Plan, Schedule, and Run Scale Tests

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Create a test plan.
Schedule your test and book an available slot.
View test results.
Compare recent tests.

Why Scale Test?

Companies construct intricate implementations with multi-layered integrations. These implementations undergo careful architectural planning and essential functional and performance testing. However, unexpected issues can arise if there’s a sudden business peak or increased operational activity.

Scale testing identifies and addresses potential issues before they impact operations, reducing the risk of costly downtime or data loss. The insights gained from scale testing let companies meet evolving business needs and maintain a competitive edge in today’s dynamic business landscape.

To learn more about scalability, check out the Scalability with Salesforce badge on Trailhead.

Introducing Scale Test

Scale Test is a Salesforce add-on that helps you prepare for booms in your business or unexpected upticks in operational activities. Use it to test at 100% of your expected production volume, all within your existing full copy sandbox. With Scale Test, you can view peak business hours in your production org or pick a custom date and time to view performance hotspots.

This means you can uncover issues, risks, and bottlenecks long before they impact your live environment. Scale Test also helps you identify optimization opportunities from a front-end perspective, like Most Used and Slowest Pages, Most Used Lightning Components, and Most Used REST APIs.

In order to generate a large-scale test load, you have the option of using an external tool like JMeter. JMeter is an open-source Java application designed to load test functional behavior and measure performance.

So how does Scale Test work? By using these features built into Scale Test.

Test Plan Creation: Explore data that helps you plan scale tests.
Test Scheduler: Book a slot in your sandbox instance calendar and test at production peak load.
Test Execution: Compare performance metrics from recent tests.

Create Your Test Plan

A well-crafted plan helps you get the most out of your scale testing. And Scale Test is the key to crafting the best plan for your specific business needs.

As you consider the business scenarios you want to test and your desired output, consider this prework to help you define your testing parameters.

Outline your test requirements and use cases.
List the test metrics you want to study, for example slowest pages, APIs, and back-end metrics.
Use a test scripter such as Selenium to record and simulate user interactions.
Use test data generation tools like Snowfakery to generate data based on your requirements.
List the desired throughput for each business scenario. And list the estimated time needed for one user to complete the scenario.
Review your Salesforce architecture with a focus on the common components for scale testing. Understand the nuances of scale testing on the Salesforce Lightning Platform.

Schedule Your Test and Book Slots with Test Scheduler

Scale Test Bookings use Salesforce full copy sandboxes. When you book a test slot, they’re scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis per instance.

From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter Scale Test and select Test Scheduler. View your past, upcoming, and live bookings under this section. Past bookings have the status Completed. Upcoming bookings have the status Confirmed and live bookings have the status Live with the number of days left in that particular booking. A scale test booking lasts from one day to two weeks of continuous scale test days.
To create a booking, click New Booking and choose the available start and end date. Your booking is automatically confirmed and you receive a toast notification that confirms your booking.
To delete a confirmed booking, click the dropdown in the row of the test you want to cancel and click Delete.

Analyze Your Data with Test Execution

With Test Execution, you can get powerful insights into how the traffic looks under the hood of your implementation in View Server Side Traffic. These include workload metrics such as Triggers, Platform Events, and DMLs. You can then curate your test scripts and test data to include these backend operations.

After you run your scale test, you’re ready to analyze the results. To make your system more performant, review your test results and develop an action plan. When you conduct scale testing throughout the development process, you reduce the risk of performance failure. With each test, you learn more about your system and can improve your user experience.

Compare and Test Again

With Scale Test, you can include scale testing as part of your release cycle. And after you’ve run some iterations of your scale tests, you’ll know which key performance indicators are trending. You can then reassess and optimize before your next test run.

In each release, you can identify new use cases and personas for your solution. Adjust your testing based on what you learn and your most recent metrics. Also review your peak request volumes and consider conducting performance and scalability testing separately from your functional and regression testing.

Scale Test is also part of the Salesforce Scalability suite of products, which means you can use it alongside Scale Center to analyze your test results. Scale Center helps you diagnose root causes and act on scale issues earlier in your development cycle. Use it to view org performance metrics and analyze performance reports.