4 Ways To Salesforce Lightning Testing

As the Lightning Experience gains traction among Salesforce customers, many more organizations are looking at the new UI and considering how and when to make a move. There are four ways to do Salesforce lightning testing, and we will discuss them here.

But what do testers need to plan for in the new Lightning UI? What will change, and what impact will this have on your testing? Whatever your test strategy, it’s essential to understand the changes coming in and start planning for them.

Read on for four things you need to know about Salesforce Lightning testing.

1: Related Lists Have Moved

In Classic, related lists occupy the lower half of the record detail page. Quick links at the top give a quick way of navigating down the page and a hovering view of the lists.

In Lightning, this has changed. Related lists are now a separate tab on the detail page, meaning the user has to click to navigate between details and lists.

It impacts testing, requiring additional clicks in Lightning to complete the same process. (On the plus side, this may bring about faster load times, although this is still a work in progress.)

Related lists in Classic

Image shows the appearance of Related Lists in Salesforce Classic UI one of four ways to Salesforce lightning testing.

Related lists in Lightning

Image shows the appearance of Related Lists in Salesforce Lightning UI one of four ways to Salesforce lightning testing

2: Edit Screens Become Overlays

In Lightning, record edit screens overlay the original screen, unlike in Classic, where separate pages are accessible via an independent URL. This change affects the navigation path for manual or automated testing.

It also provides a challenge for implementations in Salesforce Classic, which use Custom Buttons to pre-populate defined fields by accessing the field IDs, a method known as ‘URL hacking.’ (If you’re unfamiliar with this topic, check out Salesforce Ben’s article for a great intro).

For more information about Lightning alternatives to URL hacking, try Keith McRae’s article or Michael White’s Dreamforce presentation.

Editing in Classic

Image shows a standard Edit screen in Salesforce Classic UI. one of four ways to Salesforce lightning testing

Editing in Lightning

3: Lookups Have Changed

In Classic, a lookup field has a dialog box to find the proper record. In Lightning, this has become a dropdown menu with overlays for searching.

There’s also a new quick link for creating a new record, which provides a different overlay of the full edit screen for that object.

Lookup fields in Classic

Lookup fields in Lightning

4: Lightning Uses Aura Open Source Framework

This change could be a headache for any organization with coded test automation.

They are building the new Lightning UI on the Aura open-source framework, which differs from Classic’s standard HTML. It creates a compatibility risk for coded test automation. Hooking coded tests generally into the underlying architecture of testing the platform will work for Salesforce Classic testing but not for Salesforce Lightning testing.

If this change affects you, don’t panic! There’s still time to make a plan.

Image shows Marvin the robot pointing at a 'Don't Panic' message.

One option is to rebuild your test automation for Salesforce Lightning testing completely. If you plan to do this, ensure you have the necessary rebuilding resources. They will also need time to learn how to structure their tests in the new framework.

In addition, note that your maintenance effort will double if you plan to run and maintain both test suites. It is a likely scenario for many since most organizations plan to dual-run Classic and Lightning for a defined period.

Ensure you have a plan for creating and maintaining the two test suites.

Another alternative is to invest in a testing solution with an upgrade path. Here at Provar, we’ve been working on this for some time.

Our upgrade path will help testers run the same tests in Classic and Lightning without needing a second test suite.