Salesforce Test Automation: Complete 2024 Guide

With the increasing complexity of Salesforce environments, automated testing can significantly enhance testing efficiency so you can keep on top of updates, integrations, and customizations, and ensure continuous quality. 

This guide covers everything you need to know about Salesforce test automation, including its benefits, challenges, approaches, and the best tools available.

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What is Salesforce test automation?

Salesforce test automation involves using automated tools and frameworks to test Salesforce applications, ensuring they function correctly across various scenarios. 

Automated tests can cover unit testing, system testing, user acceptance testing (UAT), production testing, regression testing, end-to-end testing, and more, all aimed at verifying the integrity and performance of Salesforce implementations and users journeys.

Why you need Salesforce test automation

Salesforce is a complex and highly customizable platform that undergoes frequent updates, including three major seasonal releases each year. These updates can introduce new features, change existing functionalities, and potentially disrupt customizations and integrations that businesses rely on. 

Given the critical nature of the processes supported by Salesforce, such as sales, marketing, customer service, and e-commerce, ensuring the platform’s stability and performance through thorough testing is essential.

Automated testing in Salesforce helps you manage the following:

• Frequent updates and customizations: Salesforce’s regular updates necessitate consistent testing to ensure that new versions do not negatively impact existing functionalities. Automated testing helps manage this by providing a quick and reliable way to validate changes.
• Complex integrations: Many businesses integrate Salesforce with other systems like ERP platforms (e.g., Dynamics 365, SAP), marketing tools (e.g., HubSpot, Google Analytics), and e-commerce platforms (e.g., Shopify, Magento). Automated tests can ensure that these integrations continue to function correctly after each update, preventing disruptions in business operations.
• Critical business processes: Salesforce supports various critical business processes such as lead management, opportunity management, account management, and customer service. Automated testing helps maintain the quality and reliability of these processes, ensuring seamless operations and a positive user experience.
• End-to-end testing: For comprehensive quality assurance, it is essential to test entire business processes that span multiple systems and applications. Automated end-to-end testing ensures that workflows involving Salesforce and other integrated systems perform correctly, providing a holistic view of system functionality.
• Business continuity: Automated testing helps identify issues early in the development and deployment cycle, reducing the risk of critical failures in production. This proactive approach minimizes downtime and ensures that business operations continue smoothly.

How to approach Salesforce test automation

The first step in developing your strategy is to identify the key business processes supported by Salesforce.

Prioritizing these critical processes ensures that your testing efforts focus on areas most vital to your operations and customer interactions.

Next, assess all customizations and integrations within your Salesforce environment. Detailed documentation of these customizations and integrations is essential for facilitating thorough testing. This step helps to ensure that all unique configurations within your Salesforce setup are accounted for during the testing process.

Establishing a dedicated testing environment is also crucial. Set up sandbox and pre-production environments to thoroughly test updates before deploying them to the production environment. Take advantage of early access to Salesforce updates to perform comprehensive testing and identify potential issues before they affect your live environment.

Implementing a structured release management process is another key component of your strategy. Coordinate your testing efforts with Salesforce’s major releases and your internal change request cycles. Aim to have a bi-weekly or more frequent release cycle for internal changes, ensuring that all integrations and customizations are validated during each cycle.

Finally, make sure you leverage automation tools that support Salesforce’s technical requirements, including API testing and validations. Select tools that facilitate end-to-end testing across multiple systems and applications, ensuring a seamless and integrated testing approach.

Best practices for Salesforce test automation

By following these best practices, you can ensure the stability, performance, and reliability of your Salesforce environment through automation.

1. Prioritize end-to-end testing
   • Focus on testing complete business processes that span across multiple systems and applications.
   • Ensure seamless integration and functionality from a user’s perspective.
2. Automate regression testing
   • Automate repetitive regression tests to quickly validate that new updates do not break existing functionalities.
   • Regularly update regression test suites to include new features and changes.
3. Maintain flexibility and agility
   • Automate tests to support frequent release cycles, enabling quick identification and resolution of issues.
   • Adapt your testing strategy to accommodate new Salesforce features and updates.
4. Engage business and technical stakeholders
   • Involve both technical teams and business users in the testing process to ensure comprehensive coverage.
   • Encourage collaboration between Salesforce developers, QA teams, and business analysts to align testing efforts with business goals.
5. Invest in training and documentation
   • Provide training for your team on Salesforce automation tools and best practices.
   • Maintain detailed documentation of test cases, customizations, and integrations to streamline the testing process.

