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DevOps

Salesforce ALM Is More Scalable With DevOps

An illustration of a small, medium-sized, and large rocket representing how DevOps can make your release management in Salesforce more scalable

Salesforce application lifecycle management (ALM) is becoming increasingly important to businesses’ agility. In this blog, we explain that you can apply the DevOps fundamentals of automation, version control, CI/CD, and agile to make your Salesforce ALM more scalable.

DevOps Fundamentals for Scalable Salesforce ALM

Your users want changes at the speed of business. Unfortunately, traditional change management practices are often time consuming, labor intensive, and prone to error. This is where DevOps comes in.

By incorporating DevOps fundamentals into the development process, you can ramp up your Salesforce ALM. Let’s take a closer look.

Automation

Automation is essential to DevOps. When you automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks, you can free up valuable time and resources to focus on higher-value work. As a result, automation in ALM can help minimize errors, increase consistency, and improve speed. Plus, it reduces the amount of boring busy work you have to do—and that’s always a good thing!

Data deployment automation in Salesforce eliminates the need for manual intervention. This in turn reduces the risk of human error that could cause problems further up the release pipeline. 

At the same time, automated testing catches bugs and issues that could affect end users early in the development process. This improves the quality of your releases. 

It’s also smart to automatically create release notes, alerts, and notifications. This saves a considerable amount of time and effort while ensuring everyone on your team has sufficient information at their fingertips. 

For instance, an automated deployment tool like Prodly DevOps lets you deploy work in 80 percent less time! We’re talking just minutes to promote work to the next stage—not hours!! 

You can also use automated sandbox seeding to quickly push up-to-date production data into a Developer Sandbox or scratch org. This makes your lower-level org just like a segment of production, so you can confidently make changes without worrying about bugs and issues later.

Version Control

Version control for both metadata and configuration data is also a critical component of DevOps. A version control system (VCS) lets you effortlessly keep track of changes, collaborate more effectively with team mates, and manage code conflicts more easily. Plus, it ensures everyone’s working from the same source of truth when you have a large development team. 

In Salesforce DevOps, it’s especially important to have a VCS like Git due to the complexity of the platform. Because a VCS automatically tracks all changes, you can easily roll back changes to a previous version if needed. That’s why a VCS is sometimes also referred to as “the oops button.”

Let’s say you deployed a new configuration to production but it’s preventing a flow from being triggered. All you have to do is roll back the change by reverting to your previous version of the configuration in your VCS. Then you can isolate the code with the bug, fix it, and test it before deploying it again. It’s a good safety net to have.

CI/CD

Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) is another important DevOps principle that can improve Salesforce ALM. CI/CD involves automating the build, test, and deployment process and constantly pushing small changes to development. This iterative, incremental approach to change management allows you to release changes quickly and safely.

For example, you’re building a new app that will enable users to integrate their Salesforce org with the latest generative natural language model. You start by building, testing, deploying, and releasing the basic app that lets users leverage AI to write and check code. 

Based on user feedback, you discover that the app is rather slow. So in your next sprint, you refine the configuration to make it faster. Your users like this, but they’ve found another bug. In your next sprint, you fix that. This is what we call iterative development. 

(Did you know you can establish CI/CD in Salesforce without Git? This can be helpful if you want to apply some principles of DevOps, but aren’t ready yet for version control.)

Agile Development Practices

Agile as a methodology predates DevOps. In fact, DevOps complements agile. So by following agile development practices in Salesforce ALM, you can respond quickly and effectively to change requests. This benefits your end users tremendously.

In agile, you prioritize the most important work and use feedback to improve and build upon it. This ensures you’re delivering value to end users as quickly as possible. Agile also promotes communication and collaboration. As a result, you and your team can more successfully perform releases and complete projects. 

Let’s use the same example as above. To establish this iterative development process, you need all team members to work closely together. This includes documenting the changes you make, keeping each other informed about progress, and working together to brainstorm fixes and improvements.

Scale Your Salesforce ALM With DevOps

Keep these fundamental DevOps principles in mind to minimize bugs, eliminate repetitive manual work, and prevent bottlenecks in the release pipeline. You’ll soon see your release management process skyrocket!

