Introduction
Used by over 97% of all Fortune 500 companies to support critical business processes across operations, sales, marketing, finance, customer service, and the supply chain, Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) is one of the world’s leading enterprise accounting and sales software. 500,000 organizations globally host a wide array of business applications within the comprehensive D365 ecosystem. For most of them, the D365 platform forms the functional backbone of the entire organization, without which key functionalities can fail to perform. Keeping this in mind, organizations need to ensure that the whole suite of applications that relies on Microsoft Dynamics 365 continues to function as defined without breaking down. This requires continuous quality assurance and end-to-end testing within a comprehensive testing framework.
However, the dynamic nature of D365, coupled with regular updates, new releases, and maintenance upgrades, makes it a very demanding job. The intricate custom workflows and inherent complexities further add to this challenge.
Avo Automation’s suite of test automation solutions is designed to overcome these challenges with AI-powered impact analysis, automated test creation, self-healing, upgrade analysis, and cross-browser and parallel testing.
In this blog, we’ll explore the many challenges of testing D365 applications and then see how Avo Automation’s smart features help you resolve each one of them.
Importance of automated testing of D365 applications
The globally widespread business operations of large organisations have intricate, interconnected work, as well as data flows that function together to keep all the teams, departments, and offices working in conjunction. Business expansion brings in new integrations, applications, and data sources that get layered on top of the existing ones. And within this lies the core set of D365 applications, tying it all together. However, the complex web of interdependent processes can break if even one of the processes ceases to function as intended. Without continuous testing of the D365 ecosystem, organisations cannot ensure that all the applications, features, and functionalities will continue to operate without bugs or other issues clogging up the flow.
To avoid any inadvertent disruptions to critical business processes due to integrations and updates, organisations need to invest in intelligent, codeless, automated continuous testing solutions that enable end-to-end testing across various integrations and user journeys, such as Avo.
How does Avo help with continuous end-to-end testing of D365 applications?
Impact analysis and self-healing
AI-driven impact analysis helps testing teams understand the impact of each update on the applications by conducting a risk analysis of the effects of the update on the underlying systems. By analyzing the impacted objects, testers can quickly cover ground by identifying the exact areas that need to be tested. Visual assertion lets teams simulate user behaviour in pre-determined conditions, further accelerating the process. Coupled with self-healing, this delivers 100% risk coverage in significantly less time, better quality applications, and much faster time-to-market.
Design Studio, Avo Genius, and MindMap
Design Studio and MindMap give testers a bird’s eye view of the entire testing hierarchy by crafting a visual depiction of the end-to-end application workflow. It simplifies tracking changes across dependencies while creating reusable assets compatible with the D365 ecosystem. Avo Genius works simultaneously with Design Studio to automatically generate test scenarios for different workflows while the team navigates through the application. Avo Genius is a smart recorder that offers data parameterization and directly syncs modules within the Design Studio without requiring manual intervention. If testers want to create changes, they can pause the recording and edit the test steps without leaving the screen.
Pre-built library of test cases
Testers spend most of their time writing new test scripts and creating cases for new features, changes, and updates. This leaves little time for test case maintenance, amongst other responsibilities. But even when they dedicate all their time to creating new tests for D365 applications, keeping up with the continuously rolling upgrades can become challenging. Avo Assure is a heterogeneous codeless test automation solution that lets all the business process owners, even the non-technical stakeholders, create tests with just a few clicks. Moreover, Avo comes with more than 1500 pre-built test cases for MS 360, D365, ERP, CRM, Store Commerce, and Finance and Operations that expedite the entire process.
Elastic execution grid, smart scheduling, and parallel testing
The Elastic Execution Grid is a unique feature of Avo Assure that helps testing teams automatically choose the best test execution pathway for their D365 applications. Coupled with the Smart Scheduling feature that lets them schedule tests during off hours, optimal resource and time utilization is ensured. With parallel testing, the team can run tests across the same or multiple Virtual Machines simultaneously. Shorter regression cycles and faster feedback loops don’t just lead to condensed testing cycles but also significantly reduce the number of bugs in production.
Upgrade Analyzer
The constant cycle of updates and releases by Microsoft for the D365 platform compels testers to focus all their time and energy on first identifying the changes to the codebase and then testing the update. This two-step process is time-consuming, cumbersome, and repetitive. But with the Upgrade Analyser, testers can quickly zero in on the piece of code that has changed and test only that. The changes to the code and subsequent test cases will be updated automatically, making test maintenance much smoother.
Avo Automation’s automated testing solutions enable teams to achieve 10x more productivity, 7x faster launches, >95% test coverage, 80% lower infrastructure requirements, and a final product with less than 1% production defects. You can download the product sheet to learn more about Avo for Microsoft Dynamics 365. To see Avo in action, book a demo today.
