In simple terms, DevOps is a combination of beliefs, methods, and tools that aim to make the development process faster and ensure consistent delivery of high-quality software.

Before the introduction of the DevOps Center, the only available tools with similar capabilities were offered by third-party providers on the AppExchange, and they came with a cost.

DevOps Center is a tool that assists teams in releasing technology more quickly. It enables the smooth movement of changes between different Salesforce development environments. It offers features like visual development pipelines, source control using Github, and automatic tracking of changes in your environments.

DevOps Benefits

When you start integrating DevOps tools into your deployment team, you can expect the following benefits:
Faster, more reliable deployments:
This leads to time-saving and efficient deployment processes.

Increased release pattern:
Using Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) automation helps to achieve a more efficient and simplified feedback process and enables more frequent releases.

Reduced bugs/errors in production:
Testing plays a crucial role in preventing the propagation of errors or bugs to production, ensuring higher quality software. Improved collaboration between developers and admins: An audit trail provided by version control allows tracking of changes made by individuals, promoting better collaboration and understanding.

Enhanced security:
Monitoring and backup mechanisms contribute to better overall security measures, safeguarding the software environment.

DevOps Center has the following functionality:

Work Items:
It’s an object to track the changes you are making. Work items will include the metadata items that are being passed through different environments during the development process.

Automated Change Tracking:
As development teams make changes in their sandboxes, DevOps Center will automatically track the changes, which means that you have total transparency into which items need promoting through environments.

Pipelines:
Before DevOps Center, Salesforce did not provide a way to define the pipeline of development environments. Now teams can create customized pipelines with their desired method of promoting changes.

Source Control:
Teams using DevOps Center can now integrate with GitHub source control, with full visibility of who changed what (and when).

Deploy Changes:
Once you’re satisfied with changes, DevOps Center provides an easy way to view your entire development pipeline and bundle and migrate changes from one stage to another – all using clicks, not code.

External DevOps tools

• • Deployment Tools
  • Backup Tools
  • Test Automation Tools
  • Code Scanning Tools

Salesforce DX

While all of the apps mentioned above are paid applications from the Salesforce ecosystem, it’s important to also mention the free tools available from Salesforce as part of the Developer Experience.

Currently, Salesforce DX offers a few different features in the DevOps space. While these features make DevOps easier.

DevOps Centre:
The DevOps Center will allow admins and developers to properly track changes between orgs, and finally allow us to use Version Control while deploying changes between environments.

Salesforce Extensions for VS Code:
Salesforce recently announced a powerful extension for Visual Studio Code. This allows you to connect your development orgs to the code editor.

Salesforce DX CLI:
A core part of the Salesforce Developer Experience is the powerful command-line interface (CLI). The Salesforce CLI has commands for moving metadata between orgs, and creating scratch orgs.

Scratch Orgs:
Scratch orgs are temporary development and testing environments containing your source code that can quickly be created and used to test or work on changes without worrying about maintaining the development environment.

Also Read: Configure DevOps Center in Salesforce

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