You can do far more with fewer resources, and you can do it much faster than with traditional release methods. This means you can complete more change requests and better support your end users, which ultimately benefits your entire organization. It also means you don’t have to work late or on weekends anymore—and that’s awesome for your Salesforce work-life balance! You’ll have way more free time!

This blog was first published on www.salesforcedevops101.com on February 23, 2023.

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FAQ

What does Salesforce application lifecycle management (ALM) involve?

Salesforce ALM comprises the planning, building, testing, deployment, and monitoring of changes to your production instance. The DevOps steps—build, test, and deploy—require seamless communication and collaboration between the development team and the operations team. Learn more about Salesforce application lifecycle management.

Why do I need automation in Salesforce ALM?

Automation allows you to plan, coordinate, and deploy changes into production with a minimum of manual work. It minimizes the time and effort you spend on repetitive tasks, improves accuracy, and speeds up the change management process significantly.

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Automated Data Loader

The Best Data Loader for Salesforce

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The #1 Alternative to the Data Loader Download and the Data Loader CLI!

Are you looking for the best data loader for Salesforce? Watch this video to see that Prodly DevOps, the leading automated data loader for Salesforce, can save you hours of work and tons of frustration. Then read the blog to learn why Prodly DevOps is the fastest and best tool for loading data into Salesforce orgs.

Why Prodly Is the Fastest and Best Data Loader for Salesforce

As you saw in the video, Prodly DevOps provides an automated data loader that lets you effortlessly migrate data between orgs—with just a few clicks!

Prodly DevOps: Data Loading Made Easy

Prodly DevOps is the #1 data loader for Salesforce. It has an intuitive user interface that’s easy to navigate for everyone on your team, including admins, business users, release managers, developers, and architects. 

You can use it with either your production environment or a VCS as a source of truth. Moreover, because it doesn’t involve exporting any data to CSV files, it’s far more secure and reliable than manual data loading. 

On top of that, Prodly DevOps is 100 percent automated for the entire data schema. That means you only have to select the data set associated with what you want to move once. Prodly automatically moves all related objects for you—without you having to do a thing!

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Automated Dataloader Features

Prodly offers automatic duplicate resolution; reusable deployment plans; search, filter, and mass select; dependency management; data masking and partial deployments. It also provides the ability to schedule deployments. You can easily adjust it to each specific data migration on the fly without running into any issues that cause delays and missed deadlines. 

You never have to create or manage external ID fields, manually deactivate automations and validations, or use VLOOKUPs again.

In short—with Prodly DevOps, you can say goodbye to busy work, as well as hours spent resolving errors and maintaining CLI scripts. Instead, you breeze through every deployment in just a couple of minutes—without ever having to worry about data security or lost productivity!

Data Loader Can Cost Time and Resources

A manual dataloader isn’t particularly user friendly. It involves an often time-consuming, painstaking process. This is especially problematic when it comes to bulk data uploads and complex data models like Salesforce CPQ Price Rules and related objects. 

For admins, using Data Loader declaratively requires quite a few steps. You have to export the data from the source environment to a CSV, run VLOOKUps, map the IDs, and import the data into the destination org. The individual objects have to be loaded into the destination org one by one. And if you get an error, how do you know what you’ve mapped incorrectly—or how to fix it?

Depending on the volume and complexity of the data you’re working with, this manual process can take hours—or even days.

For developers using the Data Loader CLI, the most time-consuming aspect is that you have to maintain the CLI scripts to keep them up to date. If you don’t, you’ll likely run into issues that slow the development process down.

Final Thoughts on the Best Salesforce Data Loader

Because Data Loader is included with Salesforce, it’s an economical and viable solution when you’re migrating relatively small amounts of data without a lot of dependencies. 

However, when it comes to bigger jobs with more complex data models, you need a cost-effective, fast, secure, and user-friendly data loader—Prodly DevOps. Because with Prodly’s automated data loader, you can skyrocket your data migration process, increase your productivity, and enhance your velocity.

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FAQs

What is an automated data loader?

An automated data loader is a tool that uses automation to migrate data between environments. It minimizes manual work and human error when you set up a development environment, sync environments, or promote data up the release pipeline. Learn more about automation for data loading.

What are the benefits of using an automated data loader?

