Creating web performance tests in Visual Studio for SharePoint on premise is easy and well documented. But writing them for Office 365 / SharePoint online is another thing. The authentication can be different – depending on you configuration – and there is nearly no documentation available. In my case the SharePoint Online tenant authenticates via ADFS against a Windows Active Directory Domain.
The easiest way to get the authentication running is to record the authentication flow in Visual Studio. Before you start recording the web test, open your browser and make sure you are logged off from Office 365. Then record the login process to your site and edit the web test.
The first thing you have to do is to set your credentials for the test in the properties windows.
Now find the request to your adfs that ends in /adfs/ls/. Delete all the steps before that – you don’t need them. Remove the referrer and make the url to your adfs, the client request id and the user name context parameters. The extraction rule should be correct.
The next request you have to look for is a post to login.microsoft.com/login.srf. Delete all requests between the adfs and this one. Remove the referrer. The form post parameters should be correct – if not you have to adjust them according to the image.
The next thing we have to do is a post to /_forms/default.aspx on your SharePoint. This post will redirect you – so make sure to set the expected response url correctly. If you leave this step out you won’t get the authentication cookie!
Visual Studio will now add the cookie to every request. Delete all the other requests and add a new GET request to your desired page.
To make sure you don’t get redirected you should add a validation rule and validate something on your site. I added a rule and test the site title.
If you run the test and encounter errors, check that the Set-Cookie ist set correctly after calling the login.srf. It must be in any request.
I just started testing SharePoint Online and Office 365 for different customers. So expect more posts to this topic the next months. What’s your experience? Do you use automated tests for SharePoint online?
writeabout.net 
Wow, I wonder why others haven’t written about this a lot!
Thanks a lot Michael, highly appreciate this walkthrough.
I do automated testing but this is something which I have never tried!
Can we do load tests for Office 365?
Yes. You can use the web test described here to perform load tests.
Thanks for that post, how can I do that same thing but for PowerBI (cloud) instead of SharePoint. We have the same setup adfs/ls and login.srf. Did the steps (excluding post to /_forms/default.aspx as it’s not Sharepoint)…
So you want to create a web test for power BI?
Yes exactly we have a SSO setup.
Response URL: Validation The value of the ExpectedResponseUrl property ‘https://app.powerbi.com/’ does not equal the actual response URL ‘https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/landing/signin/’.
So it means it’s not logging in because we are getting the “signin” page instead fo the landing page
Haven’t tried that – but you should be able to record the oauth flow like I did with SharePoint.
That’s what I did, It actually recorder twice the adfs/ls (then I deleted one of them so that it looks like yours). I don’t think that the login.srf is passing on the info to the next step (https://powerbi.microsoft.com/landing/signin/), is there a way to test that?
You have to check where it redirects you to do the post. The key in the SharePoint scenario was the post to forms.aspx. PowerBi should redirect you to an similar page.
Thanks for the tip ill try to focus on that
Hey eetawil, were you able to solve the oauth ?
I have the same oauth scenario for an app authenticating against Azure AD and can’t quite get the authentication part to work.
Hi,
Does this still works for your SharePoint Online tenant? I can’t get this to work in same setup (ADFS).
Missing hidden parameters and can’t get authorized. I noticed the password in one of my form post parameters. Didn’t see that in your example.
Haven’t tried it for some time… Our tenant was configured against adfs. And yours? I will give it a new try if I find some time…
Michiel,
I’m currently facing the same struggles. Were you ever successful in configuring the webtest to SPO? If so, any tips that you could provide? Thank you
Yes it worked. But we have SPO with ADFS.
At what point are you stuck?
Hi, I am currently working on a performance test of an SPO application with the same authentication setup as yours but with a different tool, OpenScript to be exact but it’s recorder does pretty much the same thing. How is the value being passed on the client-request-id obtained if there are no steps before the request to the adfs? I can’t get to the expected page after that step therefore correlation (extraction rule) fails on the next step. Appreciate your response on this.
Hello,
I’m trying to do the exact same thing with the same authentication process. The only thing is, as the _forms/default.aspx, my Form Post Parameters are code, id_token, session_state, & correlation_id. the extracted hidden fields does not contains t like your screen shots.
This causes the “Object moved to here.” and to authenticate again. Then on the next/last page it goes to, it authenticates all over again. It’s as if the webtest isn’t passing the cookie from one page to the next.