This is the second blog in our two-part series breaking down the basics of Salesforce testing. In this blog, we’re talking about testing — more specifically, manual and automated testing in Salesforce. The first blog in the series, Testing for Salesforce: What It Means and Why it’s Important, is available on the Provar blog. 

As any Salesforce user knows, reliable testing is critical to controlling the quality of their Salesforce ecosystem — and, ultimately, their organization’s success. But traditional manual testing is time-consuming, error-prone, and labor-intensive, and finding the right automated testing solution for your organization’s unique needs can be challenging.

In this blog, we’re focusing on the fundamentals and reviewing manual testing and automated testing. We’ll cover the definitions and differences of manual versus automated Salesforce testing and break down the benefits of automated testing.

What is Manual Testing?

Manual testing for Salesforce involves creating test cases, executing tests, and documenting the results in Salesforce without the help of automated tools. Manual testing requires human intervention at every step in the testing process and is often managed by QA teams, platform managers, and DevOps professionals.

Manual testing has traditionally been the entry point to maintaining Salesforce and its related applications. Manual testing is flexible and allows testers to use their knowledge and intuition — decidedly human instincts — to identify issues. But as an organization’s Salesforce ecosystem grows more prominent and complex, manual testing becomes increasingly cumbersome, complicated, error-prone, and unrealistic. And with Salesforce’s regular updates and integrations, it’s easy for already overburdened teams to fall behind on testing.

What is Automated Testing?

In today’s rapidly changing marketplace, testing is essential to ensure that Salesforce works as intended. Increasingly, organizations rely on specialized software tools to automate their Salesforce testing — from designing and running test cases to executing and generating reports to gaining actionable insights to help position their ecosystem end to end. Instead of relying on teams of human testers, automated testing solutions empower organizations to run tests more efficiently, effectively, and accurately.

While manual testing has its upsides (namely, cost for a smaller organization), automated testing solutions offer organizations benefits that can significantly impact their success. Ultimately, while the cost of manual testing can be lower up front, as an organization scales, those costs add up in the form of time spent and quality maintenance.

Some of the benefits of automated testing for Salesforce include: 

Enhanced Efficiency

Automated tests can be executed quickly, accurately, and repeatedly, reducing the time and effort required by teams to execute tests. Tasks that used to take hours or days can be completed in a fraction of the time, empowering teams to focus on more critical and strategic Salesforce tasks. 

Increased Test Coverage

Even the best developers and QA experts are human, and manual testing is prone to human error and limitations. Automated testing solutions can easily handle enormous amounts of data, thoroughly testing all features, functionality, and additional applications and ensuring comprehensive test coverage. Better coverage allows teams to identify issues earlier in the testing cycle, reducing the risk of bugs and breaks for end users.  

Improved Quality and Reliability

For many organizations, reliable end-to-end testing is crucial to keeping customer confidence. Automated testing ensures consistency in test execution, eliminating issues with human interpretation, error, or execution. Test scripts are predefined and repeatable and provide accurate, real-time results. Automated testing offers reliability that is especially important for complex customer journeys and intricate implementations. 

Optimized Cost

While Salesforce test automation solutions often have a significant initial investment, the long-term benefits of automated testing far outweigh the price tag. Automated tests can be reused and are easily maintained, reducing the need for additional testing resources or on-the-ground teams. Additionally, automated testing allows organizations to identify and address issues earlier in the testing cycle, reducing rework and avoiding expensive inefficiency.

Conclusion 

While no approach to testing for Salesforce is perfect, automated testing offers unique advantages to organizations relying on it for everyday operations. Organizations can enhance efficiency, increase test coverage, improve quality and reliability, and optimize cost by leveraging automated testing tools. 

Since 2014, Provar has been a leader in Salesforce testing innovation. Our robust suite of solutions helps teams organize, automate, and scale their testing efforts in Salesforce and beyond and meets our users at every stage of their quality journey. 

Interested in learning more about Provar’s robust suite of Salesforce testing solutions? Connect with us today!