Why Provar is the perfect tool for automating Salesforce?

One of the biggest challenges for Salesforce testing is its constantly evolving platform. While customers love this continually improving environment, it becomes a major headache for the development and testing teams as they can’t keep up with its pace. Also, it becomes costly to maintain.

Regular, repeat tests ensure that your Salesforce application meets and supports your needs. The flexibility of Salesforce and its constantly evolving opportunities mean that regular testing is also vital to identify and fix any functional issues that arise after updates or integrations. Salesforce is attractive to enterprising businesses because it seamlessly works with other applications; introducing additional applications makes rigorous testing even more important.

Testing is still considered a stage that hinders the speed of delivery in the agile delivery cycle. Like any other product line, the demand for test automation continuously increases in Salesforce applications as organizations focus more on swift and efficient delivery.

I highly recommend reading the Salesforce Summer 2022 Release Notes to stay upto date and properly plan to exceed your business goals. Click here.

Why there is a need for Salesforce Test Automation?

Test Automation coverage of the Salesforce system will help with smoother and more effective usage with less time wasted on manual troubleshooting and fixes. It also allows businesses to cope with frequent salesforce releases with minimal effort. Salesforce testing is always challenging and complicated. GUI tests often fail within a test environment as well.

1. To reduce manual test efforts, which are time-consuming and not scalable.
2. More extensive and efficient coverage of tests.
3. Increase in test coverage and number of tests performed.
4. Reporting and cross-browser testing.
5. To support internationalization testing.
6. Automated test reports and faster feedback help to speed up the entire test cycle.

Challenges in Salesforce test automation:

Those who have used Selenium for salesforce test automation may know how challenging it is. Salesforce adds extra complexity, like Shadow DOMs, dynamic IFrames, and dynamic elements, which is tricky to tackle.

1. Dynamic Elements:
   • Salesforce has dynamic elements that change their locators with every test script run or whenever there is a new salesforce release, making it a nightmare for automation engineers to maintain the solution.
2. Reliability:
   • Most of the time, automation engineers waste their time updating locators to test across different environments.
3. Complexity:
   • It is hard to test components like visualforce, consoles and custom lightning components.
4. Reusability and Scalability:
   • Most of the tests demand to be reusable with multiple users, cross browsers and also against different languages.

This is where Provar comes to the rescue.

Provar is the perfect tool for automating Salesforce. Provar stands out among other automation solutions because it is a Salesforce-first solution.

As I researched more about Provar on why it is unique, I realized that Provar relies on something that Salesforce provides. It’s called metadata which allows Provar to be very smart and deliver unbreakable test cases for large Salesforce implementations.

Provar creates polymorphic tests; it enables a single test case to cover many different scenarios like multiple users, different browsers, and different languages.

To make it even simpler, Provar has embraced a no-code approach so even non-technical teams at companies can easily create and execute tests with quality. Also, it supports UI and API tests.

So, is Provar another test automation tool? Well, I won’t call it a tool. I prefer to refer to it as a platform built to simplify test automation for Salesforce solutions. Provar tests are designed to work with the underlying data model of Salesforce. Many teams spend most of their time on test maintenance, fixing tests that often break after major Salesforce releases while using other test automation solutions that aren’t Salesforce-specific.

Provar’s intuitive no-code test creation enables anyone to start building tests from day one with the point-and-click Test Builder.

The Test Builder makes it easy to author and debug tests as you go. It allows the users to build the tests; it captures all of your Salesforce fields and values and enables you to add them to your Test Cases in a straightforward no-code approach. It is straightforward and quick. Test Builder automatically delivers a complete test step, including page and field details and predicted interactions, with just one click. Since the test builder helps build the test with Salesforce UI open, it is much easier to debug and update on the fly.

Another stand out feature is that Provar helps users to build unbreakable tests for Salesforce. And this substantially reduces the amount of time spent on test maintenance, mitigating one of the most prominent challenges organizations face with test automation.

Running a Provar test is even easier. Once your tests are created, you can click on the Run menu and execute the test within Provar; it also provides different Run modes. The ability to test the same actions on multiple browsers is invaluable, as users will be using any browser of their choice. Testing with different browsers is as simple as selecting a browser option from a select list in the menu provided in Provar.

Provar provides out of the box integration support with a wide variety of partners, including Docker, Copado, GitLab, Slack, CircleCI, Jenkins, Heroku etc., to help teams test throughout the development lifecycle and collaborate more effectively. Slack integration is super cool, and it helps to share test results in real-time. They also have a comprehensive documentation library and customized consulting services to help clients take advantage of their offerings.

For Reporting, it supports the standard reporting option of creating a PDF report detailing various metrics and a high-level summary of which test cases have been run, highlighting which tests passed and failed. It is also possible to customize the report and tailor it to specific project stakeholders.

We can say that Provar is a complete package for Salesforce test automation. It also includes custom coded scripts which makes it a comprehensive solution that offers everything one needs to create any test script.

Using a solution like Provar reduces the amount of test creation and maintenance time and gives the teams enough time to focus on other things that matter. You can have a simple test automation case created, capture screenshots and generate a visual test report within minutes.

Provar excels in instantly recognizing Salesforce elements, like page layouts and objects, making it incredibly easy even for a non-technical person to assist with creating automated tests.

Provar can be included in the following parts of the SDLC [Reference: Automating End to End testing in Salesforce whitepaper by Provar]:

• User Stories: Provar integrates with test design tools like ALM and Zephyr and agile development tools such as Jira.
• Develop: Provar synchronizes metadata changes and can be executed as part of a CI process as each change is made.
• Package: Using Provarʼs SalesforceDX package testing of package versions and release artifacts are simple and reusable.
• Document: Provar provides a number of test result artifacts that can be retained for testing evidence, accelerating UAT sign off.
• Test: Functional and non-functional tests executed with Provar, including regression coverage.
• Deploy: Provar tests are integrated during the deployment process to verify the deployment has been successful.
• Data Load: Provar has Salesforce Bulk API support which can be used to migrate data, preload test environments or pushes data to production.
• Releases: Provar tests can be integrated with release management tools to verify the release integrity and provide complete traceability.
• Monitor: Smoke tests integrated into daily regression to identify the availability of key systems and end-to-end business processes.
• Compliance: Proof of test execution and scope of testing required by auditors.

In short, based on my initial exploration Provar is a simple, powerful, and unique platform that eases your testing efforts more smartly.

If you are yet to explore it, I would highly recommend giving it a try. Provar also provides a certification course on the University of Provar (UP) for FREE! I would suggest that Salesforce Testing Teams explore Provar and try out its capabilities.

---