Performance testing of Microsoft Dynamics CRM using Visual Studio Enterprise

CRM – Customer Relationship Management is a software solution to maintain customer relationships, track sales leads, manage pipeline, marketing and service.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a client-server application, primarily an IIS based web application that supports extensive web services interfaces. Clients can access CRM either using a browser or by a thin client such as the Outlook plug-in. Dynamics CRM supports most of the browsers; IE, Chrome and Firefox are fully supported.

Dynamics CRM is now known as Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and has the following applications –

• Dynamics 365 for Sales
• Dynamics 365 for Marketing
• Dynamics 365 for Customer Service
• Dynamics 365 for Field Service
• Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation

Why Load test?

There are several benefits of conducting load tests at various phases of the application. Running load tests during any system upgrade or customization are recommended to validate performance, stability and end-user experience.

Few major benefits to various stakeholders are

Business Benefits

• Prevent failure on ‘Go-live’
• Baseline against competitors
• Reduce the cost of infrastructure (hardware, software etc.)

Benefits for Architects & Dev

• Validate design goals
• Establish scalability patterns and verify/validate capacity requirements
• Optimise hardware & software configurations for increased throughput

Benefits for End users

• Consistent end-user experience
• Functional integrity during peak load on the system
• Increased confidence in the application

Visual Studio Load testing features

Web Test – Recording engine helps capture the server-client traffic. By default, this works with IE and for any other browser, we recommend the tool Fiddler. Export fiddler capture as .web test to use in Visual Studio.

Web Test Enhancements – Once the web test is ready and working as expected, enhance the web test to simulate realistic load on the system.

Following are some of the script level enhancements.

• Handle dynamic parameters
• Parameterization (Test data)
• Cache
• SLA – Response time goal
• Think time

Load test – Helps design scenarios and run the load test.

Load test settings – Configure load test run time settings as per your requirements.

Test Results – Capture details of load test execution. Helps create detailed analysis report.