According to all excellent administrators, changes should always be made in a sandbox environment unless there is an exceedingly strong reason. Especially if there are numerous, significant changes, like a lightning migration.
Therefore, these changes must be deployed to production once you are happy with the solution you have constructed and passed through testing, including UAT, if necessary.
Your devotion and hard work have all culminated in this final phase, but plenty of things could go wrong.
If a clear plan and deployment checklist are in place, CRM technology implementations might be more manageable. Below listed are the ultimate guides to the Salesforce deployment checklist:
Before deployment:
⦁ Agree online and pay everything in advance:
The most effective deployments are thoroughly thought out and predetermined, ensuring that everything is taken care well before going live. Before starting the Salesforce deployment, allow yourself a plenty of time to design and test many scenarios.
Carefully evaluate the ramifications of the Salesforce deployment. Deploying can take a long time, and as a result, many unusual things take place.
Set a time in advance and inform everyone in the company that it will take place outside of the user’s nonworking hours to minimize any adverse effects on the user and give us time to address any difficulties.
For most firms, this means the evening or weekend. Ensure everyone is informed and urged to refrain from accessing the organization during this period.
We might think about genuinely freezing users until deployment, post-deployment actions, and until the testing is finished if we are working in a large organization if our deployment is enormous.
⦁ Build everything in a sandbox environment:
You can test applications and build them out in a secure environment using a sandbox before deployment. For the most accurate and practical outcomes, always ensure your sandbox is an actual clone or copy of the production environment.
⦁ Check the trial list:
You should check the audit trail in the production environment to ensure no alterations were made that would be lost upon deployment.
If so, let’s delay or postpone our deployment until these changes are transferred to the sandbox or discussed with the relevant stakeholders.
⦁ Prepare your change set:
The change set should be ready and verified in advance. You want to ensure you get your deployment window because you weren’t prepared. This can take a long time if we need to fix issues between the sandbox and production.
Watch out for a few things that validation may catch, such as renaming standard fields or modifying API names.
⦁ Prepare test scripts:
Ensure the test script is ready to run to verify everything functions correctly after deployment. The Salesforce customer portal provides the necessary information for the customers.
As a responsible administrator, you will have tested the change set in your sandbox before making it. Still, you should do so once again in production to ensure that everything has deployed as it should.
Prepare these test scripts with step-by-step instructions on what to test and how in advance so that you and your users can rapidly run through these tests to ensure everything is working.
⦁ Disable email deliverability:
Disabling email deliverability while you deploy will prevent your users from being inundated with a deluge of emails because mass modifications can result in many system emails and notifications.
When deactivating something, make sure to note it so you may enable it again when your change set has been deployed.
Deactivate any rules, workflows, validation rules, flows, or process builders that could influence changes or interfere with their proper deployment. After you have reactivated them, be sure to run tests to make sure your environment is working correctly.
⦁ Do a full export and take a back up:
Before deploying, do a complete export or backup of the production data. Before making any significant changes, you should perform a backup to ensure that your data is secure in case something goes wrong.
⦁ Build a sandbox copy:
Make a sandbox that is an exact copy of your production, so you have a record of your current configuration and metadata. Again, you want to be able to return to the necessary condition of play if something goes wrong.
⦁ Prepare training and documentation:
Your users could become perplexed if you make significant adjustments. Prepare training sessions and documentation for all users. Make sure users know how to get in touch with you or open an internal support ticket if they have any problems or inquiries.
Consider establishing an actual help desk in the office where customers may come for assistance if you are making truly significant changes.
After deployment:
⦁ Data and undeployed changes:
You should ensure workflow rules, process builders, and validation rules stay inactive for this, depending on the desired outcome. Reactivate any paused devices.
It is time to revive your workflows and validation rules if you put them on hold during deployment. Launch workflows rules and automation are not immediately enabled after deployment.
Anything that might not have been acted upon, such as new Process Builders, workflows, and validation rules, should be activated.
⦁ Switch email deliverability back on:
Once testing is over, and everything is functioning as it should, you may enable email deliverability so that your users can start receiving emails once more. The Salesforce customer portal is a personalized website that delivers information about the specific company.
⦁ Reactive and inform users:
If you are relieved that everything is running smoothly, you have completed your deployment. If you disabled it, the last step is to enable it again and notify your users that changes have been made.
Make sure they have access to all the required training and support materials, and follow up sometimes to ensure they are as ecstatic about your fantastic adjustments as you would hope.
Bottom line:
An expert consultant knows that deploying Salesforce involves much more than pushing configurations. Utilize this tremendously effective business tool to its most potential by working with a well-qualified consultant. You can be highly benefitted by maintaining a proper checklist.
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