An intentional and consistent approach to sandbox management streamlines Salesforce DevOps processes and leads to more reliable applications and updates.
Why It Matters: Wasted time reduces the ROI for every DevOps project, compounding over time to drastically degrade the benefits of each product.
- Time spent addressing lengthy lead times takes developers away from advancing subsequent projects.
- Thoughtful management provides the tools and guidance needed for development teams to improve time to market and release frequency, increasing the value of the application development pipeline for the organization.
Here are eight ways sandbox management cuts down on wasted time in your Salesforce DevOps pipeline:
- Sandbox Seeding Eliminates Inconsistencies
- Keeping Everything in Sync Reduces Configuration Drift
- Scratch Orgs Preserve Sandboxes
- Version Control Simplifies Collaboration
- Proper Permissions Streamline Processes
- Tracking Changes Prevents Redundancy
- Regular Sandbox Refreshes Minimize Downtime
- Frequent Backups Avoid Data Loss
1. Sandbox Seeding Eliminates Inconsistencies
Inconsistent environments lead to mistakes and rework. The ability to get these right at the start of the project sets your team up for success.
Setting up scripts to automatically seed sandboxes with relevant test data saves significantly more time than manually entering or importing data.
Automation ensures consistency and readiness for testing without delays.
2. Keeping Everything in Sync Reduces Configuration Drift
Keeping sandboxes in sync with production is essential to avoid configuration drift—the gradual divergence of configuration settings, data, or metadata between two environments. This typically occurs between a sandbox or other development environment and the production environment.
Proper sandbox management ensures that test environments mirror the production instance closely, leading to smoother deployments.
Verify the settings across your environments and avoid configuration drift and other issues that could impact the quality of your DevOps project.
3. Scratch Orgs Preserve Sandboxes
Scratch orgs are very useful for experimenting and trying new things with code without the risk of negatively impacting other environments.
Train your team on when to use a scratch org versus a sandbox to help save resources and time by keeping environments lean and focused.
Scratch orgs can be spun up quickly and are very useful as a strategy to preserve the stability and settings of developer sandboxes.
4. Cost Reduction
Multi-developer teams enable a faster release cycle, but without proper management and tooling, they are prone to overwrites and errors.
Version control is a crucial tool in maintaining the quality of applications and updates by providing the ability to quickly roll back updates when an error is identified.
Leveraging version control as part of an automated release management tool provides the infrastructure of support needed for reliable results.
5. Proper Permissions Streamline Processes
Strong management means things are aligned and operating smoothly. This can relate to the actions taken by team members as well as the infrastructure of the platform on which they work.
Managing user roles or profiles within sandboxes from the start ensures the right team members have access to the proper data and functionalities, avoiding unnecessary back-and-forth.
Misconfigured permissions can slow down development and testing.
6. Tracking Changes Prevents Redundancy
With multiple sandboxes running in parallel, poor coordination can result in redundant bug fixes or code duplication.
Proper sandbox management helps track changes across different sandboxes, reducing unnecessary work.
Eliminating redundant work lets your team focus on pushing new products into production.
7. Regular Sandbox Refreshes Minimize Downtime
Using stale sandboxes with outdated configurations or data wastes valuable time during testing and deployment.
Performing regular refreshes ensures sandboxes stay up-to-date, minimizing issues caused by outdated setups.
Focus your team’s efforts by ensuring everything is current, so time is not wasted on data that doesn’t impact the project.
8. Frequent Backups Avoid Data Loss
Ensuring data integrity is crucial for sandbox environments. By implementing routine backups, teams can prevent wasted time caused by accidental data loss or corruption during testing.
Automate repeated data backups according to an intentional schedule to ensure you always have a current dataset to fall back on in the event of an outage.
Sandbox management ensures your DevOps processes are consistent and reliable. Automating the management of various aspects of your releases reduces manual errors and increases deployment velocity.
Next Step…
Maintaining high-quality updates and applications is a pivotal aspect of a healthy Salesforce platform. But as your wealth of data grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid errors and bugs that can impact your entire environment.
Our ebook, The Definitive Handbook to Quality Management in Salesforce DevOps, explores everything you need to know to preserve quality throughout your IT environment.