This post is sharing 6 up and coming development tools and trends to keep your eyes on.
With so many organizations using Salesforce to manage their workflows, it’s no surprise that many companies are investing in optimizing the tool for their specific uses with additional development.
Salesforce Development Teams have historically worked within small groups or as single developers, making the highly manual processes possible with minimal errors. As development teams are expanding to meet the demands of more features and increased deployment speeds, they are encountering more challenges.
With developers and admins working side-by-side, there’s now more room than ever for mistakes, code to be overwritten, data to be lost, and deployments to go wrong.
Let’s explore a few ways teams can embrace Salesforce Development without wanting to pull their hair out due to the same inefficiencies happening with every deployment.
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1. Increasing Adoption of Git-Based Version Control Git-Based Version Control is the current standard for code and deployments. Why? Because it takes a lot of manual work to prep fields and edit change sets.
Not only is it possible to get automatic version control with programs like Blue Canvas, but having every change tracked makes it possible to roll back to any version with a single click.
No more relying on change sets and manually updating files.
Teams should use Git-Based Version Control because of it:
Enables tracking changes easily and makes rolling back errors a breeze.
Enhances collaboration between developers and admins.
Seamlessly integrates with CI/CD pipelines for automated deployments.
2. The Rise of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) One of the amazing things about technology is that it’s removed so much of the manual labor from some previously long and detailed processes.
One of those great advancements is continuous integration and continuous deployment. Why are these life-changing? Well, they allow you to actively test new code every step of the way to ensure it’s working smoothly, and then when you get it polished, you can roll it out without fear of human error getting in the way.
Teams should embrace CI/CD because of it:
Automates testing and deployments, allowing for reduced human errors.
Improves developer productivity by enabling faster feedback loops.
Ensures long-term consistency across all environments.
3. Low-Code/No-Code Development and Its Impact on DevOps Development teams are quickly being joined by Salesforce admins who are able to leverage low-code and no-code tools to make amazing updates to their systems.
While these tools can be a great addition to the development efforts of your core developers, they can also bring some outside issues to the table.
Before you try to outsource all your development to admins, be sure to think through what the process looks like from a long-term workflow perspective.
Challenges to Consider:
When using tools like this, it’s hard to accurately track changes made by admins and business users.
It’s easy to disregard governance and compliance because these tools don’t always account for your specific industry.
Potential Solutions for Those Wanting to Use Low/No-Code Solutions:
Setting up an automatic version control solution. Be sure it supports declarative changes.
Take a proactive approach and automate documentation and compliance tracking.
4. AI and Automation in Salesforce DevOps With the help of AI, so many have been able to increase their efficiency through automated testing.
AI has made it possible to analyze logs, optimize workflows, and predict deployment failures before they even go live. This means teams can spend more time writing great code and less time fixing deployments that have gone wrong.
AI-Powered Enhancements Your Team Should Be Using:
Automated code reviews and/or quality checks. Pair this with manual code reviews, and you’ll be in great shape!
Predictive analytics to proactively identify deployment risks.
Pre-testing automation for faster release cycles.
5. Security and Compliance Becoming a Priority More and more requirements are being created to protect data across many industries, so when it comes to staying on the safe side of compliance, be sure to plan for and protect your data at all times.
A Few Best Practices:
Use Implement audit trails for all changes.
Use automated security scanning tools.
Enforce role-based access control and permissions.
6. Shift-Left Testing and Quality Assurance With so many tools to make it possible to quickly and efficiently clone environments and test new code in every stage of the process, it’s becoming standard practice to incorporate more ongoing testing to ensure quality before deployment.
Teams are Embracing This Change By:
Leveraging automated unit testing for Apex and Lightning components.
Incorporating end-to-end testing frameworks integrated into CI/CD pipelines.
Focusing on test-driven development (TDD) approaches.
Conclusion With Salesforce Development evolving more and more every day, we hope these tips will help you and your team embrace new technologies while prioritizing security and data compliance.
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