Opkey vs. Selenium: Test Automation for Salesforce
October 3, 2022
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by
Sohaib Zaidi
While Salesforce was originally developed as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, today, hundreds of thousands of enterprises use Salesforce to manage their daily marketing, sales, and commerce operations.
Salesforce testing is crucial since it ensures that critical business processes like CPQ, Fulfillment, Billing, and more work as intended, especially after seasonal releases & functional improvements are deployed.
Opkey is a no-code test automation platform, launched in 2016. Opkey supports more than a dozen packaged applications, and enables organizations to run complex, end-to-end tests that span across multiple applications and technologies. Opkey’s automation testing platform is robust enough to automate the most complex Salesforce tests, yet simple enough for any non-technical Salesforce user to use. At a high level, Opkey streamlines test automation through:
Instant test discovery: Opkey’s test discovery platform surfaces the legacy tests that have been run in a client’s environment, along with process logs to identify gaps in coverage.
Easy test creation: Opkey’s no-code interface allows any user to create tests to automate Salesforce application testing.
Painless test maintenance: Failed tests are easy to diagnose and fix with self-healing technology. Opkey also provides easily digestible reports on which tests have passed and failed, along with screenshots.
Advantages of Opkey for Salesforce testing:
Tests can be created in minutes, even for small changes in a highly customized Salesforce environment.
Opkey allows tests to be scheduled and executed anytime.
End-to-end testing, across multiple applications and technologies, is supported for SF Lightning/Classic.
Opkey supports integrations with other test tools in the Salesforce AppExchange.
Opkey has intelligent object recognition capabilities that can easily identify Salesforce’s hidden and layered objects.
Launched in 2004, Selenium is the world's most well-known test automation tool. Selenium is a free web application, allowing experienced coders to write test scripts in programming languages like Ruby, Java, NoseJS, PHP, Perl, Python, and C#. Selenium's client libraries allow coders to execute browser automation with scripts written in practically any programming language, and the platform works by coding a series of commands to simulate a user's Salesforce actions in a web browser.
Selenium can be integrated with your CI/CD pipeline to make sure changes to your Salesforce applications do not affect current workflows. Selenium consists of three tools to enable automated testing:
Selenium IDE: A record and playback tool that can be used to create and edit test cases and test suites.
Selenium WebDriver: A programming interface to create test cases using element locators.
Selenium Grid: A parallel testing interface.
Advantages of Selenium for Salesforce testing
It’s free.
It’s open-sourced and allows modifications to its source code.
Multiple programming languages, operating systems, and major browsers are supported.
There is a large community support and a vast network of users.
Watch our video Opkey vs. Selenium for a real-time analysis of running a test script.
Salesforce automated testing comparison: Opkey vs. Selenium
Now that we’ve been introduced to both platforms, we’ll take a closer look at the two platforms side by side. A list of common questions from Salesforce IT and QA managers has been added into the below chart:
Usability and Adoption questions
Using Opkey
Using Selenium WebDriver
What is the cost?
Requires fee for user licenses.
Free
How difficult is installation?
Set up for Opkey takes hours and testing can begin the same day.
Initial installation requires installing and configuring Java, Configure Eclipse, and Selenium Webdriver. Additional plugins and extensions need to be added for screen recording and test creation. This takes roughly a few days to a few weeks, depending on your team’s coding capabilities.
What is the average learning curve?
Users need a few hours of training to create tests.
Users need anywhere from 3-6 months of education in coding language to successfully write sophisticated tests.
What training options are available?
Opkey provides at least 5 hours of client onboarding training. Additionally, many Youtube tutorials are available, as well as on-demand webinars and e-Learning courses.
Many Youtube tutorials and materials can be found online, provided you have the coding knowledge to understand it.
Is there customer support?
Opkey provides 24/7 dedicated online customer support and chat options. Opkey does not have a support community.
Selenium has no dedicated support, but has a flourishing online community of users to share tips and ideas.
Can the software automate tests?
Yes
Yes
Are coding skills required to run tests?
No. This is a no-code platform to create tests using a keyword-based drag-and-drop interface or screen recorder.
Yes. This platform has to be used by programmers who know the below programming languages (C#, Java, Python, PHP). Screen recording is an option, but tests must be modified with the appropriate programming language.
What tests are supported?
Regression testing, continuous testing, end-to-end testing, and
UAT testing.
Regression testing.
What applications are supported?
14+ packaged applications, web applications and browsers, and 150+ technologies across desktop, mainframe, and mobile.
Web applications and browsers.
Can you get insight to the current tests run in Salesforce?
Yes. Opkey's test-mining technology can plug into a client's Salesforce test logs to discover their current testing.
No
Can testing be run via the web?
Yes. Opkey is set up for on-premise use, but can also be used as online SaaS
Yes, Selenium can be used on local machines or by remoting into an off-prem machine. To test cloud-based apps or run parallel tests, additional platforms have to be integrated.
Is test maintenance easy?
Yes. Opkey offers AI-powered smart object recognition and self-healing scripts to detect broken objects or tests and fix them without code.
No. Since tests are heavily coded, you must rework each test that breaks.
Can you re-use tests for Salesforce seasonal updates?
Yes. Opkey's test library provides a repository of previously run tests that can be used again.
No, because no two tests are the same. QA testers run the same tests with different data sets for different users. The Apache POI is needed to extract combinations of Excel data and form a Java-based test each time a test is run.
Can you get risk-reducing QA insight into the impact of Salesforce changes from an update?
Yes. Opkey's change impact analysis shows your "as is" processes and compares them to your "to be" processes after an update.
No
Can you use tools to identify HTML webpage object locators not recognized by the Salesforce object locator?
Yes. Opkey's Intellichoose technology goes beyond Xpath, Name, and ID locator to find object metadata from APIs to recognize object locators, iFrames and Shadow DOMS consistently for every test.
Yes, Selenium supports 7 different object locators, but objects lack fixed attributes. Test scripts need rigorous maintenance for changes to object locators or tests will be unstable. The platform recognizes iFrames and Shadow DOMS.
Can the platform support end-to-end process testing?
Yes
No, unless you add additional third party-tools.
How can I handle reporting and debugging?
* Reporting dashboards are included.
* No reporting structure available.
* Opkey’s self-healing technology can fix broken scripts.
* Programmers have to build their framework with reporting and debugging options.
* Opkey offers integration plugins for the most popular Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools.
As you can see, both Opkey and Selenium offer pros and cons for automating Salesforce testing, depending on what’s most important to your organization. Though we’re slightly biased, we’re confident that Opkey’s solution is the better option because it’s no-code, allowing any Salesforce user to contribute to test automation, and can perform true end-to-end testing from day one.
Sohaib Zaidi
Technical Content Writer
Sohaib is a technology enthusiast and a passionate writer with vast experience in technical niches like IoT, AI, Cloud Computing, ERP, SaaS Software & Business Intelligence. Sohaib loves to create compelling and communicative sales copies that create great impact on the minds of the readers.
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