Using an automated dataloader offers several distincts advantages. Pre-built templates drastically reduce the amount of time and effort required for migrating data between orgs. In addition, moving data with automation results in fewer errors, which further reduces the time involved with data loading in Salesforce. In short, using an automated data loader can significantly enhance your productivity and velocity.

A vector illustration with white ones and zeros and the word "rollback" in red signifying a rollback strategy in Salesforce
Rollback, Salesforce DevOps, Version Control

Salesforce Rollback Strategy: A Primer

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A robust rollback strategy in Salesforce safeguards your change management process against bugs and errors in releases. In this blog, we discuss exactly what a rollback plan is, when you should use one, and how to implement it.

What Is a Rollback Strategy in Salesforce?

A vector illustration with white ones and zeros and the word "rollback" in red signifying a rollback strategy in Salesforce

A high-level definition of a Salesforce roll back strategy is a set of procedures you put in place to revert changes to your production environment. These procedures restore your Salesforce org to the stable state it was in before your previous deployment.

What Is the Purpose of Rollback?

The purpose of rollback is to minimize the impact of any bugs or issues that arise after deploying new changes to production. Because it acts as a kind of safety net, developers often call it the “oops button.”

Why Is a Rollback Strategy Important?

When you include a rollback strategy in your deployment process as a matter of course, you ensure you can quickly and easily deal with any issues without your end users being affected.

What Should Be in a Rollback Plan?

Your rollback strategy should encompass a carefully constructed, written, and tested plan that outlines all the steps you need to perform to revert production to a stable state. It should also define the part each team member plays in the process. In addition, it should include the checks you have to run and how to respond in the event of a failure situation.

When Should Rollback Be Used?

Use a roll back to restore stability to production when serious issues occur during a deployment, such as bugs or errors you can’t resolve in a short amount of time. 

You should also use one when new changes are causing complications that have a negative impact on your Salesforce instance’s performance. By performing a rollback to restore your production org to the state it was in before the changes, you can restore stability for your end users. They can go about their daily business, while you can work on a fix for the issue in an isolated environment.

How Do You Perform a Rollback Operation in Salesforce?

Now you know what a rollback plan is and when you need one, you’re probably wondering, “How do I rollback changes in Salesforce?” 

You can roll back changes using Salesforce tools, but this is quite complicated, as you can see from the steps below. You can also use Prodly to quickly and easily rollback a deployment.

How to Rollback a Deployment in Salesforce

To rollback a deployment in Salesforce, perform the following steps.

Stop the Deployment

If any issues arise during the deployment of a change, stop it immediately to prevent further damage to your Salesforce instance.

Inform Stakeholders About the Rollback

Communicate to everyone on your team, as well as all users and other stakeholders, that you’ve decided to perform a rollback and why.

Define the Scope of the Rollback

Determine which components have been affected by the deployment and need to be rolled back. Use this analysis to plan the steps you need to take to restore your production org to its previous state.

How to Rollback a Metadata Deployment

First, we’re going to look at how to rollback metadata changes. Let’s say you have three versions of a Flow, and the most recent version, version 3, is causing problems. You can deactivate version 3, reactivate the previous version (version 2), and deploy version 3 to a sandbox so you can fix it. You’ll have to perform a similar step for each metadata component that’s affected.

An image of deactivating a Flow in Salesforce to illustrate a rollback of metadata in Salesforce
How to Rollback a Config Data Deployment

Performing a rollback of config data (for example, if you’ve made changes to Salesforce CPQ) is more complex. First, check that you made a backup before you deployed the record updates. Then use Data Loader to revert the updates with that backup. If you inserted new records, identify them using a query or a Salesforce report, and delete them from production.

Check and Test

After you’ve restored your production org to the stable version, ensure that it’s fully functional. This might involve reconfiguring settings, reimporting data, or updating configurations.

Test thoroughly to make sure all components are working as expected and that there are no unexpected problems.

Communicate With Stakeholders

Inform your team, as well as all users and other stakeholders, that the rollback has been successful. You should also make them aware of any changes to production that will impact their workflows.

