With the increasing demands on digital technologies and the rising requirements of customers, Salesforce has now transformed to higher standards to provide the best CRM solutions and manage their customer requirements.
As a user-friendly 'no-software' CRM, Salesforce helps as an ultimate bridge to connect organizations with their customers. Apart from being a customer interaction tool, Salesforce also contains the advantage of cloud technology and offers a more accessible way to develop software, which has a transformative impact on the field of software development.
However, increasing customization and upgrades brings complexity and challenges. It is where Salesforce DevOps assists!
In this blog, we’ll explore each detail about what is Salesforce DevOps, how many types it contains, its benefits, and other necessary points. So, let’s dive in!
What Is DevOps?
DevOps is a set of technologies, strategies, and a collaborative mindset that integrates and automates the procedures of software development and IT teams. It facilitates team empowerment, technological automation, and cross-team cooperation and communication.
The concept of DevOps gained momentum around 2007 in response to rising concerns by software development and IT operations teams. These concerns originated from the traditional approach, where these two teams worked separately, which led to various challenges and inefficiencies. DevOps, a combination of 'development' and 'operations,' bridged that gap between these teams, which promoted collaboration and automation to simplify the entire software development and deployment process.
What is Salesforce DevOps?
Salesforce DevOps has the same concept and principles as actual DevOps.
DevOps, in general, is all about improving collaboration and automation between development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams to enhance the software delivery process. In the context of Salesforce DevOps, it applies these DevOps principles to Salesforce.
It allows development teams to detect issues, pinpoint bugs, and repair them before releasing updates to their user base. In addition, Salesforce DevOps revolves around automation, which enables frequent and reliable software releases.
Further, Salesforce provides multiple tools for deploying these applications, such as change sets, SalesforceDX, Workbench, the Force.com migration tool, DevOps Center, CI/CD Pipeline, and third-party AppExchange tools.
Why Should You Use Salesforce DevOps Tools?
Firstly, you must know that Salesforce DevOps tools are not necessary for everyone. For instance, if you manage a small-scale organization with a simple setup and a limited development team, you may be comfortable with the basic Salesforce features or tools, like change sets.
However, if you have an extensive team with multiple engineers working across diverse Salesforce sandboxes, or if your operations involve complex solutions, such as Salesforce CPQ, you will find that Salesforce DevOps tools become essential for your Salesforce environment.
Now, let’s explore why you should employ Salesforce DevOps Tools.
Advantages of Using Salesforce DevOps Tools
Using DevOps Tools in your Salesforce teams provides numerous benefits, including:
Shorter Development Cycles
Employing Salesforce DevOps tools helps you achieve shorter development cycles. These tools automate various stages of the development process, from coding and testing to deployment. As a result, development tasks execute more efficiently and reduce the time it takes to bring new features or updates to your Salesforce environment.
Faster Innovation
By automating time-consuming and repetitive tasks, Salesforce DevOps tools free up your development teams to focus on creating new features and functionality. This accelerated pace of innovation ensures that your Salesforce solutions remain fresh and appropriate to your users. Moreover, It enables your business to respond promptly to market trends and customer feedback, ensuring that you are always at the top of technological advancements.
Reduced Deployment Failures
Salesforce DevOps tools substantially reduce the probability of deployment failures and minimize the impact of any issues that do occur. Automated testing and deployment processes catch potential problems early in the development cycle that prevent them from reaching the production environment.
Improved Communication and Collaboration
Effective communication and collaboration are essential for successful Salesforce implementations. DevOps tools facilitate improved teamwork among developers, administrators, and other stakeholders by informing them about the project’s progress, changes, and issues, which enhances collaboration, leads to better project outcomes, and ensures a clear understanding of the Salesforce solutions development to all stakeholders.
Increased Efficiencies
Salesforce DevOps tools offer various features that enhance overall operational efficiency. By automating routine tasks, these tools reduce manual effort and minimize the risk of human error. Also, these tools help assign work to the right individuals based on expertise. These efficiencies result in cost savings, higher productivity, and a more reliable Salesforce environment.
Types of DevOps Tools in Salesforce
Salesforce DevOps tools include the following types:
Deployment Tools
Picking the right Salesforce deployment tools is essential for fast, high-quality project delivery. These tools simplify multiple projects, progress tracking, and build management, offering user-friendly interfaces and automation for smoother deployment and rollback processes.
Some famous deployment tools in Salesforce are Salesforce Setup, Copado, ANT Migration tool, Flosum, Gearset, and Force.com IDE.
Version Control Tools
These tools help organizations manage changes and revisions to their Salesforce code, configurations, and metadata over time. These tools play a crucial role in Salesforce application development and deployment.
Popular version control tools used in Salesforce DevOps include Git and GitHub.
CI/CD Tools
CI/CD tools support continuous deployment and integration practices in Salesforce development. Further, these tools help teams detect and fix problems early by automating the testing, building, and deployment of changes.
The most used Salesforce DevOps CI/CD tools are Bamboo, Jenkins, Cumulus CI, Travis CI, and Circle CI.
Rollback Tools
These tools permit teams to revert Salesforce customizations’ modifications/changes to a previous state if any error or issue arises during deployments.
The most common Salesforce Rollback tools include Git, Gearset, Prodly, Copado, Autorabit, and Flosum.
Testing Tools
Testing tools provide multiple types of Salesforce customization testing, such as integration, unit, and UI testing.
The famous Salesforce testing tools are QTP, Selenium, Testim, Assure Click, Accelq, and TestRigor.
Reporting Tools
These tools offer features to share, create, and visualize dashboards & reports based on Salesforce data.
The familiar reporting tools in Salesforce DevOps are Klipfolio, Tableau, Conga Courier, G-Connector, Zoho Reports, Smartsheet, and InsightSquared.
Backup Tools
Bakeup tools allow a regular backup of crucial data and configurations in the Salesforce organization for recovering disaster and business continuity by providing automated backup and recovery features. Salesforce backups contain two types:
Data Backup Tools
Metadata Backup Tools
Test Automation Tools
These tools facilitate automating Salesforce customization testing, including Lightning components, Apex code, and Visualforce pages.
Some test automation tools are Provar, Selenium, Katalon, and ACCELQ.
Code Scanning Tools
They can scan Lightning components and Apex code for security issues, potential vulnerabilities, and coding best practices and provide feedback on security risks, performance concerns, and code quality.
The most-used code scanning tools are Checkmarx, Code Scan, SonarQube, PMD, Clayton, Code Climate, Quality Clouds, Codacy, and DigitSec.
Final Words
We hope this article helps clear your doubts. If you have any additional questions or require further details, feel free to ask.
Visit our other articles: “What is Salesforce DevOps Engineer?”