Dynamics 365 Testing Best Practices: Your Essential Guide

Dynamics 365 testing is part of a cloud-based platform that is mainly related to Microsoft business applications. It combines the advantages of relationship management and resource planning. It also helps in other ways, such as Sales, Marketing, Customer Services, Finance, Operation, and other features on a single platform.

The use of Dynamic 365 is important in the business environment as it helps to make the process smooth, makes it easy to increase customer engagement, and improves decisions by making proper analyses. It also helps in increasing the scalability and flexibility of your business. It tries to make a perfect balance between business and changing market conditions, with efficiency and achieving growth.

Testing is considered one of the important icons for successful Dynamic 365 implementation. Testing also helps you to know that the system is working properly and fulfilling the needs of business requirements. It verifies data accuracy and consistency, helps in making the right decision, and maintains the trust of the customers.

Understanding the Dynamic 365 Testing Landscape

Types of Testing in Dynamics 365

Unit Testing:

• Evaluating specific program parts or components is known as unit evaluation. A unit can be considered a function, method, class, module, or a small program of computer software.
• Verifying that each code unit works as intended is the primary goal of unit inspection. It also helps in identifying and fixing bugs in the development cycle by improving the quality of the code and easy maintaining of the software.
• In this type of testing, test cases are written with frameworks like JUnit, NUnit, etc. These test cases are automated in nature, make use of individual units, and verify their behavior with the outcomes.

Integration Testing

• This kind of evaluation involves connections and relationships between various program elements or parts. It mainly gives importance on verifying that these units are working together to give proper result.
• The main intention of this testing is to make sure that the interaction between these components does not produce any defects or problems. It also helps in identifying issues related to the communication protocol, exchange of data, and depending on different parts of the modules.
• Once unit testing gets completed, then you should go for integration testing. The test cases in this type of testing helps you to cover situations like API calls, database interaction and other messaging systems.

System Testing

• In this process a complete and integrated software has to be evaluated with some given instructions. You to the test the whole system such as its functionality, performance and other qualities.
• These are also known as black box testing, where the testing is done from the perspective of the end user. They include functional testing, security testing or any other testing depending upon the requirements of the system.

Acceptance Testing

• The process involved in this type of testing is evaluating the system of a software with other business requirements. This process determines whether item is given to the user.
• The main intention of this testing is to get confidence that the system meets the expectations of the owner. It gives an assurance that the system is performing well.
• Users who are not in the development process do this work.

Testing Tools and Frameworks

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Test Framework

This Dynamic framework allows user to automate the testing process within 365 environments. This process makes sure that the software is running efficiently and accurately with various functionality and processes.

Third-Party Tools

There are some third-party tools that help during the process of testing.

• Selenium: It is one of the useful tools to complete the process.  It handles tasks like form submission, clicking buttons, and verifying content.
• Postman: It is one of the popular API testing tools. Testers can create collections of API request and runs the software that they are performing well.

These tools provide functionalities and can improve the efficiency of the testing process.

Read Also: Top 10 Automated Testing Tools For Web Applications in 2024

Best Practises for Dynamic 365 Testing

Develop a Testing Strategy

Before going for a project first you should understand the objectives. Different projects may require different testing based on factors such as technology, industrial regulation and other complexities of the system.

Importance of Structured Testing Plan

• A proper testing plan gives clarity about the testing process and who will be responsible for each aspect of testing.
• Structure evaluation is for the process to observe risk and issues. It also reduces the impact during the delivery of the product.
• A proper plan helps to maintain the excellence of the item.
• It guarantees that the attention is directed towards the critical parts.

Automated Testing Where Possible

Benefits of Automation Testing in Testing Cycles

Automation testing, supported by automation testing services, helps make the process easy with the help of software.

• Increase testing efficiency.
• Faster test execution.
• Identifying the defects.
• Reducing the effort.

Identifying Test Cases for Automation

Identifying the cases helps in selecting the scenarios that are based on factors like repetitiveness and criticality. A broad range of functionality should be tested, with a focus on those that are more likely to experience regressions. Extensive selection maximizes test coverage and reliability while guaranteeing effective use of automation resources.

Manual Testing Considerations

Scenario-based testing

It mainly involves test cases based on real-world situations to make sure that the software is working properly.

Exploratory Testing for New Features

Exploratory testing helps in learning test design, executions, and other defects, as well as understanding features. It also enhances the quality of software in different contexts and further issues.

Data and Environment Management

The use of realistic data involves scenarios such as employing data sets that are similar to the actual and visual example. It also enhances the accuracy of testing outcomes.

