With over 150,000 businesses worldwide relying on Salesforce and 98% of global teams reporting significant return on investments (ROI), the platform is renowned for driving efficiency, faster releases, seamless collaboration, and data security in its deployment processes.
Yet, for many organizations, the journey can be filled with challenges that cost time, money, and trust. A successful Salesforce deployment isn't just about getting your system up and running; it's about aligning it seamlessly with business goals for long-term success.
This guide explores seven essential best practices for navigating these common challenges and ensuring your Salesforce deployment delivers lasting value. Whether you're preparing for your first rollout or refining your approach, these insights will set you up for success.Let's dive in!
The 7 Salesforce Deployment Best Practices
To achieve a seamless and efficient Salesforce deployment, following practices that minimize risks and maximize outcomes is essential. Here are the 7 essential best practices to guide your deployment for success.
1. Plan Thoroughly Before Deployment
Every successful deployment begins with a solid plan. Without clear objectives and a well-structured roadmap, your Salesforce deployment process may face unexpected obstacles, resulting in long release cycles or wasted efforts.
How to Plan Effectively?
- Clarify your goals and priorities: Understand what you aim to achieve. For example, as a Chief Technology Officer (CTO), your goal might be to reduce deployment time by 50% or double the monthly releases.
- Develop a detailed roadmap: Create a timeline with milestones for each stage. For instance, you could plan for six hours per deployment, ensuring each phase—such as testing, review, and final release—is accounted for and achievable.
- Anticipate risks and prepare solutions: List potential challenges and develop strategies to address them before they disrupt the deployment.
2. Use a Sandbox Environment for Testing
A sandbox provides a safe space to experiment and validate changes without affecting your live production environment. Skipping this crucial step can lead to error, downtime, or disrupted workflow during deployment.
Key Benefits of Using Sandboxes
- Risk-free testing: You can test changes like updating a sales process or customizing an approval workflow without affecting live data. For example, adjust how leads are assigned to sales reps and ensure the changes work as expected.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Teams can work on different aspects of the deployment simultaneously. For instance, while developers create a custom app, Salesforce admins can adjust user permissions in the same sandbox.
- Seamless Transitions: Catch issues early, like a report failing to pull data correctly after a field update. Fixing this beforehand ensures smoother deployment to production.
Salesforce offers various sandbox options, such as:
- Developer Sandboxes: Best for small changes like field customizations or rule adjustments.
- Partial Copy Sandboxes: Ideal for testing with a sample of real data, such as new campaign flows.
- Full Copy Sandboxes: Suited for large updates, like simulating system-wide upgrades.
3. Use Salesforce Change Sets and Deployment Tools
Salesforce provides built-in tools like Change Sets to simplify deployment. However, as your organization grows or faces more complex requirements, it will require more specialized tools designed for greater efficiency.
An excellent solution is Flosum, a DevOps platform built natively on Salesforce, which can streamline and scale the deployment process effectively.
For example, with Flosum, you can:
- Australia Post, a leading logistics company, cut deployment time from 30 average hours to just 6 hours, saving over $50,000 a year in direct resource costs.
- Turnitin's team saw a 98% deployment success and saved 45% of their developer's time within months.
- DMI Finance, a leader in the finance industry, increased production deployments from 15 to 35 per month — a 133% improvement in their release cadence.
Additionally, this tool can handle complex deployment scenarios, such as resolving merge conflicts, with its native version control system. This ensures seamless integration and smooth releases.
4. Involve Stakeholders Early and Often
Involving stakeholders from the start of the development process ensures your deployment aligns with business objectives. Engaging the right people at the right time fosters collaboration and reduces resistance, making the deployment process smoother.
How to Engage Stakeholders Effectively
- Include representatives from various departments: For example, you can involve IT for technical insights, sales for user experience feedback, and marketing to ensure campaigns are aligned with deployment changes.
- Hold regular check-ins: Schedule brief, consistent meetings to gather feedback. If you're rolling out a new CRM feature, ask sales and support teams if it meets their needs or if they encounter issues in testing.