Roll Back a Salesforce Deployment in 5 Steps With Prodly DevOps

Prodly DevOps integrates with various version control systems, including GitHub. Because of this, it lets you easily perform a rollback in five simple steps:

  1. Navigate to the appropriate repository in GitHub and select the branch you deployed the changes from.
  2. Click on “Commit History” and select the pull request you want to roll back in the commits list.
  3. Click “Revert” at the bottom of the pull request and select the revert branch GitHub creates.
  4. Merge the new pull request GitHub creates into the branch you originally deployed the changes from.
  5. Deploy the restored changes from your branch to your Salesforce org.

Then all you have to do is log into Salesforce and confirm that your changes are successfully rolled back.

Conclusion

To ensure the continuity of your Salesforce instance, it’s critical to have a well-defined rollback strategy. By consistently making sure you have one for every significant deployment, you can minimize the impact of issues on your production environment and maintain the trust of your users.

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FAQs

What’s the difference between a rollback and a roll forward deployment?

When you perform a rollback, you revert your production environment to a previous state of stability—but then it doesn’t have the new features. With a roll forward deployment, you add additional changes that fix the issue while at the same time keeping the new features live. 

How often should I make a rollback strategy?

It’s advisable to have a tested rollback strategy in place for every significant deployment you make.

Diverse Salesforce team learning how to do CI/CD without version control
CI/CD, Salesforce Automation, Salesforce DevOps, Sandbox Management, Version Control

How to Do CI/CD Without Version Control

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You Don’t Always Need Git for Salesforce DevOps!

If you aren’t yet ready for source-driven development in Salesforce, it’s possible to do continuous integration and continuous delivery, or CI/CD, without version control. We’ll discuss how to do this and why you might want to. We’ll also explain that you can also find your own balance between no automation and source-driven development.

How to Do CI/CD Without a VCS in Salesforce

Diverse Salesforce team learning how to do CI/CD without version control

Although many developer-centric Salesforce teams are accustomed to using a version control system (VCS) for CI/CD, it’s not an absolute must-have. You can still achieve the benefits of CI/CD in Salesforce without Git.

Continuous Integration With Sandbox Management

To establish continuous integration in Salesforce without version control, start with a best-in-class sandbox management strategy to keep your orgs clean. Then, during the development process, you continually sync configuration changes that have passed integration testing into your developer environments. You do this by pinpointing the changes within the configurations in your integration environment and pushing them back to your Developer sandboxes and scratch orgs. 

This ensures your lower-level dev environments are always up to date, which in turn minimizes the chances of bugs and release delays. 

With a solution like Prodly Sandbox Management, you can easily manage data and metadata across every environment in your release path without using a Git repository. This is especially helpful for admins and other low-code/no-code users.

Continuous Delivery With Automated Deployments

Now you have up-to-date developer orgs, it’s time to automate deployments to ensure continuous delivery. The benefits of automating deployments include speed, accuracy, a reduced workload, and a whole lot less frustration.  

Using Prodly DevOps, you can bypass data loaders and change sets, and instead, deploy your changes automatically. Prodly DevOps provides easy diff-viewing and pre-built automations for a large number of Salesforce apps, including Salesforce CPQ, Conga Composer, FinancialForce, and more. 

What’s more: You can even schedule deployments so they occur after hours, when they won’t disrupt your business users.

Why Do CI/CD Without Source Control?

One reason to do CI/CD without Git in Salesforce DevOps is that a source-driven development process takes time and effort to set up. You’ll also have to organize training and enablement on a completely new process for your team. Additionally, you have to use the exact same release path every time, which can compromise your agility, especially when it comes to small fixes.

The initial overhead of implementing source-driven development combined with the loss of flexibility often outweighs the benefits gained. Because of this, smaller teams rarely find the upfront investment of setting up a version control system for Salesforce DevOps worth the return.

Find the Right Balance Between No Automation and Source-Driven Development

When it comes to deciding between no automation for release management and source-driven development, it’s important to realize that the Goldilocks principle applies. This means that there’s no predetermined “right” or “wrong” balance between the two. What works for your Salesforce instance might be completely different from what works for another company. 

For example, let’s say you can achieve 90 percent of the efficiency gains of CI/CD with automated deployments. If you add version control, it might give you the other 10 percent—but it would likely require an inordinate amount of effort to set it up. In other words, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons of using a VCS and decide on a course of action that will yield the greatest ROI for your specific company.

CI/CD With Prodly DevOps

Although source-driven development offers additional automation for Salesforce DevOps, you can achieve comparable results using Prodly DevOps.

