Courtney Gray
Microsoft’s ecosystem of business-critical applications, from Dynamics 365 and Azure to Power Platform, Microsoft 365, and Copilot, form the operational core for enterprises around the world. These tools power productivity, innovation, and collaboration at scale.
But in such interconnected environments, even a minor defect, from frequent updates, custom workflows, or cross-platform dependencies, can disrupt business continuity. Ensuring software quality through scalable, robust test automation is no longer optional. It’s essential for your business.
Yet, many organizations are still held back by limited tools and testing approaches that fail to meet the demands of agile delivery.
Enter Leapwork. Leapwork's no-code AI-powered test automation platform is transforming how teams collaborate, test, and innovate by replacing traditional bottlenecks with dynamic, scalable, and reusable testing strategies. With Leapwork, QA teams, DevOps engineers, IT professionals, and business users alike can contribute to testing, ensuring consistent quality across Microsoft applications so customer experiences are great, and operations are uninterrupted.
Find Leapwork on Azure Marketplace here
In this article, you'll find about everything you need to know about testing your Microsoft platforms and systems. Let's get into it, shall we?
Skip ahead to:
The Microsoft ecosystem: Testing is the key to a successful setup
What are the different testing tools
How to approach testing Microsoft software & tools
Leapwork: A Microsoft strategic partner
Leapwork in action: Customer stories & Microsoft integrations
How industries are interacting with Microsoft technologies
Key Microsoft and test automation resources
The Microsoft ecosystem: Testing is the key to a successful setup
Microsoft offers a comprehensive business technology stack, including ERP (Enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), cloud services, collaboration tools, and AI-driven applications including Microsoft Copilot.
Each of these applications plays a critical role in enterprise operations, making automated testing essential to ensure business-wide continuity and software quality.
Staying up to date with Microsoft One Version
Microsoft’s One Version strategy ensures that customers of Dynamics 365 (and other connected services) run on the most up-to-date release.
The Microsoft One Version update process involves fewer but more impactful updates, with this approach providing faster access to new features, meaning that businesses need to rethink and adjust their release and testing strategies to match.
These continuous updates require a rigorous testing approach to avoid disruptions:
- Dealing with frequent, smaller updates:
- Microsoft may push out monthly, or even weekly, patches and hotfixes. Without automated testing to ensure performance stability, QA teams may risk falling behind the release cycle. And if a team falls behind one cycle, this can quickly snowball.
- Regression testing at scale:
- Every update can potentially affect your current customizations and integrations. Broad regression test coverage ensures no hidden conflicts or data integrity issues across your systems.
- Integration and E2E considerations:
- With One Version, cross-application workflows must remain functional. Even minor changes in D365 can break Power Platform or M365 flows. Testing your integrations and testing end-to-end will catch these mistakes before they compound into something much larger.
- Automation-first strategy:
- No-code test automation is essential for coping with the accelerated pace of releases. Traditional code-based scripts (e.g., Selenium) often can’t keep up with the frequent UI changes in D365, and teams end up spending hours of wasted time on repetitive tasks when they could be focusing their efforts on more important and complex cases.
Ensuring your business has the latest Microsoft innovations and critical security patches is vital for a successful application ecosystem as it provides users with more features, automation, and AI capabilities. However, this can be a resource-intensive task. Leapwork is here to help.
Software testing teams can rely on Leapwork to accelerate Microsoft update schedules and ensure all applications and application customizations work as intended. Leapwork’s platform supports multiple concurrent testing cycles at scale so that tech debt is never a threat.
This also means that a company’s systems must be able to support these updates while ensuring their existing systems function as intended.
Why you should be testing each Microsoft Application
Here is a brief overview of each Microsoft application and their uses.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365)
Dynamics 365 is a powerful ERP and CRM platform that helps businesses manage operations, sales, and customer interactions. It combines several functions including sales, customer service, marketing, finance, and operations into one platform.
Why testing is critical: Frequent updates (including Microsoft’s One Version strategy), extensive customizations, and integration complexity can create a high risk of disruptions within the system if testing teams are unable to stay on top of the workload. Automated testing ensures stability and performance across its various modules, including Finance, Supply Chain, and Sales.
Typical testing scenarios:
- Functional testing for workflows to ensure they meet the system requirements.
