Top 10 Copado Features for #AwesomeAdmins

I have been an #AwesomeAdmin for about 15 years now.

This means that I eat, sleep and dream about the Salesforce platform and cannot wait to get my hands on the Release Notes every Spring, Summer and Winter to see what’s new (nerd alert!).

In my time as an SI Partner, I have solutioned across many aspects of the platform – Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Social Customer Service, Field Service, Nonprofits, Healthcare, Wave…whatever our Internal Users or Customers needed, I designed a solution and had a great time doing so.

But I would give anything to get back all of the late nights, weekends and holidays that I spent deploying all of my #AwesomeAdmin solutions to Internal Users and Customers.

If only I had known about Copado! This is the only end-to-end Release Management Platform, built 100% native on Salesforce, so all of your DevOps Team Members can collaborate in one centralized Platform for all of your Salesforce Projects.

So, to all my dear #AwesomeAdmin Ohana, and as an homage to the legendary David Letterman, I give you my own Top 10 Copado Features for #AwesomeAdmins!

#10 Release Pipelines

Native Process

Track in spreadsheets all work that has been completed in our lower-level Dev Sandboxes, what has been promoted/deployed to UAT, SIT or Integration Sandboxes and what has been promoted/deployed to Production.

Copado Process

Copado allows you to define as many Release Pipelines as your business warrants and then all of your Metadata changes are promoted/deployed across environments in the sequence you define.

#9 User Story-Centric Model

Native Process

Maybe you are using standard Salesforce Cases with a User Story record type or maybe you have created a Custom Object to track Requirements. If you have a standard ALM Platform such as Rally, Azure DevOps or JIRA, they are either independent of Salesforce, or you have an AppExchange or custom-built integration.

Copado Process

Copado has taken the industry-standard ALM Tools such as JIRA and Azure DevOps as inspiration for our own User Stories to allow Scrum Masters and PMs the ability to fully document both Functional and Technical Requirements, Acceptance Criteria and common Agile attributes such as Epics, Sprints and Releases in one easy-to-use point-and-click page.

Copado even offers an Unmanaged Package to manage and customize your bi-directional integration with JIRA or Azure DevOps! Copado Change Management Integrations

Using VersionOne, Rally, Agile Accelerator, ScrumDo or TargetProcess? We have uni-directional solutions for those too!

#8 The Commit Grid

Native Process

• • Download the native Setup Audit Trail
  • Filter Setup Audit Trail in Excel for specific Metadata Components, Last Modified By Users and Last Modified Date Ranges

    Manually create Change Set in Source Environment

  • Manually add Metadata Components, one Metadata Component Type at a time to Change Sets
  • Repeat for every Source Environment in your Release Pipeline as you Promote/Deploy to higher and higher Environments

Copado Process

Copado offers a gorgeous Commit Grid that allows you to leverage multi-column filters including:

• Component Name Contains
• Metadata Component Type (that’s right, you can, for example, filter for Apex Classes, Apex Triggers, Layouts and Custom Objects all at the same time!)
• Created By User
• Last Modified By User
• Created Date and/or Last Modified Date RANGE (yes! You can filter by a Created Date Range and/or a Last Modified Date Range!!!!)

#7 Package Once, Deploy to All

Native Process

Manually create your Change Set(s) in every lower-level/Source Environment in your Release Pipeline each time that you need to Promote/Deploy to a higher Environment.

Copado Process

Since Copado creates a unique Feature Branch in Git for each User Story (Copado Branching Strategy), then Copado creates your User Story Feature Branch once and that same Feature Branch is used for every level of Promote/Deploy of the User Story’s Metadata Changes all the way up your Release Pipeline!

The really slick point here too is that Copado enables #AwesomeAdmins to work seamlessly with git right within Copado (and native Salesforce!), by automatically handling all the git operations (checkout, merge, etc.). No worries about Command Line Interfaces for us #AwesomeAdmins – all git operations are managed by Copado behind the scenes and under the hood. Copado’s got your back!

One additional bonus to mention, as you move User Stories through your Release Pipeline, if a particular User Story is not complying with the QA standards or, for some other reason is not ready, you can decouple it from the Release and that User Story’s Feature Branch won’t be merged to the next Upper Environment.

#6 Additional Git Operations

Because Copado leverages Git as our Version Control and single-source of truth for all Metadata Changes, whether Declarative or Code, our Commit Grid also allows these amazing additional Git Operations.

Recommit

Native Process

We are not perfect; sometimes, we grab the wrong Apex Class(es), Visualforce Page(s), Page Layout(s) or other Metadata Component(s) in our Change Set(s) today. To correct our mistake natively, we must:

Paginate through however many Components are already in our Change Set one page at a time

Manually remove each Component one page at a time, one individual component at a time

Cull through segmented, paginated filters of Metadata Component Types to add in any missing Components one Metadata Component Type at a time, one page at a time

Copado Process

With the Copado Recommit Git Operation, you use the very same awesome Commit Grid functionality to correct your error quickly, recommit/update the User Story Feature Branch, and, IF you really flubbed, you even have the option to Recreate the User Story’s Feature Branch!

Destructive Changes

Native Process

Sometimes in new Orgs, but more often in older Orgs, there is Metadata that we just plain need to delete, whether a Custom Field, a Custom Object, a Profile or Permission Set, a Page Layout, etc.

Native Change Sets do not allow Delete of Metadata so, today, I suspect many of you are doing as I once did, spending hours-upon-hours in each individual Environment manually deleting old Components after you have finalized all other Deployments from a lower Environment to an upper Environment

Copado Process

With the Copado Destructive Changes Git Operation, you use the very same awesome Commit Grid functionality to perform Destructive Changes (aka Metadata Deletes) across all of your Environments as the User Story moves through its Release Pipeline! All with Points and Clicks!

For more information visit source link: https://copado.com/2019/12/top-10-copado-features-for-awesomeadmins/

Founded in 2013, Copado is a leading DevOps platform for Salesforce. For enterprises wanting to accelerate their Salesforce deployments.