Interested in learning more? Request a demo today!

FAQs

What is a VCS?

A version control system or VCS is a tool that makes tracking and managing changes to code and configuration easier. By using a VCS, you can ensure you’re always working on the latest version of the configuration. Learn more about version control for Salesforce. 

 

What are the most popular version control systems for Salesforce DevOps?

The most popular version control systems for Salesforce DevOps include GitHub, Bitbucket, Azure, and GitLab.

 

What is continuous integration for Salesforce?

Continuous integration for Salesforce is the practice of keeping Salesforce development environments in sync with production. It also involves syncing in-flight development work to identify and fix integration issues as early as possible in the development cycle. 

In a best-in-class Salesforce development process, changes to data and metadata are continuously integrated across parallel development paths. This way, everyone’s working against the most current configuration of Salesforce.

 

What is continuous delivery for Salesforce?

Continuous delivery for Salesforce is the practice of automating the delivery of changes to end users in production. A best-in-class Salesforce development process involves making and testing changes in a development environment, i.e. a Developer sandbox or scratch org.

After you’ve approved the changes, you use automation to deploy them through a release path of increasingly production-like orgs. These can include integration, UAT, and staging phases. The ultimate goal is to deliver thoroughly tested work to end-users. 

By using automation, continuous delivery for Salesforce accelerates the release cycle and reduces the risk of deployment errors.

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Configuration Data, Kaptio Deployments, Salesforce DevOps

How to Run a Kaptio Deployment

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In this blog, we teach you how to run a Kaptio deployment using Prodly’s automation templates or data sets. This process is much more accurate than manually deploying config data with a Salesforce data loader. Automation takes 80 percent less time, which boosts your productivity significantly!

Automate Kaptio Deployments

Prodly DevOps provides automated deployment templates for the entire Kaptio data model. That means you can now perform accurate and successful Kaptio deployments in minutes instead of days! 


Here’s how to run a Kaptio deployment in three steps with Prodly DevOps:

  1. Select the source and destination environments.
  2. Select the template you want to use to deploy your Kaptio object, i.e. Business Unit, Package, Agreement, Itinerary Data, etc.
  3. Deploy.

Check out how quick and easy it is in this video:

Discover automation for Kaptio deployments—request a demo!

FAQs

What is Kaptio?

Kaptio Travel Platform is an end-to-end enterprise travel CRM built on the Salesforce platform. It allows travel providers to handle reservations, contracts, operations, and their distribution management system all from a single pane of glass.

Why are Kaptio deployments with Data Loader so difficult?

Kaptio deployments are so difficult because the Kaptio data model consists of complex configuration data, like Salesforce CPQ. As such, there are many object relationships that need to be taken into account in every deployment. When you use Data Loader, you have to map all these relationships out manually, one-by-one, to make sure the deployment is successful. This is tedious and time-consuming work that’s prone to error and often results in hours of rework.

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Salesforce DevOps

Pros and Cons of Salesforce DevOps

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It’s critical to understand the pros and cons of Salesforce DevOps before implementing it in your organization. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at the development philosophy’s advantages, including improved collaboration and creativity, faster delivery of changes, reduced risk, and increased ROI.

We’ll also examine the disadvantages, such as the time and cost investment, added complexity, and potential disruptions and delays during the transition.

Advantages of Salesforce DevOps

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There’s one overarching benefit of Salesforce DevOps. It enables you to deliver higher-quality changes and applications much faster than you could using traditional release methods like change sets and Data Loader. Let’s take a closer look at these key advantages.

Improved Collaboration and Creativity

Implementing Salesforce DevOps eliminates silos and improves collaboration between development and operations teams. Salesforce admins, developers and business operation teams must work together to deliver process optimization for the business. This improved collaboration between the teams can lead to greater creativity and innovation.

Faster Delivery of Changes

Salesforce DevOps involves delivering incremental changes on a continuous basis. You can get updates and new apps to your sales team much faster than with traditional models. This in turn empowers them to do their job better.

Reduced Risk

Salesforce DevOps reduces risk because it allows you to be agile and respond immediately to the demands of the market. In the worst-case scenario, with conventional big bang releases, an app can be obsolete by the time it’s market ready. With Salesforce DevOps, you can prioritize bug fixes and change direction without too much disruption because you deliver work iteratively.

