The document discusses techniques and tools to improve the Salesforce development cycle. It covers establishing reusable development organizations, managing source code with version control, implementing automated testing, developing features in isolation, and integrating continuous integration practices. Reusable orgs allow multiple developers to work independently. Version control with branching enables collaborative development. Automated testing validates code changes. Isolated feature development prevents conflicts. Continuous integration merges and deploys changes across environments.

1. Techniques and Tools to Improve the
Salesforce Development Cycle
Stefan Goor
The TAS Group

2. Introduction
• Who should benefit from this talk?
– ISV Development Teams
– Development Teams new to Salesforce
• Traditional development techniques
• What will be covered?
– Reducing development obstacles
– Managing source code
– Automated testing
– Improving feature development
– Improve development cycle

3. Introduction
• The TAS Group
– Salesforce ISV
– Several large managed packages
• Typical challenges of large code base
– Source Code Management
– Collaborative Development
• Salesforce platform doesn’t solve all the
problems (yet?)

4. Salesforce Development Challenges
Learning Salesforce
Technologies
Organization
Restrictions
Version Control
Automated
Testing
Isolated Feature
Development
Continuous
Integration

5. Reusable Development Organizations
• No local environment for developers
• Many developers + 1 Organization (Org) = Code Conflicts
• Avoid development in Publishing Org
• Org preparation takes time
Partner Portal
•Create Org
•Enable Cascade
Delete
•Increase Apex Limit
etc…
Remove Default
Content
•Migration Tools
Organization
Security Settings
•IP Addresses
•Password Policies
Create Users
•Assign Permissions
•Adjust Profiles
Configure
Organization
Settings
•Namespace
•Enable Features
• Solution: Create a collection of reusable Orgs

6. Reusable Development Organizations
• Maintain
List of Orgs
• Reserve
Orgs for
projects
development org Manage Orgs
evelopment org
development org
development org
development org
evelopment org
development org
development org
development org
development org

7. Managing Organizations

8. Reusable Development Organizations
• Deploy Source
Code
• Retrieve
Source Code
• Undeploy
Source Code
Migration Tools
Special thanks to FinancialForce for
their deployment tools

9. Migration Tools
• Deploy
– Reserve Org in Org List
– Substitute Namespace
– Push source code to
Organization
• Retrieve
– Export Source Code
– Remove Org Specific references
• Undeploy
– Blank all code
• Apex Classes
• Apex Triggers
• Formulas
• Visualforce Components
• Visualforce Pages
– Deploy blanked content
– Undeploy hierarchical rollup
fields in sequence
– Remove remaining content
MAigpMratcaihnoeun a ATlon Sott leTsap Tssakssks – Update Org List

10. Salesforce Development Challenges
Learning Salesforce
Technologies
Organization
Restrictions
Version Control
Automated
Testing
Isolated Feature
Development
Continuous
Integration

11. Automated Version Control
Benefits of Version Control
Branching & Merging
Code history / audit trail
Collaborative development
Prevents lost code

12. Branching & Merging
• Branching
– Create a clone of project (files & directories)
– Manages changes in isolation of original project
– Original project branch referred to as trunk
• Merging
– Reintegrate changes from one branch to another
– Merges work in both directions
– Merging may require manual conflict resolution
TRUNK
Project

13. Automated Version Control
developer org
developer org
developer org

14. Salesforce Development Challenges
Learning Salesforce
Technologies
Organization
Restrictions
Version Control
Automated
Testing
Isolated Feature
Development
Continuous
Integration

15. Automated Testing
• Validate new or changed code
• Special Org reserved for Testing
• Salesforce Migration Tools
– Test Deploy
– Run All Tests
• Jenkins Continuous Integration (CI) Server
– Schedule apache ant & migration tool jobs
• Daily
• As Needed
– Notification of any failures (including logs)

16. Automated Testing
testing org
Source Code:
Apex,
Visualforce etc

17. Salesforce Development Challenges
Learning Salesforce
Technologies
Organization
Restrictions
Version Control
Automated
Testing
Isolated Feature
Development
Continuous
Integration

18. Isolated Feature Development
• Keep different projects / features separate
– 1 Feature : 1 Development Org
– Create a Subversion (SVN) Branch for feature
– Deploy branched code to Org
• Reintegrate new features to core application
– Safely extend managed packages
• Prevents accidental dependencies
• Reduces source code conflicts

19. Feature Branching in Force.com
development org
Retrieve
Feature A
publishing org
Retrieve Deploy
TRUNK
publishing org
Deploy
• Trunk contains Publishing Org code
• Branched of trunk is deployed to development Org
• Merge back to trunk when feature complete
• Deploy merged code to managed package org and create betas / managed package
• Development Org can then be undeployed and recycled

20. Salesforce Development Challenges
Learning Salesforce
Technologies
Organization
Restrictions
Version Control
Automated
Testing
Isolated Feature
Development
Continuous
Integration

21. Continuous Integration
• Each of our Salesforce Apps has
– Packaging Org
– Patch Org(s)
– Feature Org(s)
• Bug fixes need to propagate to all Orgs
– From earliest version forward
• Automatic merges
– Only if
• no conflicts in merge
• no test failures in branch being merged
– Successful merge deployed to org

22. Continuous Integration
• Ant tasks for SVN merge
• Automatic (Jenkins) merge order
– Start at earliest patch org
– Merge incrementally to other patch orgs
• 1.1 to 1.2, 1.2 to 1.3 etc
– Merge latest patch branch to Trunk branch
– Merge trunk to all feature branches
• Manual only merges
– From Trunk to new patch orgs
– From Features orgs to Trunk

23. Merging Example
TRUNK
1.1
1.2
1.3
Patches Features
A B
C

24. Salesforce Development Challenges
Learning Salesforce
Technologies
Organization
Restrictions
Version Control
Automated
Testing
Isolated Feature
Development
Continuous
Integration

25. Useful Links
• Migration Tools
– http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/daas/
• Apache Ant
– http://ant.apache.org/
• Jenkins CI
– http://jenkins-ci.org/
• Subversion
– https://subversion.apache.org/
• FinancialForce deployment tools
– https://github.com/financialforcedev/df12-deployment-tools
• Force.com CLI
– https://force-cli.heroku.com/

26. Q & A