This document serves as a guide to integrating Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) with Salesforce, highlighting its importance for efficient software delivery. It explains the concepts of CI and Continuous Delivery, details various third-party tools for implementing CI/CD with Salesforce, and provides a step-by-step process for setting up a CI pipeline using CircleCI. The piece emphasizes how these practices enhance development workflows and customer satisfaction in software delivery within the Salesforce ecosystem.

1. Salesforce
Salesforce
Salesforce
CI/CD
CI/CD
CI/CD
Integration:
Integration:
Integration:
A Quick
A Quick
A Quick
Guide
Guide
Guide
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2. Quick Summary:
Are you looking to ship your salesforce
application quickly and efficiently?
Salesforce CI/CD integration is the perfect
solution for your business. Do you know
how you can integrate CI/CD with
Salesforce? This blog will help you
understand what CI/CD is and how you can
set them up with Salesforce.

3. Introduction

4. CI/CD has always been the heart of DevOps,
and now these software engineering
practices have become a real game-changer
for the Salesforce ecosystem. Today,
continuous integration with Salesforce has
become the most talked-about topic in the
cloud platform world. And why not? These
practices allow more reliable development
and release cycles as you build, test, and
ship code faster.
Today, Salesforce has become an integral
part of many large and small organizations
all across the globe. However, it is one of the
most powerful tools but let’s not forget it
has its own challenges. Despite the project
becoming more significant and time
becoming lesser, clients still expect project
delivery on time with advanced features
and functionalities, which is entirely
impossible to achieve by the traditional
salesforce deployment process.

5. But that doesn’t mean Salesforce can’t do it.
This CRM platform left no stone unturned to
deliver the products with efficiency and
quality. So what’s the solution? Here CI/CD
implementation with Salesforce comes into the
picture.
CI/CD is not a new buzzword; it is one of the
most prominent DevOps practices that
streamline the release cycle by delivering
development more quickly and less risk. To
build, run, and test the salesforce applications
efficiently and confidently, CI/CD is the best
practice to go with.
This blog will guide you through the complete
Salesforce CI/CD integration. But, before diving
into how to set up CI/CD process with
Salesforce, it is essential to understand what
CI/CD is?
So without any further ado, let’s get started
with-

6. What is
Continuous
Integration?

7. Many organizations overlap continuous
integration with continuous development,
continuous appointment, and other things. So
here we have described the general definition of
what precisely continuous integration is?
Continuous Integration or CI is a process that
you set up to ensure that every little change you
make to your system is compatible with the rest
of your system. So that when you make changes
to your system, you are going to deploy the
main two parameters of the users in a safe and
reliable environment.
Continuous integration is a way to ensure that
what you are doing will work across the
application. This software development practice
allows developers to integrate their change
codes into a source code repository regularly.
Automated builds and tests run before or after
the developers put new code into the system to
protect the source codes from external threats.

8. Push the code to the code repository often
(Github, Bitbucket, CodeCommit, etc.)
Testing or build server checks the code as
soon as it is published via codebuild, Jenkins
CI, Circle CI, etc.
The developers get feedback about the tests
and checks whether the codes passed or
failed.
Find bugs early if present and fix them in a
quick turnaround time.
Deliver faster as the codes are tested
Deploy often
In a nutshell, Continuous integration (CI) lets
developers-
CI leads to – “Happier developers, as they’re
unblocked.”
Moving on, let’s see what continuous delivery
is?

9. What is
Continuous
Delivery?

10. Continuous delivery is a software
engineering approach in which teams
produce software in short cycles, ensuring
that the software can be released
dependably whenever needed. It also
ensures that deployment happens quickly
because the developers want to move away
from doing one release every three months
to five releases a single day. You can only do
5 releases a day if you have something
continuous deliver. So that means that the
deployment will be fully automated.

11. How does the
Continuous
delivery
pipeline
work?

12. The developer will push code often to
the code repository.
Build server will get the code and build
& test it.
And then, the deployment server, after
the build server is done, will get the
build output and can deploy the new
version to the applications server from
V1 to V2 and at a high level.
So this is how continuous delivery works.
Moving on, let’s discuss

13. How to
integrate CI
with
Salesforce?

14. To integrate the CI/CD with Salesforce,
many third-party tools are available in the
market from which you can choose the
suitable one matching your business needs.
Salesforce can easily integrate with these
tools, helping you with a smooth and easy
Salesforce CI/CD integration.
Continuous integration
using CircleCI
CircleCI platform automates the confidence
in your code. It builds, tests, and effectively
deploys the software. This platform is a
commonly used integration tool that
integrates with your existing version
system. This is because to push the
incremental updates of your choice to the
environment. This enterprise solution can
be easily installable in your private cloud,
data center, or on-premise tool. It is
available to use for free for a limited time.

15. Continuous integration
using Jenkins
Jenkins is an open-source implementation
of a Continuous Integration server written
in Java. This server is highly compatible
with multiple languages and can run on
various platforms, including Linux,
Windows, and macOS. If you plan to test the
salesforce applications against scratch org,
you can easily integrate the salesforce DX
into the Jenkins framework and automate
the applications’ testing.

16. Continuous Integration
with Travis CI
Travis CI is an effective cloud-based
integration service that lets your developer
test and deploy the code confidently. With
Travis CI, you can test your codes in
minutes, you only require to sync your
project with this integration platform, and
it will test your code quickly.
Sample CI Repos for Org
Development Model
With sample CI repos, you can easily clone
your sample repository of the vendor of
your choice. Each repo in sample CI comes
with a unique sample configuration file and
an elaborative README.md with step-wise
information.