Increased ROI

Arguably the most important benefit of Salesforce DevOps is that it delivers an increased ROI. Automation—a key aspect of Salesforce DevOps—and risk reduction contribute significantly to keeping costs low and maximizing returns.

Disadvantages of Salesforce DevOps

While these advantages are significant, there are potential drawbacks, as well.

Time and Cost Investment

Implementing DevOps in Salesforce may require a certain financial investment if you need to purchase new automation tools and work management apps. At the same time, moving from a traditional development model to DevOps doesn’t happen overnight. You’ll need to dedicate time and resources to getting the framework and processes set up—all while ensuring business continuity.

Added Complexity

To make DevOps work in Salesforce, your teams need to communicate, collaborate, and adopt new processes and tools. Depending on the flexibility of your team, this can be easy or challenging. In some cases, already established processes are so ingrained that they’re almost impossible to overcome.

Potential Disruptions and Delays During the Transition

Salesforce DevOps involves a different way of working. No matter how enthusiastic the team is, this can potentially have an impact on change management during the transition period. It’s advisable to delay any major updates or deliveries until everyone is comfortable with the new development philosophy.

Measure the Potential of Salesforce DevOps for Your Business

Salesforce DevOps can provide efficiency gains and deliver a significant ROI for your business. However, there are many ways to implement DevOps best practices within Salesforce, and you don’t have to implement every best practice to start seeing results. 

When you’ve decided on one or more best practices to implement, conduct a proof of concept trial on a smaller project, and use metrics to evaluate the results. This will allow you to make a data-driven decision as to whether Salesforce DevOps is right for your business or not.

FAQs

What are the four most important DevOps principles?

To implement DevOps, you need to incorporate the following four principles into your development process: automation, iteration, continuous monitoring and improvement, and collaboration. Learn more about DevOps principles.

How can Salesforce DevOps help my organization be more innovative?

Implementing DevOps principles in Salesforce involves fostering communication and collaboration between development and operations teams. The resulting combination of different points of view can lead to heightened creativity that you can then harness for innovation.

This post is republished with permission from Salesforce DevOps HQ.

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Data Deployment, Enterprise Territory Management, Reference Data, Salesforce DevOps

How to Automate Enterprise Territory Management Deployments

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In this blog, I’ll explain how you can use automation to quickly and easily deploy Enterprise Territory Management changes. Plus, I’ll discuss how to schedule your Enterprise Territory Management deployments—so you can enjoy your New Year’s Eve with your family and friends! 

Automatically Deploy Enterprise Territory Management Updates

Manually deploying changes in Salesforce Enterprise Territory Management is a complex, time-consuming process. Why? Because some components are metadata, while other components are built with complex relational record data—also referred to as configuration data. 

In contrast, with Prodly DevOps, you can promote your changes quickly and effortlessly—no matter whether they’re metadata or record data. What’s more: You can do it all in one go in our user-friendly “clicks, not code” UI.

For example, let’s say your sales team is expanding and your CRO has asked you to model various ways to divide sales territories to create equitable opportunities for everyone. Enterprise Territory Management makes it easy to set up and test sales territories, so you’ve built several territory models with territory account assignment rules in your sandbox. Now you want to deploy these new territory models to production.

Prodly DevOps lets you do this quickly and easily using an automated guided deployment. Watch this video to see how easy it is: 

Here’s how to automatically deploy Enterprise Territory Management updates in just a few easy steps:

  1. In the Prodly DevOps UI, navigate to the Guided Deployment page.
  2. Select your source and destination environments.
  3. Select the metadata you want to deploy. Prodly highlights the differences between your environments and shows you exactly what’s changed to help you get it right the first time. 
  4. Select the data you want to deploy by choosing the Enterprise Territory Management data set from Prodly. A data set is a pre-built automation that identifies which data to move.
  5. Optionally, select Temporarily Deactivate Events to automatically deactivate and reactivate all available platform automation during deployment.
  6. Click Deploy.

Click here for more in-depth information about our guided deployments. 