- Regression testing after major Microsoft updates to ensure everything is working as it should be.
- Performance testing for large-scale deployments
Cross-application dependencies: D365 integrates with Power Platform, SAP, and Salesforce, requiring thorough end-to-end testing across these multiple systems.
Learn more about D365 testing:
Microsoft Power Platform & Power Apps
Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of low-code/no-code tools designed to help businesses automate workflows, analyze data, and build applications efficiently.
It currently includes:
- Power Apps: A low-code platform for building custom applications without extensive development resources.
- Power Automate: A tool for automating workflows and business processes across applications.
- Power BI: A data analytics tool used to visualize and derive insights from business data.
- Power Virtual Agents: A chatbot creation tool for automating customer and employee interactions.
- Power pages: A tool to build secure, low-code business websites.
Why testing is critical: Business-critical applications built with low-code tools require thorough validation to prevent process failures and maintain data integrity. Proper testing ensures and enhances their functionality, security, and performance, reducing the risk of data integrity issues, automation failures, and user experience problems.
Typical testing scenarios:
- UI testing for Power Apps to ensure they function as expected across different user interactions and devices.
- Workflow validation for Power Automate to verify that automated processes trigger correctly and perform the intended actions.
- Data consistency checks for Power BI to confirm that dashboards and reports reflect accurate and up-to-date data from connected sources.
- Chatbot response verification for Power Virtual Agents to test whether they provide relevant and accurate responses.
Cross-application dependencies: Power Platform and Power Apps work closely with Dynamics 365, SAP, Salesforce, and other enterprise platforms, demanding automated workflow and integration testing.
Read more about Leapwork’s Microsoft Partnership for Power Platform
Microsoft Azure & DevOps
Azure provides cloud computing, while Azure DevOps facilitates CI/CD automation.
Microsoft Azure: A cloud computing platform that provides a wide range of cloud-based services, including computing power, storage, networking, databases, AI, machine learning, and security. Businesses, developers, and IT professionals use Azure to build, deploy, and manage applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers worldwide.
Azure DevOps: Specifically facilitates CI/CD automation, providing a set of tools for software development, collaboration, and deployment. It helps teams automate workflows, manage code, track work, and deploy applications efficiently.
Why testing Is critical: Testing cloud applications and DevOps pipelines is essential to ensure they deliver reliable, secure and compliant experiences. It also helps to optimize performance, ensure scalability under varying loads, and maintain seamless integration across systems.
Typical testing scenarios:
- Automated testing of cloud configurations helps ensure infrastructure is correctly set up, secure, and compliant with organizational policies.
- API validation checks that APIs function reliably and return expected results across various scenarios and data conditions.
- Security compliance testing verifies that systems adhere to required security standards and regulatory requirements to reduce risk and maintain trust.
Cross-application dependencies: Azure and DevOps are often integrated with AWS, Kubernetes, and ServiceNow, requiring comprehensive cross-cloud automation.
Leapwork on Azure Marketplace Installation Guide
Microsoft 365 (M365) – SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, Excel
Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based productivity suite that includes applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive, along with powerful security, collaboration, and AI-driven tools.
Microsoft 365 provides collaboration tools for enterprise communication and document management, allowing teams to work in real time and securely access data from anywhere across devices.
Why testing is critical: Testing Microsoft 365 is critical to ensure security, performance, and seamless collaboration, preventing issues like data breaches, and integration failures, while maintaining optimal functionality across applications and devices. Doing so ensures business processes function correctly across documents, emails, and collaboration workflows.
Typical testing scenarios:
- Document validation in SharePoint ensures files are stored, accessed, and versioned correctly according to organizational rules and permissions.
- Workflow testing in Teams and Outlook confirms that automated processes, such as approvals and notifications, trigger and execute as expected.
- Data consistency checks in Excel automation verify that calculations, data imports, and outputs remain accurate and up to date across tasks.
Cross-application dependencies: Often integrated with SAP, HR platforms, and third-party automation tools, making end-to-end testing essential.
Find out more about Leapwork and Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot leverages AI to enhance productivity across Microsoft applications such as Microsoft 365 (including Word, Excel, Teams, etc.), GitHub, and security solutions. Copilot operates as AI-assistants that are embedded into the applications that help users with automation and decision-making, such as offering suggestions, automating repetitive tasks, and providing contextual insights.
