Importance of UAT for Salesforce Testing

According to Gartner Research, there is consensus among a majority of businesses that their future successes will be determined by customer experience alone. This calls for Salesforce Implementation for it facilitates building of better business ecosystems through tools such as Force.com testing and UAT. UAT or User Acceptance Testing validates a solution – in the form of an integrated software, hardware or firmware - by the end users. Also known as end user testing, operational acceptance testing, field user testing or simply beta testing, UAT involves testing of the ‘system’ also known as Salesforce, by actual users / customers / clients. This is done in real life scenarios to ensure that the Salesforce performs to its optimum as per specifications that were agreed upon between the developer and the client.

Stages of Salesforce Implementation

Any software product or system once in the developmental phase goes through a number of testing stages before being finally handed over to the client or general users. These stages are as follows:

Unit wise testing: Carried out at each of the developmental stages, this process checks if each unit or bunch of codes performs as expected.

Integration testing: Here individual units are functionally integrated to check if the interface between them works properly.

System or Alpha testing: This is the final in house testing by developers to ensure all integrated units of the system function as per the desired outcome.

Once the above tests are accomplished, the final stage of Salesforce Implementation i.e., User Acceptance Testing or Salesforce testing gets underway. This process involves a number of steps as well.

Planning: The client or users should list out a plan that covers each functional area of the Salesforce. This should incorporate timelines for testing, error fixing and final sign off.

Selection of test users: Salesforce UAT should identify users who would carry out actual testing in a real test environment. The users should be of different profiles representing different functional areas of the system. The testing should document each flagged issue by multiple users, preferably in a shared spreadsheet.

Who sees what scenario: The Salesforce will have different functional areas that are user specific, so UAT should ensure that a user specific to a particular functional area of the system should not have access to other areas. This is to ensure security and built in integrity of the Salesforce.

Structured / Unstructured testing: Structured testing follows a defined set of steps with predefined outcomes. Unstructured, on the other way is left to the discretion of users to go about testing to achieve a set objective. Importantly, UAT involves testing business processes and not the technology used in developing the Salesforce.

Final Sign Off: This shows the testing is completed to the users’ or clients’ satisfaction. After this phase, the system is finally ready to be used by the client / user.

The importance of UAT for Salesforce testing can be attributed to the following reasons:

• Systems undergoing UAT display a higher adoption rate in organisations as users get hands on knowledge and feel of systems and their functionalities.
• As system glitches are ironed out during UAT, the final product comes out error free.
• The Salesforce is customised to fit into business processes rather than the other way around thus ensuring cost savings.

Michael works for Cigniti Technologies, which is the world's first Independent Software Testing Company to be appraised at CMMI-SVC Level 5, and an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified organization.