This Blog post requires basic understanding of Salesforce platform. In this blog post we will cover following topics related to Salesforce Lightning-based third-party app testing:

• • Key Aspects of the Salesforce Lightning-Based Third-Party App Testing
  • Types of Salesforce Lightning-Based Third-Party App Testing
  • Levels of Salesforce Lightning-Based Third-Party App Testing

 

Salesforce Lightning-based third-party app testing ensures that applications built or integrated with the Salesforce Lightning platform function as expected. This involves three key aspects:

Custom Development Testing

Organizations often tailor third-party apps to meet specific business requirements within Salesforce Lightning. Custom development testing ensures these customizations are robust and meet the intended goals. This includes:

a) Functional Testing:

• Verifying Custom Features:
  • Ensures custom features and components within third-party apps work correctly with Lightning components and pages.
  • Involves checking that all functionalities, such as data entry, workflows, user interfaces, and business processes, perform as expected.
• Interaction Checks:
  • Ensures that each feature interacts correctly with other components.
  • Verifies that all features meet the defined requirements for seamless operations.

b) Non-Functional Testing

• Performance Assessment:
  • Evaluates the app’s speed, responsiveness, and stability under various conditions.
  • Ensures the app performs well under expected load and stress conditions.
• Security Testing:
  • Ensures the app is protected against vulnerabilities and unauthorized access.
  • Checks for proper implementation of security measures to safeguard data.
• Usability Testing:
  • Focuses on the user experience thereupon ensuring the app is intuitive and user-friendly.
  • Ensures the app meets the users’ needs subsequently providing a satisfactory experience.

c) Unit Testing

• Isolating Components:
  • Developers write unit tests for custom Apex code and Lightning components.
  • Involves isolating individual components or pieces of code to verify they work as intended.
• Early Bug Detection:
  • Helps identify and fix bugs at an early stage, reducing the risk of issues in later stages of development.
  • Ensures that each unit of code performs correctly and integrates smoothly with other parts of the application.

Integration Testing

Third-party apps often need to integrate seamlessly with Salesforce and other enterprise systems. Integration testing ensures these interactions are smooth and reliable, validating that data exchanges and processes function correctly across different systems and platforms. This is crucial for maintaining data integrity, operational efficiency, and user satisfaction.

a) API Testing

• Validating Data Exchange:
  • Ensures data exchanges between Salesforce Lightning and third-party applications are correctly handled.
  • Involves checking API calls for correct formatting and ensuring endpoints are reachable.
  • Ensures data is accurately transmitted and received between systems.
• Security Measures:
  • Validates proper authentication and authorization mechanisms to protect sensitive information.
  • Ensures that only authorized users and systems can access the APIs.
• Error Handling:
  • Tests how APIs handle errors in data exchange.
  • Ensures that any issues are appropriately managed and reported.
  • Involves checking for proper error messages and logging mechanisms.

b) End-to-End Testing

• Workflow Validation:
  • Ensures data flows correctly through the entire process, from the third-party app to Salesforce Lightning and back.
  • Simulates real-world scenarios to validate the entire workflow, including data entry, processing, and output.
• Data Accuracy:
  • Verifies that data is accurately updated, synchronized, and displayed in both the third-party app and Salesforce.
  • Checks that data remains consistent across all systems involved.
• Identifying Integration Issues:
  • Helps identify any integration issues that could disrupt business processes or lead to data inconsistencies.
  • Ensures that all parts of the system work together as expected.

c) Error Handling

• Managing Integration Errors:
  • Ensures the system can detect, log, and manage errors that occur during data exchange or process execution.
  • Focuses on the system’s ability to recover from errors without significant impact on functionality or user experience.
• Providing Feedback:
  • Ensures clear and actionable error messages are provided to users and administrators.
  • Helps users and administrators quickly identify and resolve issues.
• Resilience Testing:
  • Tests scenarios where integrations might fail, such as network disruptions or incorrect data formats.
  • Ensures the system’s resilience and reliability in handling such failures.

