Allied Testing, a leading specialist in testing and software services, have developed a new CRM Testing Framework.

The new CRM Testing Framework has been developed as a business framework for deep functional and performance testing of CRM solutions based on Siebel 7.5 and Siebel 7.8 technology. It consists of three parts: a specially created Siebel plug-in for BEST, Allied Testing’s automatic testing platform; a Siebel Database Comparison Toolkit; a set of UI based scripts. The new framework allows the full range of CRM testing to be automated to a new level.

"CRM Framework allows us to test a broad field of core CRM functionality: from input validation, to complicated business processes and it also can be used for load and performance testing. Allied Testing have undertaken testing of many large and heavily customized Siebel installations and the team doing this work comprised internal and offshore developers, vendor representatives, business representatives, testers and project managers. One of the challenges such teams face is necessity to understand and verify changes between two different Siebel customizations. To help our customers to resolve this challenge, a unique Database Comparison Toolkit was developed, which allows testers to compare two different Siebel Repositories and notifies all interested parties of changes in Siebel Controls and Views that have taken place. This test tool significantly reduced the time and cost required for initial release verification and regression testing" says Iosif Itkin, Project Director of Allied Testing Consulting Services.

Another advantage is that the BEST part of the new framework allows engineers to develop and run scripts fundamentally different from the ones that can be coded using third-party testing tools. BEST parses Siebel Web Protocol, allowing direct communication with Siebel Web Server and it creates a logical representation of Siebel objects, whereas commercial testing tools only communicate on an http level and use simplified correlation rules. This offers three benefits: (i) smoke tests can be run in multiple-user mode on one machine; (ii) it offers a significant improvement in load test stability, compared with other tools; (iii) it makes it much easier to test links to external interfaces.

"These Test Libraries give us some unique capabilities, such as the ability to combine functional and performance tests in one script. Along with the verification of core CRM functionality and external interfaces, the new framework provides project teams with a bunch of performance metrics, which is hugely beneficial for any project. In general, our product is dynamic, flexible and - more important - stable. Apart from that, testers don’t need to have any unusual skills and learning to use the framework doesn’t take long" – says Mikhail Teif, Director of Allied Testing.