Getting Started with Salesforce DevOps Center Series

Traditionally, custom objects, apex classes, profiles, etc. were deployed from a Sandbox to Production using “Change Sets.” Many development teams dislike “Change sets” because they are difficult, annoying, and time-consuming. It’s time to stop using Change Sets, as Salesforce’s DevOps Center is now available to manage changes and deployments in a more modern way. With DevOps Center, teams can utilize its capabilities to improve their change management and deployment processes. The purpose of this blog is to explain how DevOps Center can be installed and run.

What exactly is a Salesforce DevOps center?

Salesforce DevOps Center is a tool that enables teams to streamline the software development and deployment processes within the Salesforce ecosystem. It allows teams to manage their configuration and code in a centralized location, such as GitHub, and apply best practices for DevOps to improve collaboration and compatibility across all roles, including administrative, developer, release manager, QA, and business stakeholders. DevOps Center aims to provide a user-friendly point-and-click interface for declarative/low-code/no-code developers to drive deployments in a similar systematic manner as developers who use code, thus bringing both types of developers closer together.

Benefits of using a DevOps Center

DevOps Center offers a variety of benefits to help development teams manage changes and deployments in Salesforce. They are:

  • Work Items, a new object designed for DevOps Center, allow users to organize work and track associated changes.
  • Automatic change tracking allows teams to view a list of changed metadata components in the DevOps Center and select the ones they want to migrate, eliminating the need for manual tracking methods like sticky notes and spreadsheets.
  • It’s easy for teams to adopt GitHub even if they have never used it before because of its seamless integration.
  • It helps to deploy changes with just a few clicks by visualizing the deployment pipeline and moving changes from one stage to the next.
  • It will help developers to organize their work, track changes automatically, integrate seamlessly with GitHub for source control, and deploy changes with simple clicks.

A step-by-step guide to installing the DevOps Center Package

In order to utilize Salesforce DevOps Center, it must first be installed. It is available as a managed package that can be installed either in a sandbox or production environment. If you are installing the DevOps Center package in Salesforce, you will need a production org that has the Professional, Enterprise, or Unlimited editions or a new Developer edition org that was created after the summer of 2022.

  • Go to Setup, search for DevOps Center and select it. Then, toggle to enable it
  • Click “Install Package” and follow the instructions.
  • You can choose whether to install it for “all users “or “only for administrators.”
  • Approve access to login.salesforce.com and test.salesforce.com and click “Done.”
  • You will receive a confirmation email once the installation is complete.

However, there may be an issue with installing in a Professional edition org, where an error message may appear. Currently, there is no solution, but Salesforce plans to fix this in a future release. You can try installing it in a different supported org edition, such as Developer Edition.

The next step is to create the connected app:

To proceed, navigate to the App Manager and create a new Connected App by clicking on “New Connected App.” For the Connected App, specify the following details:

  • Connected App Name: DevOps Center
  • API Name: DevOps_Center
  • Contact Email: support@salesforce.com
  • Logo Image URL: https://tinyurl.com/doc-icon
  • Description: A tool for managing the development and release processes.
  • In the Web App Settings, enter the Start URL as “/sf_devops/DevOpsCenter.app”.

After entering the details, click “Save.” When the Connected App is saved, click the “Manage” button at the top, then scroll down to the “Manage Permission Set” section. From the available permission sets, choose “sf devops Name Credentials” and save your changes. Your connected app is now ready to use.

  • The DevOps Center permission set should be granted to all users of the DevOps Center, while the DevOps Center Manager permission set should only be assigned to selected users within the organization who are responsible for setting up projects, environments, and users for the DevOps Center.
  • The permission set for DevOps Center Manager needs to be assigned to specific individuals within your organization who have the responsibility of establishing the project environments in your pipeline.
  • sf_devops_InitializeEnvironments is required for users who will connect to various environments while configuring the DevOps center.
  • Name credentials are required once more for all DevOps center users.

To make the DevOps Center available in the app launcher, follow these steps:

  • Go to the user record.
  • Assign the necessary permission sets.
  • Look for the DevOps Center.
  • Click on it to open the DevOps Center.

Conclusion

We hope with this you were able to have your DevOps Center up and running. In our next blog, we will go over how to configure DevOps Center.

If you want to gain hands-on experience with DevOps Center, feel free to reach out to us or connect with a CloudFulcrum specialist.

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