Release Testing

Salesforce regularly updates its platform, which can impact integrated third-party apps. Release testing ensures these updates do not disrupt existing functionalities, maintaining the stability and performance of the system. It involves various testing strategies to validate that new updates or patches introduced by Salesforce are compatible with the existing configurations and customizations of third-party apps.

a) Regression Testing:

• Regression testing involves running a comprehensive suite of tests that cover all major functionalities of the third-party app. This suite is designed to catch any regressions or bugs introduced by the latest Salesforce updates.
• Automated regression tests are particularly useful because they can be executed quickly and repeatedly, providing fast feedback on the stability of the application after updates.
• The goal is to ensure that previously fixed bugs remain fixed and that new changes do not introduce new issues, maintaining the overall quality and reliability of the application.

b) User Acceptance Testing (UAT):

• UAT typically involves key stakeholders, such as business analysts, product owners, and end-users, who are responsible for validating that the new features align with business requirements and expectations.
• The sandbox environment used for UAT mimics the production environment closely, allowing users to test new functionalities without affecting live data.
• UAT sessions may involve detailed test scenarios, checklists, and feedback forms to systematically assess the new features and identify any areas that need improvement before the final release.

c) Compatibility Testing:

• Compatibility testing is crucial for ensuring that the third-party app remains functional and user-friendly across a wide range of devices and browsers, which is especially important in environments with diverse user bases.
• This testing includes checking the app’s performance on various versions of major browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, as well as different operating systems such as Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.
• It also involves responsive testing to ensure that the app adapts well to different screen sizes and resolutions, providing an optimal user experience on desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

 

Testing Salesforce Lightning-based third-party apps involves various methods, each targeting different platform aspects:

Native Salesforce Testing

Native Salesforce testing leverages built-in Salesforce tools to test third-party apps, ensuring they integrate seamlessly with the Salesforce ecosystem and adhere to platform standards. These tools provide robust capabilities for both developers and testers to create, execute, and manage tests efficiently.

• Developer Console:

  • The Developer Console is a powerful integrated development environment (IDE) provided by Salesforce that allows developers to write, debug, and execute code directly within the Salesforce platform.
  • It supports writing and running Apex tests, querying Salesforce data using SOQL, and analyzing application logs.
  • Developers can quickly test new code snippets, validate changes, and troubleshoot issues in real-time, enhancing productivity and ensuring code quality.
  • The console includes features like syntax highlighting, auto-completion, and real-time error checking, which help streamline the development and testing process.

• Apex Test Execution:

  • Apex Test Execution is a built-in framework within Salesforce that facilitates the creation and execution of unit tests for Apex code and Lightning components.
  • Developers can define test classes and methods that validate the functionality of their code, ensuring it meets the required business logic and performance standards.
  • The framework supports bulk testing, allowing multiple tests to run simultaneously and helps identify issues quickly and efficiently.
  • Apex Test Execution provides detailed test results, including code coverage reports, which highlight the percentage of code tested and areas that require additional testing.
  • It also supports the creation of mock data and test isolation, ensuring that tests do not interfere with production data and each test runs independently.

• Trails and Trailmixes:

  • Trails and Trailmixes are guided learning paths provided by Salesforce through its Trailhead platform. They offer structured modules and tutorials to help users understand and implement testing best practices within Salesforce.
  • These learning paths cover a wide range of topics, including Apex testing, Lightning component testing, and integration testing, providing comprehensive knowledge to both novice and experienced developers.
  • Trails offer hands-on challenges and quizzes that reinforce learning, allowing users to apply their knowledge in real-world scenarios and gain practical experience.
  • Trailmixes can be customized to include specific modules relevant to an organization’s needs, ensuring that team members focus on the most pertinent areas for their projects.
  • By following these guided paths, developers and testers can stay up-to-date with the latest testing methodologies and tools, enhancing their skills and ensuring high-quality application development.

Manual Testing

Manual testing involves human testers setting up, executing, and analyzing tests for third-party apps within the Salesforce ecosystem. This approach relies on the expertise and judgment of testers to ensure the applications function correctly and meet business requirements.

• Versatility:

  • Testers have the flexibility to design and execute a wide range of tests, including functional, system, and regression tests, tailored to the specific requirements of the third-party app.
  • Functional testing ensures that each feature of the app works as intended by simulating user actions and validating outcomes against expected results.
  • System testing evaluates the entire application as a whole, ensuring that all components and integrations work together seamlessly within the Salesforce environment.
  • Regression testing involves re-running previously conducted tests to ensure that recent changes or updates have not adversely affected existing functionality.
  • Manual testing allows for detailed and nuanced examination of application behavior, especially for complex and dynamic user interactions that may be difficult to automate.

• Real-World Scenarios:

  • Manual testing is highly effective for exploratory testing and validating user interfaces, as testers can interact with the application in ways that closely mimic real user behavior.
  • Testers can create and execute test cases based on real-world scenarios, such as typical user workflows, to ensure the app performs well under realistic conditions.
  • This approach helps identify usability issues and ensure that the user experience is intuitive and meets user expectations.
  • Testers can adapt their testing strategies on-the-fly based on observed behavior, uncovering unexpected issues and edge cases that automated tests might miss.

