You must test your Salesforce environment to mitigate risk if you’re using Salesforce. The goal of testing is to prevent errors. Testing ensures that all components of the workflow function as intended, from data entry to report generation. Tests help maintain quality in the Salesforce ecosystem. They cover areas such as data integrity, integrations, UI functionality, performance, and regression. Testing your Salesforce workflow helps you catch issues early on, reducing the risk of costly errors and downtime.
Choosing how to test is just as vital as deciding what to test. You can test manually using strategies like spreadsheets or use an automated testing tool. Automated testing is a more effective way to optimize for the future.
Today, there are two primary automated testing approaches. One is test automation with robotic test-building capabilities, also known as Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The other is metadata-driven test building.
Understanding the differences between robotic and metadata-driven test building is essential. Choosing the right approach for your organization helps mitigate risk.
The Scoop on Robots
Robotic tests remove menial, time-consuming tasks from testers’ hands, leaving them with more bandwidth to take on complex tasks or initiatives that require a human touch. But the same can also be said of other kinds of automated testing—and other kinds may not have as many drawbacks.
Here are some areas where robotic test capabilities may put your Salesforce environment at risk:
- Dependency on UI: Many robotic testing tools rely heavily on the UI to perform tasks. This makes them prone to breaking when UI elements or layouts in Salesforce change.
- Complexity: Designing and maintaining robotic tests can be challenging. The complex nature of these applications requires coding knowledge, making the tests difficult to create and manage.
- Maintenance Overhead: As Salesforce evolves, automation scripts need constant updates to stay aligned. This maintenance overhead can be a significant drawback for organizations with limited resources.
- Data Security: RPA robots interact directly with sensitive Salesforce data. Any breaches or vulnerabilities in the automation process can expose this data and put organizations at risk.
- Scalability Challenges: While robotic testing offers scalability, managing many robots can introduce complexities. These must be addressed carefully to maintain a smooth testing process.
Where Metadata Prevails
Metadata-driven test-building capabilities alleviate these challenges. They employ stable locators for elements found by leveraging Salesforce’s metadata model. The solution then understands the location of elements and automatically updates its locators when Salesforce’s metadata changes, leaving tests with fewer opportunities to break.
Here are some reasons why tests built using the information found within Salesforce’s metadata are more resilient than tests governed by robotic capabilities:
- Change Management: As Salesforce environments are subject to frequent updates, these tools can automatically adjust and update test cases accordingly, eliminating the painstaking process of identifying and modifying to accommodate changes.
- Ease of Use: Unlike their robotic counterparts, these tools are designed to be user-friendly and accessible to Salesforce administrators and testers with minimal coding experience.
- Reusability: These tools’ reusable components make it easier to maintain and scale the test suite as the Salesforce instance evolves.
- Time to Value: The combination of change management, ease of use, and reusability leads to a rapid time to value, enabling faster delivery of high-quality applications to the market.
- Native Integration: These tools are designed to work directly within the Salesforce ecosystem, allowing organizations to leverage Salesforce-specific features and components during testing.
- Native Reporting: Many metadata-driven testing tools offer built-in reporting and analytics features. These features provide insights into test coverage, highlight areas for improvement, and offer a comprehensive view of the testing process.
Provar Automation: A Resilient, Intuitive, End-to-End Testing Approach
When choosing a test automation solution, consider your specific testing needs, team expertise, and Salesforce environment complexity. Testing your Salesforce environment is crucial to mitigate risk. With the right test automation choice, you can deliver high-quality Salesforce applications to your end users.
Want to learn more about how Provar Automation can meet your Salesforce testing needs? Request a demo today, and download our white paper, Robotic Testing: Are You Putting Your Salesforce Environment at Risk?, for an in-depth comparison of robotic versus metadata-driven test building tools!
