ISVforce Guide
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Trialforce
A Trialforce setup has several parts: the Trialforce management organization, Trialforce
source organizations, and Trialforce templates. Before you set up Trialforce, learn how these
parts work together to deliver a trial of your AppExchange solution.
- Trialforce Management Organization (TMO)
- The TMO is the starting point for setting up Trialforce and the central location for
managing Trialforce after it’s set up. You must log a case in the Salesforce Partner Community to request a TMO. The two tasks
you perform in the TMO are:
- Create Trialforce source organizations.
- Define templates for custom branding.
- Trialforce Source Organization (TSO)
- You use the TSO to create a template for the trial orgs received by your customers. You
create the TSO from your TMO. The tasks you perform in a TSO are:
- Install your offering, along with any sample data.
- Configure the TSO to be exactly as you want your customers to experience it.
- Specify branding by choosing from the templates you previously created in the TMO.
- Create a Trialforce template, which becomes the basis for all trial orgs.
- Trialforce Template
- The template is a snapshot or exact copy of your TSO at a specific instance in time. You create it from a TSO after you’ve installed your offering and made configuration changes. You specify a Trialforce template when you generate a trial org using the SignupRequest API and when you create a demo org from the Environment Hub. The template defines the trial org that is provisioned each time a customer signs up for a trial of your offering.
The TMO, TSOs, and Trialforce templates have a hierarchical relationship.
- You can create multiple TSOs from a given TMO. For example, if you want to offer trials for two different apps, you would generate two different TSOs from the same TMO, one for each app. This enables you to use the TMO as a central hub to manage the trials for all Lightning Platform apps or components produced by your company.
- You can create multiple Trialforce templates from the same TSO. For example, you release a new version of your component after you’ve started using Trialforce. You can install the updated version into the previous TSO and generate a new Trialforce template from it. To request a trial for the new version, use the SignupRequest API with the new Trialforce template ID. All trial orgs created using the new template ID have the new version of the package.
As a best practice, we recommend that you have one unique TMO for your company, one TSO for each offering, and one Trialforce template for each version or edition of your offering. Splitting up the configuration process across these different levels makes it easier to maintain and update your trials. Each time you change something, such as the version, its branding, or a configuration detail of the trial org, you only need to make the change at one level in the hierarchy. This minimizes the configuration steps involved and makes it easy to concurrently manage trials for multiple offerings, versions, and editions.
After you’ve configured a TMO, TSO, and Trialforce template, choose how to provide trials to
prospective customers.
- Use AppExchange: Customers begin a trial of your offering directly from an AppExchange listing. This is the quickest, easiest way to make a trial available because it requires only a few steps to configure.
- Use the API: You provision a trial of your offering programmatically using the SignupRequest API. This approach is ideal if you want full control of the signup process because it allows for advanced customization.