Inquiry on the Best Practices for Test Data Seeding in Role-Based Web Applications

Hi everyone, I am back again as I require your expert advice. I am currently exploring the best approach for test data seeding and isolated test setup in our web application and would really appreciate insights from experienced QA engineers and automation testers.

Our platform has multiple user roles eg.

• Students → mostly content consumers/read-only users
• Teachers → create, edit, and manage courses/content etc.

At the moment, I’m looking into using API-based setup/seeding and then focusing UI tests only on the functionality being validated for the core user flows. I understand that this helps reduce dependencies and improve test isolation, but I’d love to know what key factors, trade-offs, or questions you typically consider before deciding on a long-term test data seeding and environment strategy.

Some areas I’m particularly curious about:

• Best practices for seeding role-specific data
• Managing isolated test environments
• Handling cleanup/reset strategies
• Avoiding flaky tests caused by shared data
• Structuring Playwright fixtures or test factories
• Balancing API setup vs full UI workflows

I’ve done quite a bit of research already, but I’d genuinely appreciate learning from your experiences and what has worked best for your teams.

Thank you!