By maintaining separate environment for different stages means that the integrity of the testing process has to keep away from development process and staging environment. These practises increase the effectiveness of the testing process with better quality and less risk.

Test Case Design and Management

Designing Effective Test Cases

When considering case studies, mention the cases properly. To achieve thorough coverage, start by defining particular scenarios that correspond with business requirements. Every test case must have a distinct goal and be composed in plain English, avoiding technical jargon wherever feasible.

Make sure that test cases are properly arranged and thoroughly documented for ease of use and upkeep. Make use of a template or standard format to improve uniformity between test cases. Make readability a top priority as well to help stakeholders outside the testing team comprehend.

You can also incorporate different business scenarios into test cases to make sure that the application is actual in nature. Understand the business concept and give importance to test cases and focus on functionalities and also the quality of the software.

Test Management Tools

Tracking and managing case studies are essential to preserve the standards. There are various platforms that offer different repositories where test cases are created and organized easily.

Test case version control makes ensuring that modifications are monitored and recorded throughout time. This eliminates the possibility of overwriting or losing important test case data while enabling teams to keep a history of revisions, go back to earlier iterations if needed, and work together efficiently.

Performance Testing Dynamic 365 Application

Importance of Performance Testing

Designing systems that can easily handle increasing workloads by adding resources or transferring jobs is essential to ensuring scalability. Maintaining consistency in performance and availability, reducing downtime, and gracefully resolving faults are all parts of reliability. Scalability is typically attained through horizontal scaling, load balancing, and effective resource allocation; reliability, on the other hand, is achieved through redundancy, fault tolerance systems, and stringent testing.

Performance Testing Tools

These tools are important for making the system work smoothly. With its extensive testing features, LoadRunner simulates actual user behavior to measure system response under varied loads. An open-source substitute called JMeter offers scalability and versatility, allowing testers to create intricate scenarios. Both programs produce thorough reports that highlight areas in need of improvement and bottlenecks.

Best Practices for Performance Testing

The process of creating performance benchmarks include establishing quantifiable criteria for assessing achievement and advancement. This means figuring out important measures that are pertinent to the objective, such sales goals or customer satisfaction levels.

Simulating real users means using patterns to test the performance of the system. Understanding user behavior, workload fluctuations, and traffic distribution are all part of this. Through simulation of these scenarios, developers evaluate the behavior of a system under both average and high loads, guaranteeing that it can effectively manage anticipated user demands.

Security Testing in Dynamics 365

Security Testing Overview

Protecting sensitive data from cyber threats, unauthorized access, and breaches requires regular security testing. It finds weaknesses, evaluates threats, and confirms that security precautions are strong. It improves an organization’s overall security posture by enabling proactive mitigation techniques through the detection of holes in systems and applications.

Protecting sensitive data from cyber threats, unauthorized access, and breaches requires regular security testing. Security testing services find weaknesses, evaluate threats, and confirm that security precautions are strong. They improve an organization’s overall security posture by enabling proactive mitigation techniques through the detection of holes in systems and applications.

Best Practises for Security Testing

In order to prevent security breaches, regular vulnerability assessments entail methodically locating, measuring, and ranking vulnerabilities in systems, networks, and applications.

In compliance with security standards, role-based access testing verifies that user rights match assigned roles, avoiding unwanted access and preserving data integrity.

Read Also: Maintaining Web Application Quality with Ongoing Testing

Continuous Testing and DevOps Integration

Implementing Continuous Testing

There are some benefits of continuous testing in DevOps:

• Fast feedback
• Minimises risk
• Preserves authenticity of item

Tools and Platforms for CI/CD

To guarantee that each code modification is extensive and important to implement in different live environments, integrate testing into continuous integration/continuous deployment methods. This improves software quality and lowers the possibility of introducing bugs.

By automatically delivering application modifications to many environments and doing automated tests, automating deployment and testing speeds up the software delivery process, saves time and effort, increases deployment frequency, and enhances overall development efficiency and reliability.

A study found that companies implementing CRM systems, like Dynamics 365, can experience up to a 29% increase in customer satisfaction and a 26% increase in retention rates. This statistic underscores the importance of Dynamics 365 in enhancing customer engagement and loyalty, highlighting the critical role of thorough testing in ensuring the system’s effectiveness.

Implement Our Top Dynamics 365 Testing Tips for Guaranteed Success

A cloud application is necessary for enhancing the business in various ways, such as sales, marketing, finance, and other operations. These operations increase the economy and customer experience.

Numerous best practices are existing for this testing process. These practises are smooth communication, faster delivery of the product, performing well and enhanced user adoption. It also makes sure that data is valid and functioning well.