- Communicate timelines and expectations clearly: Make sure everyone knows when changes will happen and what's expected. If a major feature is being launched, inform stakeholders beforehand so they can prepare.
5. Prioritize Data Integrity and Security
Data integrity and security are critical to a successful Salesforce deployment. Neglecting these aspects can lead to significant challenges, including:
- Unauthorized Access: Sensitive information being exposed to individuals without proper clearance.
- Data Breaches: Weak security protocols compromising customer and company data.
These issues can have severe consequences like loss of trust and reputation and legal penalties. Focusing on strategies that strengthen your Salesforce data security investment, such as robust backup solutions, minimizes risks tied to unauthorized access and breaches and ensures a more resilient deployment process.
For instance, Flosum's zero-trust security model enhances your data security by ensuring no one can access customer data without explicit permission.
6. Ensure Thorough Documentation
Thorough documentation is essential yet often overlooked. Without it, troubleshooting and onboarding new team members can become much harder due to communication breakdowns, which may result in low productivity.
Examples of things to document are:
- Salesforce deployment processes: Document each deployment step, including the tools and methods used. For example, if you deploy through Change Sets, note the specific configurations or customizations made during the process.
- Configuration settings and customizations: Record all settings and customizations, such as specific validation rules or field configurations. This makes it easier for someone new to understand the environment and replicate your work.
Key learnings and potential pitfalls: Write down any challenges faced during the deployment, such as issues with permission sets or failed integrations, and how they were resolved. This helps avoid repeating mistakes.
7. Monitor and Optimize Post-Deployment
Once your deployment is live, the work doesn't stop there. You must continually monitor its performance, address potential issues, and optimize the system to maximize its impact. This is where a robust monitoring tool becomes invaluable.
Platforms like Flosum offer built-in reports, dashboards, and KPIs, giving you deep visibility into system performance and user activity. You can easily track and compare code versions, monitor code changes, and spot potential issues—all within the platform.
Benefits of Post-Deployment Monitoring
- Track performance metrics: Monitoring metrics like response times and system errors helps you identify areas for improvement early.
- Conduct regular audits: Regular audits ensure your system is aligned with your evolving business goals and compliance requirements.
- Gather user feedback: Ongoing feedback provides valuable insights that can drive system improvements and enhance your user experience.
Transform Your Salesforce Deployments with Flosum DevOps
Salesforce deployment comes with its fair share of challenges. However, understanding these challenges and how to mitigate them while sticking to proven Salesforce deployment best practices can lead to remarkable outcomes.
These practices help minimize downtime, accelerate deployment processes, and ensure that each change aligns with your organization's goals.
For teams looking to streamline their deployment process, tools like Flosum offer a native Salesforce solution designed to simplify the experience. Built-in security and features suited for technical and non-technical users help scale deployments effectively while reducing costs.
Ready to transform your Salesforce deployment process? Check out this demo and see how Flosum can help you scale faster, lower costs, and strengthen data security.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. Which is the best deployment tool for Salesforce?
Flosum stands out as the top choice for Salesforce deployments. Unlike general-purpose tools like Git, Flosum is 100% native to Salesforce, offering seamless integration with features like the version control system, CI/CD, and real-time analytics. It eliminates the need for complex setups and external hosting, ensuring your metadata stays secure. Compared to competitors like Copado and Gearset, Flosum's intuitive UI, Hyperforce compatibility, and zero-trust protection make it a superior, user-friendly option.
2. How is deployment done in Salesforce?
Salesforce deployment involves migrating metadata from one environment to another. While tools like Changesets and Git require extensive manual processes and custom configurations, Flosum simplifies this process with drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built automation, automated testing, and built-in code reviews. Its native versioning ensures consistent and secure deployments tailored to Salesforce users.
3. How many ways can we deploy in Salesforce?
You can deploy in Salesforce using Changesets, Salesforce DX, or third-party tools like Flosum, Gearset, and Copado. Changesets are manual and lack version control, while Salesforce DX is better suited for small teams. Flosum, however, offers a complete DevOps platform with native versioning, automated processes, performance testing, and enterprise-grade security, addressing challenges like unsynced sandboxes and permission set complexities.