And with Agentic AI being the next step in the AI technological journey, and a technology that Microsoft is rolling out across their tech stack, ensuring your AI tools are updated, working and are tested properly is vital. This is why assuring quality across your critical applications must include AI-powered tools like Microsoft Copilot. Testing tools like Leapwork allow teams to ensure their AI applications and core AI algorithms produce the expected outcomes.
Why testing is critical: Testing AI applications like Microsoft Copilot is essential to ensure their outputs are accurate, compliant, and secure. Generative AI models are known to produce hallucinations, which are plausible sounding but factually incorrect information.
This becomes especially risky in enterprise settings where users may rely on AI-generated content for critical business decisions, legal communications, or customer interactions. One small mistake from AI-generated content could have compounding impacts on your business.
Typical testing scenarios:
- Validation of AI-Generated responses: Ensure Copilot’s outputs are contextually appropriate, factually accurate, and align with organizational tone and standards.
- Accuracy testing in workflows: Verify that Copilot performs reliably across Microsoft 365 apps, delivering precise results based on user intent in real-world scenarios.
- Security compliance verification: Confirm that Copilot respects data access controls, adheres to regulatory requirements, and generates content only from authorized sources.
Cross-application dependencies: Copilot works with CRM, ERP, and governance frameworks. Automated testing helps to verify the AI-driven decision-making processes to avoid compliance risks.
Learn more:
- Microsoft Copilot Automated Testing
- Effortless test automation for D365: Leapwork & Microsoft AI Copilot in Action
What are the different testing tools
Microsoft’s own testing software
There are several tools currently available for testing Microsoft software. These include Microsoft owned testing software, which includes RSAT (Regression Suite Automation Tool), Azure DevOps Test Plans, Visual Studio Test Platform, and Playwright, open-source testing programs like Selenium and no-code solutions like Leapwork.
RSAT (Regression Suite Automation Tool)
RSAT (Regression Suite Automation Tool) is a Microsoft-developed solution designed specifically to automate testing within Dynamics 365 applications. It enables organizations to create, manage, and execute automated test cases directly aligned to D365 business processes, helping ensure system updates do not disrupt critical workflows.
RSAT is especially useful for regression testing in environments that follow Microsoft's One Version update strategy.
RSAT Pros:
- Developed and supported by Microsoft, ensuring tight integration with Dynamics 365.
- Enables automation of standard D365 business processes with minimal customization effort.
- Reduces manual testing overhead during frequent update cycles (e.g., One Version updates).
- Allows business users with minimal technical knowledge to execute predefined tests.
Cons:
- Limited flexibility for testing outside of Dynamics 365 applications.
- Does not natively support testing for Azure services, Microsoft 365 apps, or third-party integrations.
- Best suited for relatively standard D365 workflows, not ones with complex customizations.
- Test maintenance can become cumbersome when workflows are heavily customized or frequently changing.
Azure DevOps Test Plans
Azure DevOps Test Plans is a comprehensive solution for manual and exploratory testing within the Azure DevOps ecosystem. It supports test case management, test execution tracking, and integrates with CI/CD pipelines, offering visibility into quality metrics across development workflows.
Designed primarily for teams working in agile or DevOps environments, it helps organize, automate, and monitor testing activities alongside other DevOps processes.
Pros:
- Native integration with Azure DevOps Boards, Repos, Pipelines, and Artifacts.
- Centralized test case management and traceability across work items and builds.
- Supports manual, exploratory, and automated testing workflows.
- Customizable to fit agile, scrum, or DevOps processes.
Cons:
- Primarily geared toward Microsoft technology stacks and has limited flexibility for teams using diverse toolchains.
- Best suited for manual and integration testing as automation requires external tools.
- Licensing costs depend on the number of users and parallel test executions.
Visual Studio Test Platform
Visual Studio Test Platform is a testing framework integrated into the Visual Studio ecosystem. It supports various testing types including unit testing, load testing, UI testing, and integration testing.
The tool works well for development teams deeply embedded in the Microsoft environment.
Pros:
- Deep integration with Visual Studio and Azure DevOps ecosystems.
- Supports a wide range of testing types: unit, UI, load, and integration testing.
