Uncovering the Challenges of Salesforce Test Automation
Tags: salesforce, test, automation
Published: 2023-09-14 10:14:11

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Started as an application to store customers’ contacts, Salesforce has been turned into a strategic application development platform. Salesforce claims that it allows 50% faster custom app development. It also termed itself as a digital transformation platform that helps in app development to meet the data needs of a specific business. To keep up with the speed of development and to maintain quality standards in the applications, Salesforce test automation is the need of the hour. The reason being manual testing is time consuming, inaccurate and error-prone. However, Salesforce test automation isn’t a walk in the park. 

In this blog, we’ll discuss why Salesforce test automation is challenging. We’ll also highlight what you should look for when selecting a Salesforce testing platform to achieve sustainable and reliable automation.

**Why do you need Salesforce Automation Testing**?

It has been stated above that Salesforce is a strategic digital transformation platform. Furthermore, it supports Agile & DevOps form of development in which dev teams can roll out new features faster than ever. It means that QA teams need to execute regression testing of Salesforce apps on a weekly/ daily/ nightly basis. By doing this manually, the QA team cannot keep up with the speed of development. This will negatively impact the release timelines. 

Thus, to keep up with the speed of development, they need to automate Salesforce testing. Automation speeds up the test execution cycle, leading to savings in time and costs. 

**Challenges with Salesforce Automation Testing**

**Complex DOM Structure** 

DOM stands for Document Object Model. The concept of DOM is similar to “classes” in Java. Since different objects are organized in a hierarchy under another object, it becomes really difficult to find objects by inspecting web elements. Automated testing tools that rely on DOM find it difficult to automate custom Salesforce Applications.

**Shadow DOMs**

Shadow DOM is a new feature that can be used to create custom HTML and CSS for your application. Whenever new features or seasonal updates are rolled out, there’s a possibility automated tests for previous versions will not work. These tests need to be updated. Updates in test cases require a significant effort and time that eventually eat up all the benefits of automation testing.

**Tables and iframes**

Salesforce features dynamic tables. It means that people have role-based access to Salesforce. Dynamic tables can create a lot of problems during testing. Apart from this, Salesforce also supports iframes. It means that URLs or pages that aren’t part of native Salesforce app can be incorporated into the Salesforce dashboard. However, they can create a lot of problems when it comes to testing.

**Highly Customizable**

Salesforce can be customized heavily without requiring coding knowledge since it is developed to facilitate low code development. It means that business users can easily add a new field on a lead form, can change a label, update an approval process or workflow, prices, or quote terms. However, testing these highly customizable interfaces can be very challenging as most of the platforms are code-based and business users are non-technical folks.

**How to address Salesforce test automation challenges**?

**No code test automation**: Since business users play a critical role in testing Salesforce, always opt for a no code test automation platform. No code platforms like Opkey don’t require programming knowledge to operate and have a low learning curve so that users need to spend minimal time in training on those tools.   

**Metadata driven platforms**: As test script maintenance is a big challenge due to dynamic elements, always opt for a platform that is metadata driven. Some platforms detect metadata and whenever there is a change in the element or tables, they automatically identify changes and replicate in the test scripts so testers don’t need to put efforts in maintenance. This will also resolve problems related to DOMs.

**End-to-end Coverage**: Since Salesforce can be integrated with other applications, always opt for a platform that supports cross technology validation. 

Hope you’ve understood the challenges with traditional Salesforce test automation and also what you should look for in a test automation platform. Our platform “Opkey” not only fits perfectly into the CI/CD pipeline but is a no-code, meta driven platform that offers autonomous self healing to test scripts.