Salesforce Web Access Test

One of the key factors influencing user experience with Salesforce is the ease with which the user is able to connect and login to a Salesforce organization. If users are unable to reach a Salesforce organization over the web, or complain of slowness when logging in, there could be many reasons for it! For instance, the unavailability of an HTTP/S connection - i.e., a web connection - to the target organization can be a cause. Likewise, a latent web connection to the Salesforce organization and/or a delay in login authentication can also contribute to the poor experience.

To ensure that the overall user experience with Salesforce is above-par, administrators must first make sure that the logon experience of users is satisfactory. For this, administrators should continuously check if users are able to connect to the Salesforce organization over the web and login to it, without any delays or disruptions. This is exactly what the Salesforce Web Access test seeks to achieve!

This test emulates a user attempting to connect to the Salesforce organization over the web and login to it. In the process, the test measures the total time taken for the login, and the time taken at each step of the login process - i.e., the time for establishing an HTTP/S connection with the Salesforce organization, and the time for authenticating the login. If users complain of login slowness, then these insights can help administrators accurately isolate the reason for the delay - is it because of a latent web connection? or is it because of a delay in login authentication? On the other hand, if users experience frequent login failures, then this test pinpoints what could have caused the failure - is it because of the unavailability of Salesforce over the web? or is it because of an authentication failure?

This way, without waiting for real users to login to the Salesforce organization, this test, using synthetic monitoring techniques, proactively captures logon slowness/failures and leads administrators to the root-cause of the same.

Target of the test : A Salesforce organization

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent.

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the target Salesforce organization

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Email	This test needs to login to the target Salesforce organization as a user with Administrative rights, in order to run API commands on it and pull metrics. To facilitate this connection, specify the email ID of the Administrator of the Salesforce organization here.
Password	Specify the password of the Administrator here.
Confirm Password	Confirm the administrator password by retyping here.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Connection status	Indicates whether/not a web connection to the target Salesforce organization.		The values that this measure reports and the numeric values that map to them is as follows: Measure Value Numeric Value Success 1 Failure 0 Note: By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate the status of the web connection to the Salesforce organization. In the graph of this measure however, the same is indicated using the numeric equivalents only.
Time taken to connect	Indicates the time taken to connect to the Salesforce organization over the web.	Secs	A high value for this measure is indicative of a latent web connection.
Authenticate status	Indicates whether/not the user login was authenticated.		The values that this measure reports and the numeric values that map to them is as follows: Measure Value Numeric Value Success 1 Failure 0 Note: By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate the authentication status. In the graph of this measure however, the same is indicated using the numeric equivalents only.
Time taken to authenticate	Indicates the time it took for the emulated user login to be authenticated.	Secs	A high value for this measure could indicate an authentication bottleneck.
Time taken to login	Indicates the total time the emulated user took to login.	Secs	If the value of this measure is unusually high, then compare the value of the Time taken to authenticate measure with that of the Time taken to connect measure to know where the bottleneck is - is a latent web connection delaying login? or is authentication slowness contributing to it?