How to Schedule an Enterprise Territory Management Deployment in 3 Steps

Because sales territory alignment is a common end-of-year activity, making updates to Enterprise Territory Management often requires a release manager or advanced admin to sacrifice their New Year’s Eve. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way! With Prodly DevOps, you can schedule Prodly DevOps deployments so you don’t have to work after hours. And that way, you get your New Year’s Eve back.

To schedule automatic deployments in Enterprise Territory Management, all you need are the IDs of the data set, source environment, and destination environment. After you’ve gathered this information, perform these three steps:

  1. Open the Developer Console.
  2. Navigate to Debug > Open Execute Anonymous Window.
  3. Copy and paste the code on this page using your IDs:
Code for scheduling an Enterprise Territory Management deployment.

Now, you can choose the exact time you want to push the updates to production. That means you can schedule the deployment for 5pm on December 31st—after everyone has stopped working—and go enjoy your New Year’s Eve. Then when you, your RevOps team, and your sales team get back to work in the new year, your new territories are all set and ready to go!

Discover How Prodly DevOps Can Benefit Your Business

Just imagine the peace of mind you can get by automating your deployments—not to mention the added convenience of being able to schedule them. Discover how your business can benefit from Prodly DevOps—request a personalized demo!

FAQs

Why is it so difficult to deploy record data from multiple objects in Salesforce?

Salesforce doesn’t have a tool for deploying related record data all at once. When you’re dealing with a lot of complex relational record data, it can take hours to map objects—even longer if you make mistakes and have to start over.

How can I deploy reference data in Salesforce faster and more accurately?

With the automation provided by Prodly DevOps, you can select pre-built data sets and deploy them from one environment to another 66 percent faster than other solutions. Plus, you can ramp up productivity by 80 percent!

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An vector diagram depicting running a Salesforce CPQ deployment
Data Deployment, Salesforce CPQ, Salesforce DevOps

How to Run a Salesforce CPQ Deployment

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Learn how to easily run a Salesforce CPQ deployment using Prodly’s automation templates. Deploy CPQ records in 80 percent less time than manual deployment—while simultaneously eliminating errors.

Automate Salesforce CPQ Deployments

Few of us get excited about tedious manual labor. That’s why Prodly created the first DevOps tool for Salesforce CPQ to automate what is otherwise hours of manual, error-prone work. 

Here’s how to easily run a Salesforce CPQ deployment with Prodly’s automation:

  1. Select where the ready-to-go changes are and where they need to go—whether that’s the next org in your release path or a branch in your repository.
  2. Select whether all of CPQ needs to be deployed or just a part of CPQ (i.e. all Price Rules or a new Product)
  3. Deploy.

Prodly’s Salesforce CPQ Automation Features

Proven Templates for the Entire CPQ Configuration Data Model

Prodly DevOps comes with data set templates—think prebuilt automations—that capture the entirety of the Salesforce CPQ configuration data model. That means you can be up and running in no time. Our templates have been battle tested on over 55 million CPQ deployments.

All you have to do is make your CPQ changes in your development org, select the appropriate template—and Prodly DevOps does the rest for you. It knows all the parent-child relationships and selects them automatically for deployment. You can even deploy the entire CPQ configuration in one click using our automation templates.

Customize Data Set Templates

If you like, you can even customize data set templates to add additional relationships with configuration data.

By going deeper into the data set templates, you can get really granular as to what you want to deploy and what not. Then you can preview the deployment to make sure it has everything you need in it—and nothing else.

Temporarily Deactivate Platform Events in Salesforce

Many of our customers say their favorite feature in Prodly DevOps is the ability to temporarily deactivate—and, importantly, reactivate—platform events and automations like Validation Rules and Flows during a deployment.

While great for running your business and maintaining data hygiene in your org, these events can cause unnecessary and frustrating deployment errors during the development process. Prodly DevOps automatically reactivates the events when the deployment is completed.

Prodly’s ability to automate this during a deployment saves you heaps of time compared to manually turning events on and off. Plus, it ensures you don’t overlook an event—which could have serious consequences.

For example, if you forget to reactivate a Validation Rule, it could result in bad data being entered into the system. Or if you forget to reactivate a Flow, it could mean that a critical part of a business workflow doesn’t get executed.

Progress Report

Prodly DevOps shows you in the UI how the deployment is progressing, and it sends you an email notification when it’s complete. That way, you don’t have to keep an eye on it yourself.