- Scales from individual developer testing to large enterprise CI/CD pipelines.
Cons:
- Requires Visual Studio licenses, potentially adding to costs for larger teams.
- Can be heavyweight for teams needing only lightweight or open-source automation.
- Focused primarily on .NET and Windows-based applications, with less flexibility for cross-platform development compared to newer frameworks.
Playwright
Playwright is an open-source web automation framework developed and maintained by Microsoft, designed for fast, reliable browser testing. It supports testing across multiple browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and WebKit) and platforms with a focus on end-to-end testing.
Pros:
- Open source with strong support from Microsoft and the developer community.
- Cross-browser testing support with a single API.
- Supports multiple programming languages (JavaScript, Python, C#, Java).
- Integrates into CI/CD workflows and can be combined with Azure DevOps pipelines.
Cons:
- Requires heavy coding skills to implement and maintain tests.
- Primarily focused on web applications and has limited use cases outside browser-based testing.
Open-source software testing
Selenium
Selenium is a leading open-source framework designed for automating web browser interactions. It is widely used in software testing due to its flexibility, scalability, and ability to support multiple programming languages and browsers.
Selenium is a go-to solution for teams needing robust web application testing, particularly in agile and DevOps environments. However, it does come with its pros and cons.
Pros:
- Open-source and free to use, with strong community and vendor support.
- Supports multiple programming languages (such as Java, C#, Python) for flexibility.
- Compatible with all major browsers and operating systems.
- Extensive ecosystem of tools (e.g., Selenium Grid, WebDriver) for parallel and cross-browser testing.
- Easily integrates with CI/CD pipelines and popular testing frameworks.
Cons:
- Selenium requires strong coding skills to build, maintain, and troubleshoot test scripts.
- High maintenance effort, especially for dynamic and frequently changing UIs.
- Limited direct support for Microsoft desktop apps and low-code platforms like Power Apps without complex workarounds.
- Test execution can be slower compared to some modern cloud-native automation tools.
No-code test automation
Leapwork
Leapwork is an AI-powered, visually compostable automation platform designed to make test automation accessible to both technical and non-technical users. With its intuitive interface, Leapwork simplifies the creation, execution, and maintenance of automated tests across a wide range of technologies.
Every moment, billions of dollars flow through digital businesses and in these interconnected software ecosystems, even the smallest defect can disrupt the flow of business. Leapwork helps software testing teams to ensure continuous quality across their applications, so customer experiences are great, operations are uninterrupted, and business continues to flow.
As a Microsoft strategic partner, Leapwork is especially suited for enterprises leveraging complex software ecosystems including Microsoft’s D365, Azure, M365, and the Power Platform.
Pros:
- Visually composable test flows within the platform that empowers both technical testers and business users to create automation workflows.
- Seamless integration with the entire Microsoft stack, including Dynamics 365, Azure, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform.
- Built-in self-healing automation technology that adapts to frequent UI changes, reducing test maintenance effort.
- Comprehensive cross-application testing capabilities covering SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow, custom web apps, and more.
- Reusable workflows allow for accelerated automation.
Cons:
- Requires a commercial license, which can involve upfront investment (though organizations typically realize ROI quickly due to faster test creation and lower ongoing maintenance costs).
How to approach testing Microsoft software & tools
For testing, organizations can use a variety of testing strategies to ensure software quality, particularly for mission-critical Microsoft applications, but what testing should your organization consider?
Below are the most common approaches to testing and examples of widely used tools.
Regression testing
Definition:
Regression testing ensures that recent code changes, updates, or enhancements do not negatively impact the functionality of an existing system. It involves re-running previously executed test cases to confirm that older features still work as expected after modifications.
This process helps catch unintended side effects that new code may introduce and is particularly important in complex, integrated environments. Often automated for efficiency and consistency, regression testing plays a vital role in maintaining software reliability, reducing risk, and ensuring long-term stability as systems continue to evolve.
Regression testing for Microsoft Apps:
Microsoft regularly rolls out updates, patches, and new features, especially within cloud-based services like Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365. For instance, D365’s One Version updates are released on a regular cadence, and these changes can potentially disrupt custom configurations, integrations, or user workflows.
Regression testing helps validate that each new release does not inadvertently break existing functionality, ensuring your business processes remain uninterrupted and your Microsoft applications continue to deliver expected performance.
