Transcript:

Welcome everyone to our very first Did you know? with Prodly Customer Success. I am your co-host Scott Teeple and I'm very excited to be joined with our wonderful customer success manager, Jennifer Joannow. We are excited to bring the first edition of Prodly Does Metadata Release and Version Control. And there will be many, many more of these release videos as we continue to find more more topics to talk about.

But as we kind of get this thing kicked off, I just wanted to just give a quick introduction to kind of who's leading the webinar today. So Jen, if you want to go ahead and just introduce yourself real quick. Absolutely.

Thank you, Scott. Hello, everyone. My name is Jennifer, and you can call me Jen. I'll be your customer success manager here at Prodly. So I handle all the training and onboarding of new and existing customers and just in general work very closely with each account on a technical level. And I've joined Prodly about two and a half, been probably two and a half years now. I started on the support team, made my way over to QA and now I found my home here in Success.

That is definitely a home and you're doing a fantastic job. So I'm Scott and I'm the Director of Customer Success. So I've been with Prodly about a year and a half, little bit more than but come with 20 plus years of working within business and IT, IT business, shadow IT kind of sorts. We really have a passion for bringing value for customers and being able to utilize technology in a new fun way. So really excited to be with with Prodly and helping all of our customers along their journey and get the value. So, all right. So first edition of Prodly does metadata and version control.

As you know, Prodly is well known for its fantastic data capabilities and moving data as CPQ has been our bread and butter and moving that data along. But Jen, maybe just do some conversation here around why should they trust Prodly to also handle their metadata?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, first and foremost, if you are trusting Prodly to move your data, your data, rather the question is, why would you not trust Prodly to move your metadata? But beyond trusting Prodly, I would say that there's a lot of benefits to kind of using Prodly for your metadata. So as we all know, tech stack consolidation has been top of mind for a lot of users nowadays. all, everyone's looking for a tool that does everything, right? One tool fits all.

And so there's a lot of benefits to having Prodly handle your metadata alongside with your data. The UI is very similar, so pretty much exactly the same. So your users only really need to get comfortable using one tool, and that's that Prodly look and feel, which is really user-friendly, very easy to get a grasp on. And then in addition to that, you have the option to bundle your data and your metadata deployments together with Prodly.

So just as you would go and deploy your metadata, you can then deploy your data alongside. So saving you time throughout the whole process. Yeah. And how many times do you not have data with metadata or data without metadata, right? So they kind of go hand in hand in the way that you really need it. So you don't want to be jumping between this tool and that tool and that tool to be able to do what you need to do. So really having a one place to go and you trust Prodly for all of that really, really complex data.

Now we handle, and have handled metadata for quite some time, but really spent an awful lot of efforts within the engineering team to really beef that up and really excited to bring this fully to everyone in the market. So when we think about metadata tools, when we say, Prodly does metadata, some of the things that kind of come to mind, right, the basics of a metadata tool, are really here on the screen, right? So when you think about the abilities to do what you need to do, I don't know, Jen, when you think about metadata comparison, version control integrations, maybe what exactly, the basis of the conversation, but why now? Why Prodly now? What's changed or what have we done to really enhance and bring sort of the basics of metadata to our customers?

Absolutely. So we've made a lot of enhancements recently with our metadata. So pretty much it provides an end-to-end solution for all of your metadata needs. So that allows you, yes, to compare your components side-by side between your source and destination. We recently have added the option for multiple views there. So we actually have the ability to do an XML diff as well.

So we're kind of expanding those features as we go along, of course, but really the list here is capturing kind of the core functionality that a metadata tool would need for it to really be functional. And so when we talk about comparison, probably can do that. VC integration is the next big thing, right? We connect to all of your major kind of VCS systems like GitLab, GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, Azure as well.

We allow you to connect to your VC system and that way you can pass all of your data and your metadata through your repository. And again, kind of keeping that whole one-stop shop, right? You're going to submit that check into your branch. you want everything to be moving into your branch. You can then pass your metadata and your data with Prodly through your repository. As far as selective deployment, of course, that allows you to pick and choose what components you want to deploy. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing necessarily.

Validation and testing, we allow you to run validation tests with your metadata deployments. Of course, depending if that's needed or not, it's up to you what tests you run. We also have the ability to do like specified tests where you can specifically tell us what tests you want to run with your deployment. Rollbacks, that's all really handled through the VCS integration. So if you are connected to GitHub, you do have that ability to do that rollback within GitHub and then deploy those changes down from your branch to your org. Same thing with deployment history and tracking. We keep all of that information for you stored in your deployment results. So anytime you want to reference when a change was made, who made the change, this kind of thing, you can see all that within your results. Of course, you can also see successful components. Anything that erred out, you have the ability to cross-reference all those errors there and you have them all there for you.

