Every successful project I’ve been a part of has emphasized frequent end user testing throughout the build process. It’s critical to gather end user feedback to ensure the functionality being delivered is aligned to solve the end user’s business needs. A common end user pain point of both quality assurance and user acceptance testing is having to log feedback in multiple platforms, often shared excel workbooks, separate web forms, or 3rd party platforms. Having to hop back and forth between Salesforce and different systems can be a major pain point for end users, especially if different types of testing feedback must be logged in different locations.
Case Study: A $10B+ Financial Institution performing end user testing on Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, ~25 functional testers largely new to Salesforce
I recently served as a functional SME for a Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC) implementation for a client that had an existing build of Salesforce FSC. The client had gone live with Salesforce FSC with a different implementation partner, and struggled through quality assurance and user acceptance testing due to uncoordinated processes, which forced testers to hop between screens and files to log their testing findings. The project also suffered from version control issues due to multiple users logging items in various shared excel workbooks at the same time. At the end of the testing process the client was left with a deluge of loosely structured feedback, leading to a new challenge of triaging the feedback and getting the true bugs and enhancements into the backlog. Through the second phase enhancement project, I was excited to propose a different approach that I’d been utilizing with success on previous projects for quite a few years: configuring functionality to enable logging, triaging, and prioritizing feedback directly on the platform.
Design Approach
I’m a big advocate for configuring functionality directly in Salesforce for end users to log testing feedback through the use of a Global Quick Action, so that the end user testing and triage experience is completely within the platform for the duration of the testing phase. This can be done relatively easily through:
1. Creating a “Feedback” custom object (or whatever you’d like to call it – item tracker, issue log, etc.)
2. Creating a corresponding “Feedback” Global Quick Action to create Feedback records from any screen in Salesforce
3. Configuring the Global Layout to align to the necessary end user input (including notes & attachments for screenshots)
4. Creating reports and a dashboard to monitor feedback items as they’re logged
I’ve found the below fields serve as a great baseline on a Feedback object, which of course can be further configured and improved upon based on client needs:
| Field API | Data Type |
|---|---|
| Status | Picklist: New, In Triage, Ready for Retest, Complete, Duplicate |
| Feedback Type | Picklist: Bug / Defect, Enhancement, Training Item |
| Impact / Severity | Picklist: Critical, High, Medium, Low |
| Description | Text Area |
| Feature | Picklist: list of features being tested |
| Link to Record | URL |
| Additional Information | Text Area |
Once the object, global quick action, and global layout are configured to include the desired fields when logging items, end users should able to select the “New Feedback” Global Quick Action from any page within Salesforce. This allows them to quickly initiate the feedback process without having to navigate away from the record or to hop between screens.
Selecting the Global Quick Action will open a small window in the bottom right corner of the page for the tester to add information about the feedback item.
Once Saved, the record will be available for triage either through a list view or report on the Feedback object.
The Global Quick Action can be applied to a wide range of use cases where end users need the ability to quickly create and save records without navigating from their current page. For supporting end user testing, it’s a great way to enable testers to quickly log feedback and then get right back to continuing through their test scenarios.
Results
The client’s end users loved the new process for collecting feedback, which allowed testers to spend more time on testing their business scenarios and less time hopping between applications. This approach enabled the client’s project stakeholders to quickly triage and prioritize items as they were being logged by end users, getting the feedback could get into the development pipeline shortly after users had logged the feedback. The build team rapidly addressed items and deployed fixes for critical and high priority items in near real-time, enabling end users to in some cases retest functionality the same day it was identified.
This approach also solved a pain point for the client’s QA Director, who previously had to consolidate feedback in excel and export to share results with project stakeholders. The on-platform approach enabled the creation of a simple dashboard with key testing metrics and visuals, which the QA Director was able to monitor through the day and email out a summary report of QA progress to stakeholders at the end of each day’s testing.
This same approach was used for this client through remaining rounds of QA Testing, as well as through User Acceptance Testing. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of the approach! If you’d like to discuss QA testing best practices on Salesforce, please feel free to reach out.
– Jeff
