Microsoft Dynamics 365 Testing: What All You Need To Know
Tags: microsoft, dynamics, testing
Published: 2023-04-20 10:45:17

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a great suite of cloud applications that can streamline and automate your business processes across customer engagements, financials and operations. Since Dynamics 365 apps are your mission critical apps it is necessary that they should meet your business objectives. To ensure that Dynamics 365 apps support business users in their day-to-day activities, you must thoroughly test them. 

Two major releases each year by Microsoft have also made testing a necessity due to the following reasons:

- Changes due to major releases can cause regressions to the existing system.

- Updates can impact existing customizations. 

- Integrations with third party apps can be impacted due to updates or configuration change.

Manual Microsoft Dynamics 365 testing isn’t a viable option since it is time consuming, error prone, and non-scalable. 


Automated testing isn’t straightforward either because of the following reasons:

- Dynamics 365 applications are complex since they consist of dynamic object IDs, nested iFrames, and deep object trees. If you use a test automation tool that tests elements at the object layer, the scripts will be fragile and often break. 

- Due to the presence of nested iframes and frames, finding the correct elements in the Dynamics 365 applications and executing the actions require a lot of time and effort. 

- Frequent application updates lead to change in object properties. This can break your existing tests. Thus, test script maintenance can be a great effort.

- Dynamics 365 Applications can be integrated with third party productivity applications. Finding the test automation tools having compatibility with the entire technology stack can be a daunting task. 

Since you’re now aware of the challenges with automated testing for Microsoft Dynamics 365, let’s discuss what you should look for while selecting an automated Microsoft Dynamics 365 testing tool.

**No code automation**: As Dynamics 365 applications are continuously evolving and receive major updates at least twice a year, it is necessary you should opt for a test automation tool that supports regression testing. Selecting a no code test automation tool like Opkey will significantly reduce the time and cost of regression testing which is required before you take a Microsoft application update, or before you apply custom code and configurations to your instance. Powerful task recorder records and converts the recordings into a suite of automated tests without requiring anyone to write source code.

**Self-healing**: Test script maintenance is a big challenge for test engineers. Always opt for a test automation platform that leverages AI to identify the broken scripts. AI powered automation platforms not only identify broken test scripts but also heal them autonomously without requiring human intervention.

**Smart regressions**: What to test and what not is still a million dollar question. Too much testing consumes a lot of time while too little exposes your business to unnecessary risks. To address this challenge, opt for a test automation platform that provides you smart regressions based on the impacted areas during update testing. This will save your business from unnecessary risks. 

**End-to-end testing**: It has already been stated above that Dynamics 365 updates can impact your existing integrations. It is recommended that you should opt for a testing tool that offers end-to-end coverage across the entire technology stack. Test automation tool that covers everything from desktop apps to different cloud ERP solutions.