imbues every stage of the development cycle with data security considerations.
Salesforce test automation can also be used to address the overall security of your DevOps projects. This process is known as application security testing, and there are two approaches to choose from.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): These tools run simulated cybersecurity attacks against your programs to find and flag security vulnerabilities. This is done to find unexpected results your team might not otherwise locate.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST): These tools analyze your DevOps projects from the inside out. They check the source code for potential vulnerabilities and helps address the issues before they become active security concerns.
4. User Acceptance Testing
Testing an application or update includes a lot more than the stages leading up to deployment. And while these initial stages will support successful deployments, it’s still necessary to ensure proper functionality after this important milestone in application development. Testing the final functionality of your application or update ensures your end users will be able to interact with it in the way you intended.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) occurs at the end of the development cycle before it goes live. Users interact with the software to verify proper operation.
From there, the application can either be moved forward if the tests went well, or it can go back to your developers for further refinement. These tests act as a final stamp of approval to ensure the various types of Salesforce test automation sorted out all the bugs.
5. Automated Test Script
Everyone will have different needs and expectations of Salesforce test automation. An automated test script can be written to directly address the individual concerns of a particular DevOps project. This removes any risk of misinterpreting the results and makes it easier for your team to move a project forward.
Automated test scripts are a set of instructions to execute automated steps to a test case.
These tests collect evident throughout their execution to provide results. These test scripts can be written in variety of programs such as Selenium and integrated with other DevOps tools. Test scripts support successful deployments, reduce test time, and increase visibility in your DevOps pipeline.
6. Reporting
As we’ve discussed above, visibility provides a variety of benefits. This could be visibility into specific areas like with static code analysis, or it could be visibility into your overarching processes themselves. And while reporting might not strictly be Salesforce test automation, it can provide insights to further refine your processes and assist your testing tools.
Utilize dashboards and reports provided by many Salesforce test automation tools to find areas that need improvement so you can refine your approach.
Learning more about the current state of your DevOps projects reduces unwelcome surprises. And the best way to get this valuable information is through multiple layers of testing.
FAQs
Salesforce test automation takes the guesswork out of the DevOps pipeline, supports successful deployments, and ensures a satisfied end user.
Yes! There are three:
- Unit Testing: Performed at the code level to verify proper functionality of individual components.
- Integration Testing: Performed after unit testing to make sure everything works together.
- Functional Testing: Addresses the Salesforce CRM to verify proper functionality.
- Static Code Analysis
- Continuous Integration
- Application Security Testing
- User Acceptance Testing
- Automated Test Script
- Reporting