User permissions and access controls. These are all things that we can handle. So if you want to restrict access to certain users, you only want them doing certain types of deployments, we can handle that for you. Error handling kind of tying back into what I said about deployment history and tracking, right? We have all that information for you there. you don't have to navigate anywhere else to see it. It's just as you would any data deployment was probably. You get that same error handling with metadata. All the errors are there for you.

Now compliance and audit trails. This is a space that we're expanding in further. But for right now, I would say that kind of ties into our deployment results as well, where you can then, of course, see all the audits there, see who's made these changes and so forth. And then sandbox and support is really just alluding to the idea of being able to connect to multiple environments, really any Salesforce instance, and you have that flexibility, you're probably to deploy to and from any of those orgs if you need to.

Or of course you can pass through your VC system, it's really optional. Yeah, and a lot of these features, you know, we've had for quite some time. And I think the one that probably changes some of the narratives today is around our version control integration and being now having the abilities to tie into your repo. But it's not just for that master record capture, right? I think a lot of the VCSs have really expanded and gotten a lot more into pipelines and a lot more automation.

So now being able to utilize the full features of their product with Prodly to be able to handle not only the data and the movements with your orgs, but then also the automation and the actions that come along the way. So I think this is a big change that's happened probably over the last six months. So again, if you've taken a look recently or haven't taken a look recently, maybe now is the time to take a crack and look at us again.

And basically, the mantra that I've been saying now for the last couple of weeks is everything you need, nothing that you don't. So when you look at what you really need within a metadata tool, you likely could be spending a lot of money for both for metadata. Maybe it's time to really look at that tech consolidation and not necessarily need that other tool and just use Prodly for all of it.

So over the last six months, you and I have been working really close together. We've been having a lot of conversations with customers around metadata. And some of the stories that we're hearing, that we talk about quite often, kind of is on the screen right now. So what would you say to the customer who's listening to this or the prospect who's listening to this and says, hey, I already have a metadata tool. I really just want a tool that just does data.

What would you say to that customer that would give this reason? I mean, generally speaking, if you have a metadata tool and that's working for you by all means, but the same way that you rely on Prodly for your data and you're relying on another tool for your metadata, chances are at one point or another, you're going to want to consolidate those tools and look for a tool that can handle both for you. And then you're going to have to make the choice, where are you willing to sacrifice? But we're trying to make it so you don't have to sacrifice.

We're your data champions. you know us for that. You love us for that. You use us for that. We have added the metadata there. So that way, when you do have to make a difficult decision, you still have that ability to keep Prodly because we deliver on the metadata. And it's giving you everything you need there. And it looks and feels like Prodly as well. So again, your users only need to get used to one tool. And of course, the way that we have our metadata bundles now as well, we're all about saving you time. And we're trying to take even further and package in our data into it too. So the idea here is really that if you know and love Prodly for your data, it's definitely worth exploring probably for your metadata.

Absolutely. So then, you know, we've heard this actually quite a bit and this was a surprise to me, but, you know, change set; Salesforce gives it to you for free. Like, hey, I've got a nice system going. I really understand how it works. I've been using it for a really long time.

It's good enough. Why now? Why would I consider probably when I have a system and process of change sets? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned costs and that's kind of the first thing I would touch on here is that change sets is free. That's great. But we're probably as well, if you are paying for data, I don't believe we have a single package right now that includes just data and not metadata. So essentially if you're paying for data with Prodly, you're already paying for the metadata, you're just not using it.

So really it's coming at no extra cost to you whatsoever. So it really just comes down to, know, are you willing to move off of change sets and are you willing to make that change to Prodly? You did this with Data Loader, right? You were using Data Loader to migrate your data. And then one day you found a need for a tool like Prodly to come in there and automate that process for you. It's essentially the same exact shift when we're moving from change sets to Prodly metadata. No difference there. I love that. I love that.

And this one maybe is a little dated, but I think we wanted to keep it in here just for the conversation. You kind of touched on it on the other slide. But yeah, but I need rollback capabilities, right? I think this is one that we heard for quite a few years leading up to us releasing our version control itself. But anything more to share here on, I need rollback capabilities? I would just say that there was a time that we couldn't do it. That time is not now. We can do that for you now.

