Test Automation - CRM System with OpKey | Details and Advantages

Traditional Mindset

Thorough testing is crucial to the success of a software product. If your software doesn’t work properly, chances are strong that most people won’t buy or use it…at least not for long. But testing to find defects – or bugs – is time-consuming, expensive, often repetitive, and subject to human error. Automated testing, in which Quality Assurance teams use software tools to run detailed, repetitive, and data-intensive tests automatically, helps teams improve software quality and make the most of their always-limited testing resources. Shifting approach from Manual (traditional) to Automation was never easy. It's not only the change of approach or change of capabilities, it is change of mindset. The core issue with automation industry is, people are not ready to invest time saying they are busy doing their daily routine work.

This very thing is becoming an impediment in changing the approach and mind set towards adopting automation. The cycle looks like –

 Test Automation

In software testing, test automation is the use of special software (separate from the Software being tested) to control the execution of tests and the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes

…….IEEE-Std.

 According to me, automation testing is not about hiring a robot to click some buttons, add input text or even navigate through the application web pages. Automation testing aims at saving time and getting revenue by writing effective testing scripts that can be used in regression testing and to avoid testing repetition when client’s change requests come out at any stage of development.

 Advantages of test automation

Fast

As it’s a software which is doing testing (test execution) it is very fast and allows potential glitches to be immediately rectified. Automated testing assures higher efficiency of the development team

Accurate

If the scripts are written correctly, used proper logic then automation tool will always provide appropriate and accurate result every time

Reliability

Automated testing is more reliable and way quicker when running boring repetitive standardized tests which cannot be skipped, ever, but may cause errors when manually tested

Reusable

We can re-use of tests and components (methods, functions etc...) on different versions of AUT. Like – Sanity testing (multiple times on every build), Regression testing

Repeatable

Executing same test with multiple set of test data. Helps is covering all positive and negative scenarios, which eventually enhances the test coverage. Like – Data Driven Testing

Programmable

Can apply programming logic and use programming feature (Insert verification point, variables, operators, loop, conditions, functions etc...) Use programming logic to cover loads of test condition and scenarios to execute. As human tester cannot concentrate on multiple verification points, while tool can use as many as verification point and hence the scope of testing become very high with test automation

Comprehensive

Automation tools supports batch testing, executing series of test without any human user interaction. Thus one can run end to end test cases every time and anytime

Running tests 24/7

No matter where you are in the world. You can start the tests when you leave the office and when you get back in the morning you can see the results and keep on working. You can even do that remotely if you don’t have a lot of devices or you don’t have the possibility to buy them

ROI

The big initial investment. This may be a hold back for many, but it is proven that the return of that investment is a long-term one and it will also save time.

 Why Automation – for CRM Systems                        

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are at the core of most customer-oriented business. A buggy or improperly implemented feature in your CRM application can have direct impact on how you understand your customers and hurt your revenue. Conversely, a well-implemented CRM can help you gain customer insight and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

 CRMs also contain a lot of sensitive data about your company and your customers. Any CRM testing program should ensure that the data is accurate and secure during storage and retrieval. Test Automation plays vital role in the CRM testing to be robust and full of integrity.

 Automation – Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a very robust and customizable system. It is usual for individual users to customize it to suit their needs, functions and usage sometimes at the code level. Microsoft releases new updates every six months with code fixes, functional and performance upgrades, and sometimes it is possible that these upgrades can break those customizations. In addition, applying new customizations can possibly break older ones as well.

Hence, it becomes imperative that the existing system does not break while applying new upgrades or customization, which would severely affect business continuity; leading to revenue and reputation loss, including employee confidence and morale. And this is where the Power of Automation testing comes under picture –

Benefits of Automation – Microsoft Dynamics CRM

The biggest business perks of automated testing for Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment are:

Improved code quality

Ensuring the code base is testable results in code designed to follow the single responsibility principle. Additionally, automated tests make developers think about and test for how code can fail and therefore makes the code more robust.

Decreased testing time

Automated tests can be execute by a computer many times faster than a human can perform the same test manually, freeing up testing team’s time and increasing the available time for creating better test scripts, exploratory testing and ad-hoc testing.

Gives developers confidence to introduce changes without breaking the system

Automated tests can run regularly and without a human tester. This means that tests executed after changes to a Microsoft Dynamics CRM application that is under development will indicate if the change has introduced a bug to existing functionality. If all the tests pass, then the developer can be confident that their changes have not broken existing functionality.

Makes Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow code easy to debug

The testing and debugging of custom workflow activities are painful and time consuming on Microsoft Dynamics CRM projects. Having a suite of tests that test custom workflow activity code is the easiest way to measure the quality of custom workflow activity code compared to manually testing it every specified time interval

 Best Practice of Automation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

There are number of automation tools present in market that can be used for CRM automation, but one of the best tool I came across is - OpKey.

OpKey is a tool agnostic test automation platform which provides a complete end to end functional test automation solution. It provides power full test automation solution for web platform integrations with selenium, it has got many useful features like in built object management, test data management, recorder, and integrations with CI, ALM tools. The latest in OpKey is its Cloud Platform which provides you a solution to run your automation suite on more than 100 OS browser combinations in parallel, which helps you save both time and cost on test automation. OpKey is not an automation tool in itself. It integrates with the existing automation tools available and provides a complete end to end test automation solution.

 OpKey in your present test process

Automated testing of Dynamics CRM applications is a big challenge for traditional test automation tools. It not only requires a sophisticated understanding of the technology but also having a lot of coding experience. OpKey works in a completely different way. Test automation cases in OpKey are built as visual flowcharts by connecting easy-to-use building blocks in the visual designer tool.

As OpKey is well developed GUI based tool, it is easy to integrate OpKey with existing test process and starting test automation at any stage of Project development.

§ Daily Sanity Updates

§ BAT testing of Application on any build (anytime)

§ Consistency checking easily

§ Regression anytime

§ Run test Cases different set of data (Data Driven)

§ Batch testing, running multiple test cases at single execution list.

 Conclusion

Test Automation is for sure a step towards quality which brings a confidence in testing as well as development activities. A smart use of automation tool mainly for regression testing helps any team getting rid from the fear of arriving defects in existing capabilities of AUT.

Automatic Testing is not going to overpower or replace the manual testing as a very famous quote says "A fool with tool is still a fool". So a perfect testing team should have to have skilled and passionate functional tester, but test automation is indeed an important move to enhance the ability of utilizing available resources and time for testing purpose

Happy Picture :)

Eventually, after adopting test automation a testing team will have wheel to move in greater speed than the earlier with lesser effort and smart intelligence by focusing on other skilled testing like exploratory and error guessing...

Thank You!