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Full Application Test Execution entry
How-to guide

How to run an Application-level test suite

The page itself is a thin wrapper around the Apex Test Framework. Most of the value comes from maintaining Test Suites that map to real subsystems and running them at the right moments.

By Dipojjal Chakrabarti · Founder & Editor, Salesforce DictionaryLast updated May 19, 2026

The page itself is a thin wrapper around the Apex Test Framework. Most of the value comes from maintaining Test Suites that map to real subsystems and running them at the right moments.

  1. Define Test Suites

    Setup, Custom Code, Apex Test Suites. Create suites that map to real subsystems: Sales Cloud Smoke, Service Cloud Regression, Integration Layer, and so on.

  2. Open Application Test Execution

    Setup, Custom Code, Application Test Execution. Click Select Suites and choose the suite you want to run.

  3. Submit and watch progress

    Click Run. The page polls and updates pass/fail counts per class. The run is async, so walking away is fine.

  4. Drill into failures

    Click any failed class to view the offending method, the assertion message, and the stack trace. Cross-reference with Apex Jobs if the run involved async paths.

  5. Review history and trend

    Open Application Test History to compare the latest run against prior runs. Sustained pass-rate or coverage drops surface trends that single-run inspection misses.

Gotchas
  • Suite pass rate is not deploy readiness. The 75 percent overall coverage rule still applies at production deploy time.
  • Stale suites are misleading. Tests added to the codebase do not automatically join a suite; maintenance matters.
  • Parallel execution can break tests that share data. Fix the data isolation; disabling parallel testing globally is a heavy hammer.
  • Retention is short. Export ApexTestResult rows weekly for any trend analysis longer than a few weeks.

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