I would encourage users to anyone who has that kind of concern to definitely give it a try and see how it works with Prodly. It essentially works like you mentioned, Scott, you're doing your role back in your repository, pushing those changes down to your org. And so the same system here, same rules apply for data and metadata. So a lot of our users are paying close attention to their metadata. They have a whole process built around it, and then they're going and passing everything through the repository and they can roll back changes to their metadata at any time. I would say get on the wave with Prodly, start rolling back your metadata with Prodly and while you're at it, go ahead and set it up for your data too. So you can also have that flexibility for data as well. Now, yeah. And this last one, I'm not sure coming from an IT world that I would have ever said it this way, that cost is not a factor because we're always being scrutinized on the overall cost. But, you know, I think in some ways you know, I've got all these tools. I've got my budget. I've got my spend. I don't really need to consolidate like maybe some others. Why would I look to consolidate if I already have my processes in place? Well, I think there is more than just a cost benefit to having one tool, right? And the idea here is that you want to empower your team to be able to do more, right? So you have your admins and you have your devs, and ultimately you want to free up more of that admin, sorry, that dev time to pass things onto your admins a little bit more. And Prodly is a great tool to do that. Getting started with Prodly is super easy. There's essentially no legwork at all. Very quick to get started. Totally user friendly, end to end. mean, no learning curve really there even. And so ultimately I would say, using Prodly for your data and metadata needs together, there's a huge benefit in that just having that one tool, being able to train your users on one super user-friendly tool. And that way you have that flexibility. If any of your users ever need to kind of dabble into some of the other teams' work, it's not going to be this huge production, getting them up to speed on this brand new tool, this other unfamiliar system that they don't know. You know, so I would say that's probably a big one outside of cost. There's other benefits outside of cost to just having one tool that does it all.

Yeah, that's absolutely. And now it's time for us to come with what people maybe wanted to see as a little demo. So let's go ahead and have you share your screen and kind of do a quick little demo.

Absolutely. So for today's demo, I'm just going to kind of show you guys how to build out a bundle. And then we'll go ahead and check that into our branch as well. So when it comes to bundles, you're going to want to come into either the deploy page or the compare page. Let me see here if I have it. So it looks something like this when you're first getting started. You'll want to choose your source, your destination. you'll need a filter. And then you can go ahead and load that metadata. So I'll leave this to load and I'll shift over to this tab just to show you guys kind of what the compare looks like as well.

If you ever need to run a compare with Prodly, you can just click on the component that will load the compare on the right-hand side. And I just want to show you guys that this is where you have the standard view versus file view as well. If you ever want to change over to files, you can choose to diff your components through XML. I just want to show you that here, something more like this. And then when you actually want to build out your bundle, you just come in and pick and choose what you care to deploy. And then you would save that, give it some sort of name, and then you would be able to save that bundle to reuse. Now I'm gonna go ahead and actually just come in here and create a deployment. So we'll go ahead and check in from the source to my main branch, load up my metadata, come in and find the bundle that I want to move. I've created this a little bit earlier today. Just gonna expand that just to confirm what those changes I'm checking into my repository. So I see I have new flow, got a layout change, couple validation rules, and a new object. And so this is where I would then add my data as well if I wanted to check that into my branch as well. You do that using Data Sets and deployment plans. So I'll just go ahead and give that Data Set. And of course, when you're doing a check in, you'll need to just give it a commit message and then you can save to branch when you're done.

Now I did skip ahead just to kind of show you guys today how this will look in your repository and your branch. So opening up my main branch, you can see that my data lives in its own folder. My metadata that we've checked in today, that lives in its own folder as well. And then everything is grouped out by object or by component type. You can open that up to view the sub components in there as

And for metadata, everything gets checked in as an XML file. For data, they go in as either JSON files or CSVs as well, just to show you guys the data side as well, grouped by object in your repository, that's folders for each.

I'd like to show some deployment results as well. Just to show you guys, this is what deployment result for a metadata check-in would look like. You're going to see, of course, if there's any error messages, those will be listed here. If any changes were made, in this case none were made. But we do have the ability to show you if the records or the components were updated, inserted, deleted, or unchanged.

I think that's all I got for the demo here today. Yeah, I think that gives a nice glimpse to the overall product and what we were talking about. In summary, we're your customer success team and we really hope that you got some value and interests in maybe using probably for your metadata going forward. So why not trust us for your metadata? You're trusting us for data. And if you don't know who your customer success or your account manager is, feel free to reach out to me and I'll get you in contact with the right individual or Jen and I will pick it up and have that conversation. But if you're not a customer yet and you're seeing this, please take a look, fill out the get demo and somebody will be in contact with you, because we'd really like to show you the full product as we move forward.

Thank you and have a great day.

‍