How to do Salesforce regression testing

Salesforce regression testing is critical for maintaining the stability and reliability of Salesforce environments, particularly when you consider the frequency of changes and customizations applied to them. In this article, we’ll look at a structured approach to Salesforce regression testing, including key steps, best practices, techniques and considerations to streamline the process.

What is regression testing?

Regression testing is a crucial safety net in the development cycle. Think of it as a form of "insurance testing." Its primary role is to make sure that recent changes — whether they’re bug fixes, enhancements, or brand-new features — haven’t disrupted the existing functionality. Regression testing is often performed after significant changes have been made, ensuring that the latest tweaks haven’t introduced any new bugs or caused existing features to misbehave.

There are multiple types of regression testing, each with its own use cases. Here are a few examples:

• Complete regression testing: Revalidates the entire application to ensure no new changes have impacted any existing functionality.
• Selective regression testing: Tests only the impacted areas of the application, along with specific related modules, to verify no unintended side effects.
• Partial regression testing: Focuses on testing the changed code sections and any dependent modules without revalidating the entire application.
• Unit regression testing: Tests individual units or components in isolation after changes, ensuring that the unit functions correctly on its own.
• Progressive regression testing: Ensures newly added code integrates well with the existing codebase, especially when features are continuously developed.
• Corrective regression testing: Confirms that recent bug fixes do not create new issues or affect the stability of surrounding functionalities.

There are many tools and techniques available to carry out regression testing, but before we get on to that, let’s talk strategy first – as we should for all things DevOps.

Define a clear regression testing strategy

Approaching Salesforce regression testing with a structured plan is essential for ensuring system stability and performance. The first step in creating a robust regression testing process is defining a clear strategy that outlines the scope, objectives, and tools needed. It’s not necessary to test every part of the system each time, so prioritize high-impact and high-risk areas to help streamline the testing process.

Setting objectives — such as maintaining key business workflows and ensuring data integrity across environments — keeps the team focused on outcomes. Using specialized Salesforce DevOps platforms to simplify testing, deployments, and monitoring of your systems can form a fundamental part of your development lifecycle.

Use automation for repetitive testing

Automating repetitive testing is a key element of an efficient regression testing process. A busy Salesforce quality assurance professional doesn’t have time for manual testing. Automating your regression testing contributes to the rapid and agile development lifecycle we’ve come to expect for Salesforce, through enabling more frequent releases and faster deployments.

By building automated test suites that target critical workflows and essential business processes, teams can save time and improve testing accuracy. Automated testing, especially with Apex for backend validations and automated UI testing tools for front-end tests, can be set to run on every deployment to ensure the thorough verification of each change.

Integrating these tests into the CI/CD pipeline means every deployment is checked rigorously before it reaches production. Scheduling regular regression tests, particularly before major releases or complex changes, further aids in identifying potential issues early – a major advantage over manual regression testing. Not only that, but when you automate regression testing, you mitigate the risk of human errors creeping in.

Comprehensive coverage through multiple test types

A comprehensive approach to regression testing should include multiple types of testing for holistic coverage. Salesforce-specific functionality can be validated through unit testing, which helps confirm that individual components behave as expected. Integration testing is equally critical, as it ensures seamless connections between Salesforce and external applications, covering API interactions and data synchronization across platforms. UI testing verifies a consistent user experience across screens and browsers, while end-to-end testing of full workflows helps ensure that Salesforce changes are functional and reliable across different departments and integrated systems.

Data integrity and environment setup

Data integrity and environment setup are also crucial for reliable regression testing results. Using high-fidelity and realistic test data enables you to verify scenarios that are essential for simulating actual workflows. The accuracy of this data allows for more effective error detection early on. However, it’s essential to use data masking for any sensitive data in non-production environments in order to comply with data privacy regulations. Maintaining parity between staging or test environments and production further reduces the risk of false positives and missed issues.

Monitor and track changes rigorously

Vigilant change monitoring and version control are necessary to keep the regression testing process efficient and reliable. Using robust version control to track changes across environments enables teams to easily revert problematic deployments back to their previous state. Ideally, this should be coupled with automated monitoring tools that log metadata and data changes across environments. Effective change monitoring allows a team to catch configuration issues early and maintain alignment with the source of truth, helping prevent unintended consequences post-deployment.

Ticketing systems such as Jira offer transparency by logging each change, tracking test cases, and capturing issues in detailed documentation, which helps teams coordinate effectively across environments.

Optimize feedback and collaboration

We’ve said it before and we’re going to say it again – 80% of successful DevOps is people and processes, particularly around feedback and collaboration. Incorporating both these aspects is essential throughout the regression testing process, especially with the shift-left approach that incorporates testing from the earliest stages of your design and development process. Involving all stakeholders — developers, QA, and business users — ensures that everyone has input on the regression test cases relevant to recent changes. Rapid feedback loops, facilitated by real-time alerts, enables teams to address any detected issues quickly, minimizing deployment delays.

Frequent updates to regression test suites are also vital, as these should evolve alongside Salesforce environments to remain relevant and cover new functionalities or updates.

Consider Salesforce-specific challenges

Finally, think about how Salesforce’s unique architecture introduces specific considerations for regression testing. As we know, Salesforce environments rely heavily on metadata, which can make configuration tracking challenging. Tools specifically designed for metadata monitoring can be indispensable for identifying configuration changes and discrepancies early.

Compliance and security are also key concerns in regulated environments, requiring tests to validate security controls, access permissions, and adherence to industry standards. Regression testing should incorporate checks for these compliance elements to prevent unintentional security lapses.

Additionally, robust recovery processes, including rollbacks and backups, are necessary to handle failed deployments efficiently, ensuring that changes can be quickly reversed or adjusted.

Tools for Salesforce regression testing

Finally we can get into discussing tools for regression testing, as by now you should have a solid understanding of strategy and planning. It may come as no surprise that Salesforce itself is the primary tool for testing Salesforce – much of the work will come in the form of Apex unit tests. These can be grouped into test suites, to provide a clear, repeatable, and maintainable set of tests that allow you to carry out “before and after” testing and see the impact of your changes. These will form the heart of your automated testing strategy, perhaps in your CI/CD pipelines.

The testing doesn’t stop here, of course! To test your Lightning Web Components, for example, we’d turn to Jest, and for UI testing, many tools are available that can integrate well into your pipelines, such as Provar, Selenium, Tricentis and more.

Summary

Testing in Salesforce is about so much more than just ensuring test coverage. By following these steps to Salesforce regression testing — encompassing strategy, test automation, thorough testing, data integrity, monitoring, collaboration, and security — teams can implement a robust testing process that ensures the reliability and stability of their Salesforce deployments. This approach reduces risk, increases efficiency, and gives DevOps teams the confidence they need in every single deployment.

Ready to learn more and grow your testing automation skills? “Test” your skills with our Testing and Test Automation course here on DevOps Launchpad, and earn a certification along the way!