Selenium is an open-source project with a range of tools and libraries to support web-browser test automation. Salesforce is a commercial customer relationship management (CRM) service tool for enterprise applications focused on customer service, marketing automation, analytics, and application development. Salesforce supports the APEX programing language with built-in unit test cases for developers to test their code. The standard rule of Salesforce testing requires that a developer achieve 75% of code coverage through unit test cases. However, you should also do automated system and end-to-end tests to make sure your whole integration is working. This article highlights some important points while thinking about selenium as a test automation tool for salesforce testing.
Key Features that Selenium offers for Automated Testing
- Selenium helps create automated tests for web applications.
- Selenium IDE provides a playback and record feature for creating tests without the knowledge of any scripting language.
- Selenium tests can be executed across different browsers, operating systems, and programming languages.
- Selenium testing supports parallel test execution that shortens the length of test execution.
- A lot of types of testing like system testing, end-to-end testing, regression testing, and integration testing are supported by Selenium for simple web application architectures.
Important Facts that Salesforce Testing Should Consider
- As Salesforce is a complex application, its testing must include UI testing, functional testing, regression testing, integration testing, and system testing.
- Salesforce testing should involve the verification of various functional flows, including positive and negative edge cases using multiple user roles.
- The QA team must consider the dynamic nature of visual force pages while doing Salesforce testing as all the elements on the page may not be loaded at once.
- All classic tests should be created and tested using Salesforce’s Lightning Web Component lightweight framework
- All automated tests should be executed through a reliable automated testing tool to verify all business processes are working with 3rd party providers.
Can we Automate Salesforce Using Selenium?
Selenium is one of the most popular web-testing tools. First of all, it’s free and open-source, and therefore an obvious choice for companies who want the productivity benefits that automated testing brings. Second, Selenium allows you to execute tests in various browsers and automate various web application process flows. So, when we think about the available automation framework to automate salesforce, a Selenium can be a choice. However, if you are thinking about opting for Selenium for Salesforce testing, you must inform yourself about the limitations you can face. Since Salesforce runs in the browser, Selenium can be an obvious and first choice that comes into mind. As many realize, however, Selenium requires coding, and therefore, it’s not always the best choice for teams with limited or no coding capabilities. Even those with excellent coders in the team will also face hard challenges to automated salesforce using selenium. Here are some challenges that you have to fight if using Selenium.
1. Handling of iframes
Salesforce has a complex structure with many iframes. As a result, it’s not easy for Selenium to interact with the web elements present inside iframes. Sometimes, there are nested and hidden iframes which makes the situation even more complex. The issue is that actions that need to be performed outside the current iframe require explicit instructions to Selenium to come out from the iframe and then perform an action. Sometimes, even a simple test case takes lots of time to automate due to this complexity and results in flaky scripts.
2. Dynamic Content Handling
Salesforce has dynamic elements that don’t have predefined static IDs, names, classes, and CSS attributes. Your test can’t use these dynamic CSS attributes as it is. This will pass the test only once, but on the next run, it will fail due to the dynamic generation of attributes. Thus, hard coding of element locators like typical other web applications cannot be used in salesforce using selenium. Minor changes to the UI break the tests and take much time to bring them to a stable state. Moreover, while loading the element, Selenium can have trouble interacting with the page, and the team has to ensure they add explicit waits.
3. Data Handling in Tables
Salesforce applications arrange data in different tables. The rows in these tables are generated dynamically and are controlled by separate tabs. In this case, simple actions like ticking the checkbox become complex using Selenium and lead to flaky tests. Selecting the active tab becomes challenging, and built-in Selenium functions like the driver. switchToWindow(), sendKeys(), and click() may not work reliably.
4. Other Challenges
Some other Selenium challenges include interaction with elements present in Shadow-DOM and some pop-up windows. Selenium does not offer direct support for such elements, but it needs explicit coding using Javascript. There are many ways to solve the salesforce testing challenges using selenium. But, this requires a lot of coding expertise and time to handle. Writing robust scripts to overcome these challenges in salesforce using selenium is very tiring.
If Selenium is not a good fit for Salesforce, then what is the alternative?
Whatever tool you choose to use for Selenium testing, the important thing is to understand its capabilities and drawbacks. For instance, a user-friendly, AI-powered, code-free tool like Functionize can be a great choice for Automated testing of Salesforce. It’s easy to set up compared to code-based Selenium and is suited for varying skill sets. The cloud-based, rock-solid tests use a self-healing AI to cope with dynamic content. It also copes pretty seamlessly with nested iframes. Just remember: whichever tool you choose, be it Selenium, Functionalize, or something else, you will be helping deliver more reliable Salesforce integrations to the business.
