So, you want to perform regression testing in Dynamics. But what do you need to know before doing so? This article will take you through some key characteristics of Dynamics, as well as its relationship with regression testing and test automation.
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Regression testing in Dynamics
Automated regression testing Dynamics
Automating Dynamics with a visual, no-code approach
If you’re using Dynamics, it’s likely to be one of your core systems. If it goes down, it might stop you being able to receive orders until you get it up and running again. That’s lost revenue.
Dynamics is an enterprise application for practically any function in customer engagement, finance, and operations—it’s a complex suite of applications. It also has frequent updates that require continuous verification of thousands of business-critical processes.
Dynamics is rarely used out-of-the-box. It involves a lot of specifications, updates, and tests.
Applications within Dynamics work together like building blocks. When organizations choose different blocks and make customizations, things change in the background. But what happens as a result?
Firstly, tests start to break. When new releases are made periodically by Microsoft, customizations and configurations are impacted.
With frequent updates to core applications, multiple customizations, and integrations to manage, Dynamics-driven organizations face a growing workload to verify business-critical processes.
Related reading: How to tackle technical debt in Dynamics with test automation
Now you know the consequences of modifications to Dynamics breaking down. To avoid this requires regression testing. But what is it?
Regression testing is defined as a type of software testing used to confirm that a recent program or code change has not adversely affected existing features. It involves taking test cases that have already been executed to ensure that existing functionalities work.
Regression tests can be run at any stage of the software development cycle. They form a systematic testing of critical processes, notably including integrations with other systems.
In Dynamics, this is especially relevant. Why? Because companies make a large number of integrations and modifications to it.
Overall, regression testing aims to catch bugs that may have accidentally been introduced into a new build or release. If you don’t want to make releases in Dynamics with bugs, you’ll need to regression test.
Related reading: Regression test automation strategy
The drive to become more agile and have more frequent and faster releases means that companies need to speed up testing. However, most of them are still testing manually.
Normally, manual tests are implemented by a team that have set up a list of requirements. They then manually click through a Dynamics set-up to see if the tests passed or failed. This means that testers need to know the specific Dynamics environment of the organization.
Because the world of Dynamics is fast-moving and features change all of the time, manual testing is going to take a huge amount of time and resources. Plus it’s prone to human error. This is why it makes so much sense to automate testing.
The Capgemini World Quality Report of 2021-22 says that:
“The challenge attracting the greatest response – 44% of our respondents – was a lack of professional test expertise in agile teams”.
This lack of test expertise means that developers are in demand, but what if you could bring more of your workforce into testing Dynamics and democratize the process?
Automating testing in Dynamics means that a computer can run regression tests, allowing the QA team to focus on uncovering errors outside of the usual testing paths. Consequently, it speeds the testing process up, reduces errors and protects business-critical processes.
Using a no-code, visual approach like Leapwork’s helps non-coders in your organization—people who know your specific Dynamics environment—engage in and maintain regression test automation.
It means not having to be dependent on developers to test functionalities in Dynamics. It could allow you to to let those business-driving people facilitate the automation of testing, as opposed to being dependent on technical resources to go in and figure it out.
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