When questioning the need and importance of Microsoft Dynamics 365 test automation, you probably take into account risk evaluation and ROI analysis. We see that it is often the position of clients maintaining a non-cloud, mature Dynamics 365

application. They are not expecting or predicting any changes and so Dynamics 365 testing scope (and automation) seem too burdensome and of little business value.

With the Microsoft One Version approach and more and more companies moving to the cloud to improve delivery, time to value and application maintenance, testing is a must. More frequent updates and releases, on the one hand, make it possible to tailor the system to specific business and industry needs. On the other hand, when standard solutions are improved with new customizations and modifications, this is very likely to affect existing modifications. If you want to prevent critical business processes to fail, regression testing after each update and upgrade is essential. What you also need to remember is that customized apps also evolve and are continuously developed. It might be due to business needs but also the need to comply with new business requirements. Consider all types of testing (including regression and performance testing for Dynamics 365, UATs, etc.), a natural consequence of your software development lifecycle.

Therefore, Microsoft Dynamics 365 automated testing allows you to adopt any application changes faster and with fewer bugs on the way. As research and our testing experience shows, shortening the application lifecycle should be considered more important than the savings resulting from automated testing.

Test automation tools for Dynamics 365 that are low-code or codeless allow to automate the testing projects. However, the test script creation in most cases is till very time-consuming and hence, does not fit the test automation projects needs. For instance, RPA testing solutions, apart from budget challenges around their start and maintenance, are heavily limited in scalability, they are missing DevOps (TFS/ VSTS) integrations and do not allow test plan execution documentation. And while RSAT addresses the specific needs in terms of test scrip automation, it still lacks a lot of functionalities for

testers such as negative tests, try-catches, loops, optional steps, conditional steps, functions for no-code validations, etc. The challenge lies mainly in finding the tool that allows adequate test script maintenance so that test automation coverage is high. The inability to achieve impacts negatively the test automation project costs.

We have found out that neither a “trigger and action” approach offered by RPA tools nor RSAT are adequate for fully flexible test script modification and maintenance. One of the main aspects that is often overlooked during cost analysis – at the same time one of the main causes for going over planned test automation budget – is test reusability. It should take away the need to create test cases from scratch each and every time any script modifications are needed.

With limited budget, focus on the main testing challenges first. You also need to be able to accurately calculate ROI Consider the difficulty in maintenance and scarce scalability if you want to go for an RPA testing tool for Dynamics 365. For Microsoft Dynamics test automation, choose a tool that enables full reusability and flexible script maintenance and modification and possibly allows integrations. Check out how RSAT and Executive Automats compare in this respect (kotwica do artykułu, który powstaje)

Testing teams are required to perform a wide variety of tests. What is more, different test requirements regarding Microsoft Dynamics 365 testing project call for either manual or automated test cases.

As mentioned in Concern #2 (interlink?), the need to use different solutions for different testing needs often makes the Dynamics 365 testing project unviable from the cost and management perspective.

Different tools require not only testing team members specialization but also create unnecessary bottlenecks and hinders information flows.

Dynamics 365 testing projects teams aim to manage all ERP testing (including integrations) from a single place (80% Azure DevOps). They also expect the tool to be integrated into their common workspace. That is why it makes the most sense to utilize the Microsoft ecosystem, its solutions and tools.

Regardless of what your Dynamics 365 testing plans are – whether you are switching to an automated framework or planning a big test project and need to start from scratch, first define and decide on the planned integration testing scope. You should select solutions, methods and matching tools that will allow for a maximum testing coverage while minimizing the number of tools. For example, although Power Automate is not a tool dedicated to Dynamics 365 testing, it becomes a perfect match for automated testing with other testing tools when it comes to specific interface testing.

For specific testing needs, we suggest to solve them individually (including the hard coding), for others, it might bring more value to find a single Dynamics 365 test automation solution that will cover the maximum number of the testing requirements.

Most existing test automation tools (that are used for regression testing) unfortunately do not support the idea of performance testing. Reasons being either technical or financial. Those tools cannot handle multiple test executions, test scheduling or have platform limitations when it comes to dozens of runs of the same virtual user. However, a real life performance test requires simulating different users with different permissions and roles, thus such test requires different virtual users’ accounts. And so, tools that are licensed per robot instance become an unaffordable option. Apart from that, creating scripts for executing performance test scenarios is very time consuming. Executing testing scripts in order and scheduling mass executions during Dynamics 365 testing might also not be possible in some cases. The multiple virtual users’ accounts need not only to be created but also assigned to different scripts which involves a lot of manual work. And ultimately you expect a tool that will support a number of virtual users – ideally with a single performance test scenario – at a reasonable price.

Look out for a tool that allows an easy and fast testing script creation and with which you can run multiple sessions in parallel without multiplying virtual users licensing costs. You might also want a Dynamics 365 test automation tool that can reuse functional (regression) tests that reflect real use cases (prepared earlier on) and schedule them into performance test scenarios that you need.

Although there is no single answer, you are probably thinking about the below issues when looking for the best possible solution:

The question when and how to start Microsoft Dynamics 365 test automation is definitely not trivial. Our answer to the above depends on the combination of those issues and your needs, however here are a few common rules to follow when planning Microsoft Dynamics test automation: