Prior to the introduction of cloud-based solutions, organizations responsible for software development went through a very rigorous and time-consuming process to build, test and deploy new versions of software, sometimes in a single environment. Often, the deployment of new releases took place in a massive, single event “big bang” deployment that would span a weekend or more, before end-users could access the system and begin using it live. The problem with this approach is that the configuration was prone to rework due to having multiple configurators and integration developers building in a single environment.
Introducing DevOps and CI/CD
The digital transformation movement and the migration of applications to the cloud have created the need for shorter development cycles, faster upgrades and higher quality deployments with minimal downtime. DevOps is essentially a set of processes that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous integration and continuous delivery with high software quality.
As a provider of cloud-based solutions, nCino has included DevOps as one of their key pillars to delivering agility and quality. The AutoRABIT DevOps platform also has the ability to helps nCino integrate with the most widely used software development tools like version control and automated testing in a seamless process.
Automated Version Control
Automated Version Control is particularly helpful when multiple software developers are working to meet deadlines. Eliminating version mismatch and code overwrites automatically is a huge relief. This also delivers a single tool that both developers and configurators can use. Within AutoRABIT, organizations can rely heavily on managed label functions to interleave development, testing and configuration into simultaneous work efforts.
While the version control system manages commit and testing tasks, configuration tasks could continue in a separate environment. Configuration and testing can take place simultaneously in controlled scenarios without conflicts. Adopting this approach significantly reduces process time from approximately 40 hours of effort or so at a typical organization down to six hours.
Watch this brief video snippet on this approach.
Creation of Reusable Packages
An AutoRABIT customer who is an association membership and events management solutions provider and built on the Salesforce platform, uses AutoRABIT to speed up customer deployments. They have built out what they call a Golden Customer Org (GCO) that is essentially a deployment sandbox containing all the necessary development, objects, etc., that make up a minimum viable product. Then for any specific customer, they deploy the GCO, and customize as necessary.
This approach also gives the software company the ability to quickly develop and try out new concepts that their customers may need. This takes advantage of not only AutoRABIT’s version control functionality, but also its continuous integration, continuous deployment (CI/CD) capabilities to enable the software company to delight their customers with customized applications faster.
AutoRABIT offers a suite of products used by DevOps organizations to automate their CI/CD process for cloud-based development platforms. The Automated Release Management (ARM) Suite for Salesforce integrates a variety of tools and processes used by DevOps teams to configure, build, test and manage development, environments, and deployments on their Salesforce instance.
AutoRABIT’s Metadata Mastery™ is a proprietary technology developed to manage the dependencies, profiles, and relationships associated with Salesforce metadata.
Contact us to set up a demo or learn more about AutoRABIT.