17. Continuous Integration
with Gearset
Gearset is a prominent DevOps tool that
provides a simple, fast, and clicks
configurable solution, making the CI/CD set
up and maintenance highly scalable and
manageable.
In this blog, we will learn to integrate CI/CD
with Salesforce using CircleCI.

18. What is a CI
pipeline?

19. If you are a beginner at CircleCI, let us help
you with a quick overview of how CI will
help you improve your development
workflow.
CircleCI is a robust platform that automates
confidence in the code. It lets you build,
test, run and code faster. The CircleCI
pipeline will help you make changes to your
application and test them quickly before
deployment. If your test passes or fails, it
lets you right away. Once you are satisfied
with the code, you can manually or
automatically deploy that changes to your
users.

20. How to set up
a CI pipeline?

21. To start creating the CI pipeline, you are
required to set up a few tasks before-
1. Set up a DevOps account
2. Create your self attested SSL certificate
and private key
3. For JWT-based authorization, you need to
create a certificate; Salesforce will keep the
certificate while CircleCI will keep the
private key.
4. Before starting the pipeline, you must
create a connected application, which
connects salesforce instances in the cloud
environment.
To create a connected application, you can
follow the steps available on the Salesforce
site.
1. Store server.crt file with Salesforce
2. Add the server key to CircleCI

22. 3. Markdown the consumer key given by the
developed application
If you want a salesforce application project
hosted by a VCS provider, choose GitHub or
BitBucket. Once you host the project on
GitHub, you can start assembling the
pipeline.
Adding a project to CircleCI
The project is still in a development phase;
to complete the project, you need to-
1. Add a CircleCI config file
2. Authorize your VCS, i.e., GitHub or
BitBucket with CircleCI, and log in
3. You will be redirected to a dashboard
4. At the dashboard, click “add projects,” a
list of projects from your account will be
displayed on your screen

23. 5. Click “Setup project” for your salesforce
application
6. Click “start building.”
If your job fails, don’t worry, it is expected.
Now we are required to add a config file
with the integration and setup environment
variables.
How to add environment
variables?
To add the required environment variables,
follow these steps-
1. You will see a navigation bar, and on the
left of the screen, there will be a list of
projects which you have added earlier to
the CircleCI.
2. You will see a cogwheel next to them.

24. SFDX_JWT_KEY
SFDX_CONSUMER_KEY
3. Click the cogwheel next to your salesforce
app to get directed onto the settings page.
4. On the settings page, you will see an
option “build settings.”
5. Click the environment variable located
under the build setting.
We have created the consumer key in the
earlier steps. Now we only need to add the
new environment variable with the name
SFDX_CONSUMER_KEY and the value
from Salesforce.
For authentication, you are required to add
the two prominent environment variables:

25. 1. To get the Base64 encoded with the JWT
key, you must navigate the directory to the
self-attested certificate files you have
created in the previous steps.
2. After the navigation, click this command-
base64 server.key
3. The base64 value is encoded, now copy it
and add it to the project’s environment
variables under the JWT key.
Now it’s time to add your config.
Adding config
The CircleCI is authenticated with
Salesforce, which means you can utilize the
salesforce DX apex orb commands in the
config.

26. 1. In the project repository, add a top-level
.circleci folder,
2. Create a config.yml file.
3. Once you have created your config.yml
file, let’s start by copying the included usage
example from the SFDX Apex orb.
version: 2.1
orbs:
apex: circleci/salesforce-apex@x.y
jobs:
install_authenticate:
docker:
- image: cimg/node:14.5
steps:
- checkout
- apex/setup:
defaultusername: user@email.com
- run:
name: Run your SFDX commands
here
command: |

27. echo "You now have access to the sfdx cli
and may execute commands against it.
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas
.en-
us.sfdx_cli_reference.meta/sfdx_cli_refere
nce/cli_reference.htm"
workflows:
basic-test:
jobs:
- install_authenticate
To update things in the future, it is best
to set the version of your config.
To define and import the orb packages,
use the orbs stanza.
Visit the orb registry to view the most
up-to-date documentation and import
the most current orb version.
Version 2.1 of CircleCI config is required to
access “orbs.”

28. After the orb import, you will find the JOB
STANZA with a single job in it.
It is available under the name:
install_authenticate.
And it looks like this-
jobs:
install_authenticate:
Here you can manually define your config
file.
Orbs are available to import in the full
version, but we recommend going with the
minor version. It will help you
automatically choose the patch releases.
Jobs

29. CircleCI comes with pre-built docker
images. The images have pre-installed
NodeJS, which lets you install the node
version with Salesforce CLI. You do not
need to install the node and npm
individually.
It looks like-
docker:
– image: cimg/node:14.5
Docker image

30. Workflows are the prominent feature of
CircleCI, which lets you adapt the jobs you
want to run and the run order. If you have a
single job in workflow, you can run it
efficiently.
For instance- Create a single workflow
named basic-test and list the
install_authenticate job.
It looks like-
workflows:
basic-test:
jobs:
– install_authenticate
So like this, you can easily integrate your
Salesforce application with CI/CD. Still, if
you have any queries, feel free to reach out
to an experienced team of salesforce
developers.
Workflows

31. Are you ready
for Salesforce
CI/CD
Integration

32. Salesforce Continuous Integration and
Continuous Deployment enables faster
quality software delivery and happy
business customers. So, if you are looking to
take your business to the next level,
salesforce CI/CD integration is the proper
practice.
If you are looking for a helping hand, we are
here to help you. We are a leading salesforce
development company that holds a rich
experience of 9+ years in delivering best-in-
class salesforce solutions. We will help you
with the best implementation, integration,
and Salesforce consulting services no
matter what size of your business.

33. Thank You
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