What to look for in a Salesforce test automation solution

Salesforce developers and admins, who can end up being responsible for testing, are accustomed to working with highly technical interfaces. While this suits their technical expertise, it often results in testing being isolated within technical teams. 

User-friendly no-code tools can bridge this gap. These tools enable business process experts to collaborate with QA teams, opening up the testing process. This collaboration allows for more realistic simulations of user journeys, ultimately leading to higher quality outcomes.

Here’s what you should look for in a Salesforce test automation solution:

1. Ease of use: The tool should be user-friendly, especially for non-technical testers.
2. Scalability: Ensure the tool can handle growing testing needs and complex test scenarios.
3. Support: Look for tools with dedicated customer support to help troubleshoot issues and provide guidance when needed.
4. Maintenance: An easy to maintain solution helps ensure smooth and uninterrupted testing processes without frequent manual interventions.
5. Cross-technology capabilities: The tool should support testing across different applications and platforms that Salesforce is connected to and integrated with.
6. Integration with CI/CD: The tool should integrate seamlessly with your CI/CD pipeline for continuous testing.

CTA: TEST AUTOMATION TOOLS COMPARISON

The top 8 test automation tools for Salesforce

Salesforce testing is essential for ensuring quality user experiences, but finding the right tool can be tricky.

Smaller organizations may find that a simpler, less expensive solution—one that a single developer can own, build, and maintain—suits their needs just fine. 

However for larger organizations, relying on developers for automation is rarely a sustainable solution. It's costly, doesn't scale effectively, and places undue strain on resources. These organizations also can't afford to use siloed tools that fail to integrate across their vast, interconnected systems.

Here’s a list of the top test automation tools for Salesforce:

1. Leapwork

Leapwork is an AI-powered test automation platform. Leapwork’s no-code, visual interface makes Salesforce test automation accessible to technical and non-technical users. It offers native Salesforce support, cross-browser and cross-platform testing, robust reporting, and analytics. Its scalable architecture, reusable components, CI/CD integration, and strong support make it a powerful tool for maintaining high standards in Salesforce applications.

2. Provar

Provar is a test automation solution specifically engineered for Salesforce. It offers a user-friendly interface and support for Salesforce-specific testing needs. For complex end-to-end workflows involving multiple systems, Provar may require significant custom scripting or additional tools to manage the entire process seamlessly.

3. Copado

Copado is a scalable test automation platform with predictive AI capabilities. It focuses on facilitating innovation and providing actionable data for improving Salesforce processes. While it offers robust capabilities within the Salesforce ecosystem, it might not support or integrate as seamlessly with non-Salesforce applications and systems. This can be a limitation in environments where end-to-end testing spans multiple platforms.

4. ACCELQ

ACCELQ is a codeless test automation platform. It supports continuous testing and automates everything within the Salesforce ecosystem. While ACCELQ integrates with Salesforce applications, integrating with highly customized or legacy systems may require additional customization and effort.

5. Tricentis Tosca

Tricentis Tosca provides end-to-end testing capabilities, ensuring seamless integration with Salesforce and other applications. It prioritizes critical tests and removes redundant ones. Although Tricentis offers a powerful and feature-rich environment, there can be a steep learning curve, especially for teams without prior experience with the platform.

6. OpKey

OpKey is an AI-powered continuous testing platform that provides pre-built test automation, AI-based impact analysis, and an intuitive test builder. It supports Salesforce and other applications. While Opkey supports a range of applications and technologies, integrating with highly customized or legacy systems may require additional effort and customization.

7. Mabl

Mabl focuses on making test automation accessible to all team members, regardless of technical expertise. Mabl is generally well-regarded for making test automation accessible and for its strong capabilities in web application testing and continuous integration environments. For comprehensive end-to-end testing, it might need to be supplemented with other tools to cover all testing aspects fully.

Get started with Salesforce automation

Salesforce test automation is essential for ensuring the reliability of your Salesforce applications and beyond. By implementing a robust automation strategy and choosing the right tools, businesses can achieve significant efficiency gains, reduce costs, and improve overall software and process quality.