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Salesforce DevOps

There is no doubt that DevOps for Salesforce is different. It allows for speed and collaboration between stakeholders that other platforms simply can’t offer.

Discover how you can increase agility, shorten release cycles, reduce deployments to minutes, and stay ahead of the competition with Salesforce DevOps tools

Flosum release managment and data migration

Flosum offers some excellent tools to help your DevOps teams including built-in version control, continuous deployment systems, merge tools, and tons of different testing tools. Schedule a demo today to find out more about how Flosum can supercharge your Salesforce DevOps Strategy today!

What Is Salesforce DevOps?

DevOps is a software engineering practice that aims at unifying software development and software operations. Here, we will specifically look at how Salesforce DevOps integration works. There are several key components that make up good DevOps + Salesforce practices, and those mainly include version control, release management, and CI/CD. We also highlight how Flosum uncomplicates and streamlines these practices

Why Is DevOps Important?

It gives you agility! It allows you to build faster, deploy faster and manage changes more efficiently. It empowers your software team to manage the whole process end to end. It makes much easier for them to own the whole development process and you do not have to worry about handing over the responsibility to different teams to manage the process. Similarly, DevOps enables automation which increases your release cadence by eliminating the traditional manual oppressive tasks which are complicated and time consuming.

Salesforce DevOps tools allows you to release faster with lower risks. So, you can get whatever it is you are building into the hands of the end users more quickly which helps you get more ROI from your investment in Salesforce. A well-thought Salesforce DevOps strategy gives you a competitive edge as you can push software out of the door more quickly, sell more effectively than your competitors, and get more value from your investment.

Salesforce Version Control

Version control refers to the creation of a system that can track changes and keep records of previous versions of an application. Developing with version control is pivotal in any DevOps system because you need to be able to revert changes at a moment’s notice. If a new change breaks production due to an unforeseen use case, then the previous version of the application needs to be ready to be restored at a moment’s notice to reduce operational downtime.
It’s also pivotal to any good DevOps practice because oftentimes there is not just one member working on an application. As multiple developers make changes to code, any changes need to be accessible and visible to the whole group or pieces of the program will start to clash. It’s for this reason that version control might singularly be the most important portion of any DevOps practice.

Release Management

It’s a costly mistake to deliver content from development by injecting it directly into production, and that’s where release management comes in. Release management focuses on the process that a finished application undergoes to make it from the developer’s hands into the user’s production organizations.
Release management systems come in all different shapes and sizes, but they usually focus on passing any application through a series of tests to look for any issues. These tests not only look for use-case issues but should also look for roll-out issues as those often go unnoticed until rollout occurs.It’s also pivotal to any good DevOps practice because oftentimes there is not just one member working on an application. As multiple developers make changes to code, any changes need to be accessible and visible to the whole group or pieces of the program will start to clash. It’s for this reason that version control might singularly be the most important portion of any DevOps practice.

CI/CD

CI/CD stands for continuous integration and continuous delivery and follows along the lines of release management. Release management is the process by which you test and release new content, and CI/CD controls the rate of that flow. In order for that flow to be smooth and as quick as possible, good CI/CD practice focuses primarily on automating test execution.

Let’s face it, developers can not be expected to test everything, nor should they be. We want our developers to do what they do best, develop! That’s why automated testing is so important for good DevOps practices because it moves developers away from testing and keeps them focused on what’s important, developing.It’s also pivotal to any good DevOps practice because oftentimes there is not just one member working on an application. As multiple developers make changes to code, any changes need to be accessible and visible to the whole group or pieces of the program will start to clash. It’s for this reason that version control might singularly be the most important portion of any DevOps practice.

How is Salesforce DevOps Special?

It’s not so much that DevOps is uniquely different with Salesforce, it’s more that there are special restrictions on what is possible. One of the main areas where DevOps is special with Salesforce is because Salesforce has different organization types depending upon what stage in the DevOps process you are. There are developer and scratch orgs for development, developer and scratch orgs for testing, sandboxes for rollout testing, and then production that everyone works in.

With common DevOps processes, there could be any number of environments that an application could pass through before being rolled out. There might not even be a specific version of production that everyone uses, for instance with phone app rollouts people could be using iOS 12 or iOS15.

Another area that makes Salesforce DevOps special is that there are different ways to package a release depending upon its target organization. With Salesforce you could use a managed package, changesets, or Salesforce DX to load a new application into an organization. With most other DevOps practices there is one way to package an application and deliver it to another organization, but with Salesforce there are several.
These are just some of the ways that approaching DevOps from a Salesforce perspective can differ from DevOps practices with other programs. If all the different methods of transferring applications seems a little hectic, check out the Flosum platform which helps deal with transferring applications between the different environments

Speed

Is it faster to make changes directly in production? Absolutely, but the risks are also higher. A good Salesforce DevOps strategy allows you to mitigate the risks of making changes by spreading out the effect of an issue across several different organizations, and always keeping a backup on standby. While this does translate to longer development time, the added testing means a more robust app that is ready to face the end-user.
With a more robust app, your development teams can spend less time fixing eventual issues and more time working on creating the next big change to the system. Let’s face it, nobody wants to redo work, and by implementing smart devops practices you don’t have to.It’s also pivotal to any good DevOps practice because oftentimes there is not just one member working on an application. As multiple developers make changes to code, any changes need to be accessible and visible to the whole group or pieces of the program will start to clash. It’s for this reason that version control might singularly be the most important portion of any DevOps practice.

Collaboration

Another unique advantage of following good Salesforce DevOps practices is collaboration. With version control, multiple team members can work on the same application simultaneously which will speed up your Apps time to production. Whether you’re building a company-specific application or an AppExchange app, establishing a good DevOps practice is crucial to any successful app build.It’s also pivotal to any good DevOps practice because oftentimes there is not just one member working on an application. As multiple developers make changes to code, any changes need to be accessible and visible to the whole group or pieces of the program will start to clash. It’s for this reason that version control might singularly be the most important portion of any DevOps practice.

Your All-in-one DevOps Solution. Powerful. Secure. Fast. Easy to use.

Flosum is the only 100% native app for release management built specifically for Salesforce. It allows users to seamlessly orchestrate changes across their development ecosystem, eliminating pain points experienced when using traditional dev tools.
A truly complete solution: Flosum is a complete end-to-end solution that handles the full development lifecycle including merging components, version control, continuous deployments, static code analysis, user story management & regression testing.

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