• Limitations:

  • Manual testing is time-consuming, requiring significant effort and resources to thoroughly test all aspects of an application.
  • It is prone to human error, as testers may overlook certain scenarios or make mistakes in executing test cases.
  • Manual testing is not easily scalable, particularly for large applications with extensive functionality, as it requires a substantial amount of manual effort to achieve comprehensive coverage.
  • The repetitiveness of manual testing tasks can lead to tester fatigue, potentially resulting in decreased effectiveness and missed defects.

Exploratory Testing

Exploratory testing is a creative and investigative manual testing approach that emphasizes learning, discovery, and adaptability.

• Scenario-Based:

  • In exploratory testing, testers explore the third-party app without predefined scripts, using their knowledge and intuition to navigate the application.
  • This approach allows testers to uncover edge cases and unexpected behaviors by experimenting with different actions and inputs.
  • Testers can identify issues that may not be covered by scripted tests, providing a broader and deeper understanding of the application’s behavior.
  • Exploratory testing is particularly useful for identifying usability issues and ensuring the application is user-friendly and intuitive.

• Flexibility:

  • Exploratory testing offers a high degree of flexibility, as testers can adjust their strategies based on the application’s responses and their observations.
  • Testers can follow new paths and investigate potential issues as they arise, allowing for a more thorough and dynamic testing process.
  • This flexibility enables testers to cover a wide range of scenarios and use cases, providing a comprehensive assessment of the application’s quality.
  • Exploratory testing encourages creativity and critical thinking, helping testers identify novel and innovative ways to challenge the application.

• Challenges:

  • Exploratory testing requires skilled testers with deep knowledge of both Salesforce and the third-party app, as well as the ability to think critically and adapt quickly.
  • It can be difficult to track and document the testing process and results, as the approach is less structured than scripted testing.
  • Ensuring thorough coverage and consistency in exploratory testing can be challenging, as it relies heavily on the tester’s expertise and judgment.
  • Despite these challenges, exploratory testing provides valuable insights and helps identify issues that might be missed by more structured testing approaches.

Automated Testing

Automated testing is crucial for efficient and reliable third-party app testing, leveraging software tools to execute tests and verify outcomes automatically.

• Scalability:

  • Automated tests can be run repeatedly across different environments and scenarios, saving time and effort compared to manual testing.
  • They provide consistent and repeatable results, reducing the risk of human error and ensuring that tests are executed in the same way every time.
  • Automated testing can handle large volumes of tests quickly, making it ideal for regression testing and ensuring that existing functionality is not affected by new changes.
  • The scalability of automated testing allows for comprehensive test coverage, helping to identify issues early and improve the overall quality of the application.

• Tools:

  • Various tools, such as Selenium and Provar, can automate testing tasks, providing a wide range of capabilities for different testing needs.
  • Selenium is a popular open-source tool that supports web application testing across different browsers and platforms, offering robust scripting and customization options.
  • Provar is a Salesforce-specific testing tool that provides end-to-end test automation, integrating seamlessly with Salesforce and supporting both Classic and Lightning interfaces.
  • Some tools leverages AI-driven capabilities, such as self-healing tests and intelligent data analysis, to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of automated testing.
  • These tools help streamline the testing process, reduce manual effort, and ensure high-quality applications by catching issues early in the development cycle.

• Continuous Integration:

  • Automated tests can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines, providing rapid feedback and early detection of issues during the development process.
  • Continuous Integration ensures that code changes are automatically tested as soon as they are committed, helping to identify and fix defects quickly.
  • Automated tests can be scheduled to run at regular intervals or triggered by specific events, ensuring continuous quality assurance and reducing the risk of defects reaching production.
  • By integrating automated testing into the CI/CD pipeline, organizations can achieve faster release cycles, improve collaboration between development and testing teams, and maintain high-quality standards for their applications.

 

Testing occurs at multiple levels to ensure comprehensive coverage and the highest quality of third-party applications integrated with Salesforce Lightning.

Unit Testing

• Developer Focused:

  • Unit testing is primarily conducted by developers, focusing on individual units of code, such as functions, methods, or classes written in Apex and Lightning.
  • It involves writing specific test cases to verify that each unit of the code performs as expected in isolation.
  • This level of testing requires a deep understanding of the codebase and the logic implemented within each unit.

• Granular Testing:

  • Ensures that each small piece of code and component functions correctly. Perform detailed and precise verification of the application’s behavior.
  • Granular testing helps identify and fix issues at the earliest stage of development, reducing the risk of defects in later stages.
  • It involves testing various scenarios, including edge cases, to ensure the robustness and reliability of individual components.