Learn more about regression testing and why it’s critical for software quality
End-to-End (E2E) testing
Definition:
End-to-end (E2E) testing is a comprehensive testing approach that verifies a system’s functionality across all integrated components, from start to finish. It simulates real-world business processes by testing complete workflows that often span multiple applications, modules, or systems.
E2E testing validates that workflows, data integrity, and user interactions perform seamlessly and as expected. This type of testing ensures that all touchpoints, from the user interface to backend processes work together, helping to detect issues that may not be visible in isolated or unit testing scenarios.
End-to-end testing for Microsoft Apps:
In many enterprise environments, business processes often span multiple Microsoft products including Dynamics 365, Power Apps, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and even third-party integrations. End-to-end testing ensures that every step in these workflows functions correctly, data transfers accurately between systems, and users experience a smooth and reliable process.
Without thorough E2E testing, small breakdowns between apps or services could disrupt entire operations, leading to inefficiencies or data integrity issues.
Learn more about End-to-End testing and why it’s critical for business applications
AI-Powered test automation: Testing with AI vs. testing of AI
Definition & key distinctions:
Testing with AI:
Definition: Testing with AI refers to the use of AI-driven tools and techniques to enhance traditional software testing processes. This includes capabilities like self-healing test scripts that automatically adapt to changes in the user interface, intelligent UI recognition that improves test resilience, and predictive analytics that help prioritize test cases.
Use: Using AI in this way increases testing efficiency, broadens test coverage, and reduces the manual effort typically required to maintain and update tests in dynamic environments.
Testing of AI:
Definition: Testing of AI focuses on validating the AI models themselves to ensure their outputs are accurate, consistent, reliable, and compliant with applicable standards or regulations.
Use: Testing applications like Microsoft Copilot, Power Virtual Agents, or custom AI bots is critical to ensure that AI-generated responses are contextually appropriate, factually correct, and ethically sound.
Testing of AI with AI:
Definition: Testing of AI with AI combines the two approaches by using AI-powered testing tools to validate AI-based applications. This might involve using machine learning algorithms to detect anomalies, dynamically adapt to model changes, or automatically generate and prioritize test scenarios based on risk analysis.
Use: By automating complex validation tasks, this approach increases testing agility, improves fault detection rates, and ensures that AI applications remain reliable even as they evolve and learn over time.
Testing of AI and with AI for Microsoft Apps: Microsoft Copilot, Power Virtual Agents, and Azure ML services can cause workflows, UI elements, and other data outputs to shift unpredictably. AI-driven test automation helps adapt to these changes quickly, reducing manual maintenance and keeping tests resilient. At the same time, testing AI itself ensures that AI-generated content and decisions are accurate, compliant, and free from hallucinations or biases, protecting business processes and maintaining trust.
Learn more:
Leapwork: A Microsoft Strategic Partner
Why Leapwork?
Leapwork is the no-code test automation platform that visualizes and unifies a journey-centric workflow. By doing so, Leapwork enables business users, IT, and QA teams to automate tests without coding, meaning everyone from the most advanced coders to business users with zero knowledge can work with the solution.
Leapwork is also a strategic partner of Microsoft, working across the entire Microsoft tech stack to automate tests for D365, Copilot, Power Platform, Azure and M365. These tests help keep your ecosystem stable and prevent broken tests through self-healing automation, so you know you can stay secure and align with Microsoft’s frequent updates.
Integrating CI/CD is also easy as Leapwork supports Azure DevOps, GitHub and Jenkins, bolstered by enterprise-grade security and compliance that aligns with ISO 27001 and SOC2 standards.
"Leapwork's no-code experience for test creation empowers a broader percentage of our customers to effectively implement automated testing. Enhancing the quality of their Microsoft Dynamics 365 service experience and lowering the total cost of ownership through Leapwork is a win-win opportunity." - Mike Ehrenberg (Technical Fellow at Microsoft & CTO of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Applications Group).
Leapwork in action: Customer stories and Microsoft integrations
We have spoken about how Leapwork tests the Microsoft ecosystem, but how does the platform work in action? Below are some real-world customer stories that illustrate how Leapwork helps our customers streamline testing across their various Microsoft applications and integrations.
