Salesforce DevOps: A Comprehensive Guide to Tools and Best Practices
Salesforce DevOps integrates development and operations practices tailored for the Salesforce platform. This approach focuses on leveraging Salesforce at scale, ensuring that development teams can detect issues, identify bugs, and rectify them before releasing customer changes. Here’s a detailed overview of the article:
- Understanding DevOps: DevOps aims to develop and improve products swiftly. Continuous integration (CI) is an essential DevOps practice that detects and fixes problems before releasing customer changes.
- Salesforce DevOps Tools:
- Native Tools: Tools within Salesforce or available on AppExchange, such as Salesforce DevOps Center, Copado, and Flosum.
- Custom Build: Tools built using CI/CD platforms like Jenkins, CumulusCI, Azure DevOps, Gitlab pipelines, GitHub Actions, and Team City.
- Other Tools: External tools not native to Salesforce, like AutoRabit and Gearset.
- Pillars of Successful Salesforce DevOps:
- Version Control: Ensures traceability and security of changes.
- CI/CD Pipeline: Validates builds, automates testing, and ensures reliable deployments.
- Automation Testing: Essential for a good DevOps tool.
- Backup: Protects against malicious attacks, Salesforce bugs, and accidental deletions.
- Code Scanning: Automates the manual process of code review in Salesforce.
- Mastering Salesforce DevOps: The article provides a video session to help users master DevOps concepts.
- Salesforce DevOps Best Practices:
- Environment Strategy: Crucial for defining team size, release cycle, and Agile development mode.
- Branching Strategy: Setting up the right strategy for Salesforce.
- Build Vs. Buy: Deciding between AppExchange products, third-party tools, or open-source tools for the deployment pipeline.
- Release Management: A well-defined process and release management are pillars of DevOps best practices.
Reference: Apex Hours – Salesforce DevOps.