• Early Detection:

  • Helps catch issues early in the development process  It allow developers to address defects before they escalate and affect other parts of the application.
  • Early detection of bugs and issues saves time and resources by preventing costly fixes and rework later in the development cycle.
  • Continuous integration of unit tests in the development workflow ensures immediate feedback on code changes, promoting code quality and stability.

System Testing

• End-to-End Testing:

  • Performed by business experts to validate the complete system’s functionality, ensuring that all integrated components work together seamlessly within Salesforce Lightning.
  • This level of testing simulates real-world business processes and user interactions, providing a holistic view of the system’s performance and reliability.
  • End-to-end testing verifies that data flows correctly through the entire system, from the third-party app to Salesforce Lightning and vice versa.

• Functional Coverage:

  • Ensures all system components, including the third-party app, work together as intended, validating the integration points and data exchanges.
  • Comprehensive functional testing covers all critical business functions, user workflows, and system interactions to ensure the application meets business requirements.
  • Functional coverage includes testing for usability, accessibility, and compatibility across different devices and browsers.

• Use Cases:

  • Designed based on real-world business processes and scenarios, ensuring that the application performs well under practical conditions and meets user expectations.
  • Testers create detailed use case scenarios to validate the application’s behavior in various business contexts as a result covering both common and exceptional workflows.
  • Real-world use cases help identify potential issues that may not be apparent in isolated unit tests, ensuring the application is ready for deployment.

User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

• End-User Focused:

  • Involves actual users testing the third-party app so that it meets their needs and expectations within Salesforce Lightning.
  • UAT provides valuable feedback from end-users, who interact with the application in ways that developers and testers may not anticipate.
  • Engaging end-users in the testing process as a result helps ensure the application is user-friendly and meets business requirements.

• Scenario-Based:

  • Users create real-world scenarios to validate the app’s functionality, usability, and performance for the purpose of providing a thorough assessment of its readiness for production.
  • Scenario-based testing covers various user workflows, tasks, and interactions hence ensuring the application performs well under practical usage conditions.
  • This approach helps identify usability issues, inconsistencies, and potential improvements, enhancing the overall user experience.

• Final Validation:

  • Provides confidence that the app is ready for production use, ensuring it meets all business and user requirements before going live.
  • UAT serves as the final checkpoint to validate the application’s quality, performance, and reliability, reducing the risk of issues in production.
  • Successful UAT ensures a smooth transition to production, minimizing disruptions and ensuring user satisfaction.

Production Testing

• Live Environment:

  • Testing conducted in the production environment to ensure smooth transitions and verify the application’s performance in real-world conditions.
  • Production testing includes smoke testing, which involves running basic tests to ensure the critical functions of the application are working correctly after deployment.
  • It helps identify environment-specific issues, such as configuration errors, that may not be apparent in testing environments.

• Configuration Checks:

  • Verifies that code and configurations are correctly deployed from sandbox to production specifically ensuring consistency and reliability.
  • Configuration checks include validating environment settings, data migrations, and integration points to ensure the application functions as expected.
  • Proper configuration management is essential to prevent deployment issues in order to ensure the application is fully functional in the live environment.

• Critical for Go-Live:

  • Ensures the app is fully functional before it goes live to end-users subsequently minimizing the risk of critical issues and ensuring a successful launch.
  • Production testing provides the final validation of the application’s readiness henceforth confirming that all components work together seamlessly in the live environment.
  • It helps ensure a smooth go-live process, reducing the risk of disruptions and enhancing user satisfaction.

Regression Testing

• Impact Analysis:

  • Evaluates the impact of new code or updates on existing functionalities of the third-party app within Salesforce Lightning subsequently ensuring that changes do not introduce new issues.
  • Impact analysis involves identifying and prioritizing areas of the application that may be affected by recent changes explicitly focusing testing efforts on those areas.
  • This approach helps ensure that new features and updates do not negatively affect the stability and performance of the application.

• Continuous Testing:

  • Often automated, running regularly to catch issues introduced by new releases or fixes meanwhile ensuring ongoing quality and stability.
  • Continuous testing integrates automated tests into the development pipeline generally providing immediate feedback on code changes and reducing the risk of defects.
  • It helps maintain high standards of quality and reliability while enabling faster release cycles and continuous delivery.

• Comprehensive Coverage:

  • Ensures that existing features continue to work as expected after changes eventually providing thorough and ongoing validation of the application’s functionality.
  • Comprehensive regression testing covers all critical areas of the application, including integrations, user interfaces, and business processes.
  • This level of testing helps maintain the integrity and reliability of the application, ensuring a consistent user experience.

By understanding and implementing these various aspects and levels of Salesforce Lightning-based third-party app testing, organizations can ensure a reliable, robust, and high-performing integration that meets their business needs and enhances user satisfaction.