Mattress Firm (Dynamics 365)
Mattress Firm are using Leapwork for end-to-end Dynamics 365 testing, including integration layers and 3rd-party apps.
The challenge:
Mattress Firm was encountering significant hurdles with their testing strategy for the Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations component. Despite dedicating a year to developing automated test cases using the platform’s built-in tool, the outcomes didn't meet their expectations. This led them to reluctantly return to manual testing, costing them time and efficiency.
The solution:
After seeing no positive ROI with their previous tool, Mattress Firm called upon Illumina Technology Solutions to find a new test automation platform. The main requirements were testing end-to-end across core business applications, integration compatibility, and rapid value delivery. Leapwork met all these needs.
Outcomes:
- 20% faster checkout times
- 175% increase in product enhancements
- 90-day ramp-up for adopting Leapwork at scale
BESTSELLER (Dynamics 365 + eCommerce POS)
BESTSELLER ramped up their test automation to test Dynamics 365 end-to-end, including e-commerce and POS.
The challenge:
In their previous approach, testing was mostly done manually, which was slow and costly. Bestseller made various attempts with test automation, but it didn't yield the desired results.
The testing tool they were previously using was complex and unable to test machines or offline agents, so it couldn't test the POS system and validate the quality of the product at stores.
The reliance on a single person to maintain and manage the test automation tool also posed a risk to the project's stability and continuity, especially in the event of the individual's departure or reduced availability.
The solution:
Bestseller selected Leapwork due to its visual platform with fast ramp-up time. And, Leapwork was recommended by Microsoft. Leapwork allowed for end-to-end testing which included the POS platform, something that had previously been a heavy lift for the testing team.
Shifting from testing isolated functions to testing full customer experiences through true end-to-end testing enabled Bestseller to test across their varying technologies. Within three months, they were testing real cases, including edge cases, and speeding up the release process.
Outcomes:
- Migrated 700 test flows in 90 days
- Built 110 new test cases
- Leapwork’s speed and efficiency proved valuable
Ascensus (Dynamics 365 CRM)
Ascensus are using Leapwork to conduct end-to-end regression testing of their Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM.
The challenge:
Ascensus relies on Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM to manage their customer relationships and business growth, meaning the application is business critical.
Their previous QA strategy involved 100% manual testing, which was slow and costly, resulting in several challenges. Excessive time was spent on regression testing, especially following D365 updates, with manual testing errors leading to bugs in production and service disruptions.
The solution:
Ascensus chose Leapwork due to its rapid time to value, projected ROI, and easy-to-use interface. The three-month onboarding program and no-code platform blew the competition out of the water.
As Leapwork’s tool is designed for non-technical users, it opened the door for wider organizational adoption. Even with a modest QA team, Ascensus was able to quickly build automation flows, pulling business users into the process to expand their test coverage.
Outcomes:
- 90% reduction in bugs
- 10% headcount efficiency
- 3x increased throughput
How industries are interacting with Microsoft technologies
Healthcare and health services
Interactions with Microsoft software:
Healthcare and health services use several Microsoft tools including Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, Azure Health Data Services, and Dynamics 365. These tools are vital within patient care as they streamline clinical workflows and improve data management.
Azure provides HIPAA-compliant cloud storage while Microsoft Teams ensures secure collaboration across hospitals, clinics, and telehealth environments. AI services from Azure and Copilot are also being increasingly used within this industry, including diagnostics support (e.g. imaging analysis) and patient engagement through intelligent chatbots.
Why software testing is essential:
- Patient safety and clinical accuracy: Any failure within clinical systems can directly impact diagnosis, treatment, and patient outcomes. This has real-world life and death implications, and it is therefore absolutely vital that these systems are working as they should.
- Data security and compliance: The Healthcare industry is incredibly regulated, and therefore systems must comply with strict data privacy laws (such as HIPAA, GDPR, and HITRUST). This means that security testing is an absolute must for software systems. Large compensatory fines, patient confidence, and organizational reputation are all on the line when these are breached.
- Interoperability: Hospitals and other Healthcare services often use a complex mix of legacy and new systems. Ensuring rigorous integration testing allows for smooth and safe data sharing between EMRs, EHRs, as well as third-party applications.
Financial services and banking
Interactions with Microsoft software:
Banks and financial institutions use several Microsoft tools including Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services to manage customer relationships, automate regulatory reporting, detect fraud, and assess financial risks with real-time analytics.
