Spotlight on Rapise 5.0: Microsoft Dynamics

January 17th, 2017 by inflectra

As you may have read, we've just released the latest major update to Rapise, our unified platform for testers. Rapise 5.0 brings many benefits for testing web applications (Edge support), desktop applications (faster testing of WPF and UWP apps), API testing (SOAP support and REST enhancements), and load testing (integration with NeoLoad).

However the biggest piece of news was that we now have added support for Microsoft Dynamics, the powerful ERP and CRM system from Microsoft. We support the current Dynamics AX and CRM platforms as well as the future Azure-based Dynamics 365 service. This article discusses what this means for you and why it is such big news!

Why Test Microsoft Dynamics?

We had several customers approach us with this need during 2015, each with the same problem. With other ERP solutions like SAP and Oracle e-Business there are various regression testing solutions available that they could use. However for Microsoft Dynamics AX (their ERP solution) and Dynamics CRM (their online CRM solution) there were no available automated solutions that didn't require a programmer to write code by hand (using CodedUI).

So after consulting with partners and finding a launch customer (thanks Kent), we are really excited to offer the Microsoft Dynamics community a powerful, easy to use testing solution for Microsoft Dynamics.

The reason it is so badly needed is that with Microsoft Dynamics, it is not simply a matter of installing the application and using it; no, you have to configure and customize it with the help of a Microsoft Dynamics solution partner. This means that you can configure it to meet your business needs and match the processes and workflows that make your business unique.

That sounds great, right?! Well it is, except what happens when you apply Microsoft Update Dynamics AX 2012 R3 and suddenly all of your custom forms break! Worse still, you might not even know that one of the 10,000 custom forms you have is broken in the first place!

Enter the Regression Testing Savior

So now you can see why our customers really wanted a way to automatically run regression tests against their Dynamics installations. In fact for healthcare customers there isn't even a choice, it's required pretty much by Federal law. So how does Rapise actually make testing Dynamics easier.

Well, with Rapise, you can simply launch Dynamics AX, and use the application to carry out a standard business process:

and Rapise will capture the steps, learn the objects on the form and generate a test script for you. To playback the test, simply play the test and Rapise will carry out the steps and verify the results.

Once you have that part done, you can then use data-driven testing to run the same test hundreds of times with different employee records, orders, quotes, invoices, and other data that you need to regression test with.

In addition, Rapise can also handle Dynamics AX add-ons such as the Management Reporter and Web Portals just as easily.

What about Dynamics CRM and 365?

One of our launch customers recommended we attend the Microsoft Dynamics User Summit in Tampa, FL. As we wrote in this blog article last year, there are some big changes coming to the Dynamics platform in the coming years. The long-term plan is for all Dynamics AX, NAV, GP, CRM customers to migrate to Dynamics 365 either in its enterprise level or its small/medium size business level editions.

We are already ahead of the game! In addition to the support we added in Rapise for Dynamics AX, we also enhanced the web libraries of Rapise to handle some of the unique objects and components in:

Dynamics CRM

Dynamics 365

So What's Next?

Well, now that we have Dynamics AX, CRM and 365 support available, we shall be continuing to refine the functionality as more customers use the new features and give us feedback. Also we will be looking at providing special support for other common packaged applications: Sharepoint, Office365, SalesForce, SAP, Oracle.

We're interested in your feedback. Let us know which applications you use and which ones you'd like Rapise to help you test?

automated testing dynamics crm dynamics 365 dynamics ax erp crm microsoft rapise

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