Editor’s note – This blog has been updated from the original publication in June 2022 to reflect that DevOps Center is now Generally Available, as of December 9, 2022.
Salesforce Developers have been waiting patiently for the past few years for a modern way to manage changes and deployments in Salesforce. Yes, the interest and anticipation have been palpable, and now you can finally get your hands on it! DevOps Center is now Generally Available for you to use with your deployments today. Let’s dive into how DevOps Center will change how your development teams manage changes.
A new way to manage and release Salesforce changes — without Change Sets
What is this thing called DevOps Center, you ask? DevOps Center is a highly anticipated new product that makes the change and release management process when developing with Salesforce so.much.better. It allows you to take advantage of modern DevOps best practices through a centralized, easy-to-use interface. Some of the key features of DevOps Center are:
- Organize your work. Track and deploy the associated changes with Work Items, a new object designed for DevOps Center and open to typical Salesforce Flows and other operations.
- Track changes automatically. Changes are tracked automatically as you make them in development environments. View a list of changed metadata components in DevOps Center and select the ones you want to migrate. No more sticky notes and spreadsheets to track changes, or cumbersome interfaces to select changes. Can you say “good-bye, Change Sets”?!
- Integrate seamlessly with GitHub for source control. Even if you’ve never used source control before, DevOps Center makes it simple to adopt. All you need to do is log in to GitHub and we take care of the rest for you.
- Deploy changes with clicks. Visualize your deployment pipeline, then simply click to deploy changes from one stage to the next.
But what if you’re a developer using the CLI, VS Code, or GitHub directly? Does DevOps Center still benefit you and your team?
Absolutely! DevOps Center is designed to work for “hybrid” or “fusion” teams, i.e., teams made up of developers across the low-code → pro-code continuum. This means that you can do your work inside or outside of the DevOps Center UI-based application, and things stay in sync. So, you may have one team member doing their work from the CLI or VS Code, committing changes to the source control feature branch, and even creating, reviewing, and merging the pull request — all from outside of DevOps Center. DevOps Center will pick up on these actions and reflect them appropriately in the UI, so another team member could come along later and see the changes that were committed, access and review the pull request, and deploy the changes — all from inside of DevOps Center.
Similarly, your low-code developers and admins can now contribute to the project’s shared source of truth in the source control repository using clicks from DevOps Center. You no longer need to either push low-code users to adopt the CLI and processes they may be uncomfortable with, or just live with knowing that changes that are being managed with Change Sets are not part of your source control repository. Now, you can have the best of both worlds: modern tooling, using modern technologies, through the interface of your choice!
This all sounds great, so how do I get my hands on it?
You can enable and install DevOps Center through the DevOps Center page in Setup. If you have a production org with Professional, Enterprise, or Unlimited Edition, or a Developer Edition org, go to that page to enable and install DevOps Center. Turn this on today and start deploying changes!
We want your feedback!
We’re always interested in your feedback and lean on this as we shape future product plans. Please use the following resources and links to give us your feedback, see what we’ve got planned, and help steer our product direction.
- DevOps Center product roadmap – See what we’ve delivered and what we’re planning to deliver. Please give us your feedback directly on this roadmap to tell us what’s important to you.
- DevOps Center Trailblazer Community Group – Engage with the community and our product team on DevOps Center.
- IdeaExchange – Share your ideas and desires for updates you’d like to see in DevOps Center.
Where can I get more information?
We have lots of information and resources available to learn more about DevOps Center. The best place to start is our DevOps Center Trailblazer Community Group. Join this group to stay updated with the latest on DevOps Center, engage with the community, provide feedback, and get access to additional product resources, such as FAQs, video demos, and product documentation.
We also have detailed product documentation available through Salesforce Help:
About the author
Karen Fidelak is Sr. Director of Product Management for DevOps Center at Salesforce. When not working to bring great products to the Salesforce developer community, she enjoys exploring the great outdoors in her beautiful home state of Colorado.