Azure also ensures secure and compliant cloud services, while Microsoft 365 and Teams help foster internal collaboration in this heavily regulated environment. Advanced AI models on Azure as well as Copilot, also support in various ways, including credit scoring, portfolio management, and customer service automation.
Why software testing is essential:
- Security and risk mitigation: Cyber threats, fraud, and system breaches can lead to massive financial losses and legal consequences. Thus, ensuring the systems that could lead to these consequences are actually working is business critical, including tests like penetration testing and vulnerability scanning.
- Regulatory compliance: Financial software is very regulated, and therefore must satisfy various regulations like SOX, PSD2, PCI-DSS, not to mention local banking laws. These systems require ongoing testing and audit-readiness to ensure compliance.
- High availability and scalability: Transactions occur every second of every day, and banking platforms must be able to handle these millions of simultaneous transactions without any downtime. To do so, testing such as performance and load testing can ensure resilience within such critical cashflows.
Manufacturing and Industrial
Interactions with Microsoft software:
Manufacturers are using Microsoft applications to modernize their operations, utilizing applications like Azure IoT, Azure Digital Twins, and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. This provides predictive maintenance, smart factory initiatives, and digital transformation aligned with technological advances.
Microsoft Power Platform is also used within the industry to automate workflows, visualize real-time production data, and support decision-making across distributed plants and warehouses. AI and machine learning have been utilized within manufacturing across all software to help optimize supply chain logistics and improve product quality.
Why software testing is essential:
- Operational efficiency and cost control: Software issues on a production line can temporality, or worse, permanently halt operations, which causes significant financial loss and reputational damage.
- Machine-to-software integration: Microsoft systems must reliably integrate and interface with industrial hardware, robotics, and IoT devices. Ensuring these are working as required can be done through integration and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing.
- Worker safety and regulatory compliance: Inaccuracies in safety systems or monitoring software can lead to serious regulatory penalties, and can even endanger human lives, meaning that testing is literally a life and death matter.
Retail and Consumer Goods
Interactions with Microsoft software:
Retailers use various specialized Microsoft applications including Microsoft Cloud for Retail and Dynamics 365 Commerce to offer omnichannel shopping experiences for their customers (physical, online, and mobile).
Azure AI is used for creating personalized marketing, gaining customer insights, and performing demand forecasting. Many retailers use Microsoft 365 to connect frontline workers and back-office teams with productivity tools, while Azure infrastructure supports e-commerce sites, supply chain management, and customer service operations.
Why software testing is essential:
- Customer experience and revenue impact: Bugs in mobile apps, websites, or POS systems can have rippling effects on the customer experience, leading to abandoned carts, failed transactions, and lost brand loyalty.
- Inventory management accuracy: Mismanaged inventory data, where numbers of products stated in stock do not align with the actual number of products in stock, leading to over/understock, logistical inefficiencies and customer dissatisfaction.
- Cybersecurity and compliance: Handling customer payment information and personal data requires strong security testing and compliance with standards like PCI DSS. As customer data is at risk, ensuring this is not compromised is of absolute importance.
ISV: Independent Software Vendors
Interactions with Microsoft software:
ISVs build, deploy, and sell specialized software solutions by leveraging Microsoft's platforms, including Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform.
Many ISVs offer apps via the Azure Marketplace or AppSource. They often integrate Microsoft APIs, embed Microsoft technologies (like Microsoft Graph), and align with Microsoft's cloud-first, SaaS-based ecosystem to better serve their customers.
Why software testing is essential:
- Product quality and market reputation: ISVs rely on high-quality releases to compete and maintain their credibility, of which bugs and errors can quickly ruin a customer’s trust.
- Platform integration: These solutions must function flawlessly with Microsoft's services, which require varied testing methods including testing for compatibility, functionality, and regression.
- Scalability and performance assurance: ISVs often target large enterprises, so their applications must perform consistently under variable loads and global usage scenarios.
Key Microsoft and test automation resources
Want to discover more about how Leapwork functions with the Microsoft eco-system? Here are a few extra resources to browse:
Do you want to get started with a Leapwork trial and see how the platform’s automation can work with Microsoft? Start your free trial here or request a demo