Audit History

Does governance and SOX compliance keep you or your management up at night? Prodly DevOps provides automatic change tracking that provides an audit report of every change. This easily-generated audit report includes who made what changes, when, and why—and it can easily be sent, too. Your next SOX audit will fly by.

Promoting CPQ Configuration Data Changes Without Prodly

Without automation, deploying a change to your product catalog or other configuration data in Salesforce CPQ can be a complicated, painstaking, and time-consuming process.

For every root object, you have to migrate all the related objects–so both the parent and child objects—to ensure the configuration changed works when it is deployed to production.

Let’s say you’ve made changes to your Product object, which has dozens of parent and child relationships.

When you have to move the newly-configured Product records from your Developer sandbox or scratch org to integration, you also have to move related records in all those parent and child objects. And because Salesforce record IDs change between environments, you’ll need to map IDs to maintain those relationships.

Manually.

For every single record. One object at a time.

Then you have to do it again when you move the changes to UAT. Manually. For every single record. One object at a time.

And again when you move them to staging.

And again when you promote them to production.

How long does this take? Hours, if not longer. Oh, and that’s assuming everything went according to plan and there weren’t any errors that required a do over.

The Market-Leading Salesforce CPQ DevOps Tool

See how easy it is to run a Salesforce CPQ deployment with Prodly DevOps compared to without?

Prodly is truly the best-in-class DevOps tool to enhance the benefits of Salesforce CPQ, and it offers even more brilliant features than described above! Our state-of-the-art platform includes work management integration, version control, effortless work deployment, and easy compliance. 

Getting up and running is a breeze—and super fast. Plus, if you have any questions at all, our support team is rated one of the best in the industry.

Discover how Prodly DevOps can streamline your Salesforce CPQ instance and accelerate your digital transformation!

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The business case for automated sandbox seeding.
Business Benefits, Salesforce DevOps, sandbox seeding

The Business Case for Automated Sandbox Seeding

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Automated sandbox seeding can significantly accelerate digital transformation. It allows businesses to boost the pace of Salesforce innovation, save money on Full Copy sandboxes, improve governance and data security, and reduce attrition. Moreover, it empowers them to reduce the time to value of their Salesforce investment.

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at the business benefits of automated data seeding.

The business case for automated sandbox seeding.

Accelerate the Pace of Salesforce Innovation Without Sacrificing Trust

Automated sandbox seeding results in a streamlined release pipeline, which enables faster innovation. Because it offers a less risk-prone alternative to making changes in the production environment, it drastically reduces the chances of errors, bugs, and downtime. This is critical to maintaining trust with business users. 

Save Money on Full Copy Sandboxes

With sandbox seeding, Salesforce teams can use Developer sandboxes or scratch orgs like Full Copies. Each Full Copy sandbox costs 30 percent of a business’s net spend in Salesforce. As such, organizations can save a significant amount of funds on change management.

Improve Governance and Data Security

Prodly Sandbox Management provides control over who can deploy what data to which environments. This improves governance. In addition, because sandbox management eliminates the need to download data to CSVs and enables the masking of sensitive data during deployment, it greatly enhances data security.

Reduce Attrition

According to a Salesforce survey, 89 percent of full-time workers are more satisfied thanks to automation. Moreover, an astounding 91 percent agree that automation saves them time and gives them a better work-life balance. When high-performing employees experience enhanced job satisfaction, it leads to improved retention. This greatly reduces the costs associated with acquiring and onboarding new talent and significantly contributes to an organization’s human capital.

Decrease Time to Value of Your Salesforce Investment

As a result of more efficient employees and faster, more streamlined release processes, Salesforce teams can increase productivity by 80 percent. As a result, they have more time to focus on value-adding work. Moreover, the business starts realizing the value of its Salesforce investment that much faster.

Prodly Sandbox Management

Prodly Sandbox Management is a powerful tool to manage all environments in the development landscape. Its one-click scratch org creation and sandbox seeding features drastically reduce the time Salesforce teams spend on setting up and syncing environments. Plus, its governance features ensure the business is always in compliance with regulations. 

As a result, Salesforce teams can work faster and compliantly, produce more and better work, and help propel the business forward.

For more information about Prodly Sandbox Management, please request a personalized demo.