In today's dynamic business landscape, organisations often find themselves managing multiple Salesforce environments. While these environments serve various purposes, they can sometimes lead to complexity and inefficiency.
This article delves into the imperative task of merging multiple Salesforce environments into one cohesive unit. We'll not only outline the key steps for this process but also explain why businesses may need to embark on such a journey. Moreover, we'll discuss the challenges and risks involved and provide insights on how to overcome them.
Planning and Preparation
Before starting the merging process, planning and preparation are essential. This may include creating a detailed project plan, identifying key stakeholders, defining project goals, and setting up a realistic timeline. You may also want to consider the following questions:
Why Merge Your Salesforce Environments?
You may want to merge your environments to reduce complexity, improve performance, streamline processes, or comply with regulations.
What Are the Benefits of Merging Your Salesforce Environments?
You may expect to achieve cost savings, increased efficiency, better data quality, or enhanced security.
What Are the Risks of Merging Your Salesforce Environments?
You may encounter challenges such as data duplication or compatibility issues. Additionally, there's the potential for reduced adaptability in your business processes and release lifecycle.
How Will You Mitigate the Risks of Merging Your Salesforce Environments?
You may involve a Steering Committee (SteerCo) or appoint an Executive Sponsor to oversee governance aspects.
Understand Your Current Environments
Before merging your Salesforce environments, it's essential to gain a clear understanding of what you currently have. This involves closely checking each environment to identify differences, such as in custom fields, custom objects, and business processes.
To simplify this process, you can leverage tools like Elements Cloud, which can significantly reduce the time required to understand your Salesforce orgs, accelerating the overall analysis from weeks to mere hours.
When assessing your environments, consider these key aspects:
Features and Functions: Compare elements such as versions, editions, licences, installed apps, integrations, and workflows to gain a clear understanding of each environment's capabilities.
Data Setup: Examine how your data is organised, including fields, types of information, object relationships, and any rules or automation in place.
Data Amount and Quality: Evaluate data volumes and quality by comparing records, attachments, reports, and the reliability of data.
By understanding these aspects, you'll be well-prepared to make informed decisions throughout the merging process, even if you're not familiar with all the technical details.
Setting Rules for the Merge
After closely examining your existing environments, the next step is to establish clear guidelines for combining custom fields and custom objects, as well as aligning your business tasks. Here are some considerations:
Prioritisation: Identify which elements are critical for your business or have dependencies on other factors.
Conflict Resolution: Address areas where elements conflict, such as fields with the same names or different types, and determine resolution methods.
Alignment: Ensure elements that are similar but not identical, such as names or types, are harmonised, and ensure your team is aligned with the plan.
By setting these rules, you'll have a clear roadmap for how everything will come together during the merge, even if you're not a technical expert.
Setting up a Test Environment
Before merging, it's important to set up a test environment to make sure everything works right. This may involve creating a Salesforce Sandbox or Developer Edition environment. Consider the following steps:
Data Isolation: Copy or clone your production environment to your test environment to facilitate testing without affecting live data or users.
Rule Application: Apply your merge rules to your test environment to assess how the merge will impact data structures and schemas.
Functionality and Performance Testing: Evaluate the functionality and performance of your test environment to understand how the merge will affect features and functionalities.
Developing Your Changes
Once your test environment is in place, shift your focus to the development aspect of merging Salesforce environments. Here, we'll outline how to structure your development team for efficient collaboration, potentially employing methodologies like Scrum:
Team Structure: Organise your development team with roles such as Developers, Architects, Business Analysts, and Administrators, assigning clear responsibilities based on their expertise.
Development Methodology: Implement a development methodology, such as Agile methodologies like Scrum, tailored to your organisation's needs, providing a structured approach to task management, sprints, and releases.
Collaboration: Foster open communication and collaboration among team members through regular meetings, stand-ups, and retrospectives.
Version Control: Employ version control systems like Git to track changes and manage code repositories, ensuring changes can be tracked, reviewed, and rolled back as needed.
Testing and Quality Assurance: Establish a testing process to prevent the introduction of new issues, encompassing unit testing, integration testing, and user acceptance testing.
Documentation: Maintain clear documentation of changes, configurations, and customizations to facilitate knowledge sharing and troubleshooting.
Merging Environments
With the test environment set-up and merge rules defined, you can proceed with the actual merging of the Salesforce environments. This may involve using tools like Data Loader or Salesforce Metadata API. Consider the following tips:
Staged Merging: Merge your environments in stages or rollouts to facilitate monitoring and control of the merge process.
Optimal Timing: Plan the merge during off-peak hours or weekends to minimise disruptions to your users and customers.
Risk Mitigation: Implement backups and checkpoints during the merge process to enable recovery from errors or failures.
Quality Assurance and Post-Merger Validation
After merging your environments into one, it's crucial to ensure that all components function correctly. This includes checking custom fields, custom objects, and any automation rules, such as flows or workflows. Here are the steps you can take:
Automated Testing: Use tools like Provar to efficiently verify the functionality and performance of merged elements.
Manual Testing: Employ traditional testing methods where individuals use the new setup to ensure ease of use and reliability.
Feedback Collection: Gather input from users and customers through surveys and reviews to understand their perspectives on the merged setup.
These steps are essential to guarantee that everything runs smoothly after the merge.
User Training and Support
Finally, providing user training and support is crucial to help your team adapt to the new Salesforce environment. Consider these best practices:
Effective Communication: Share your merge plan and objectives with your team to align them with your vision and expectations.
Resource Provision: Allocate adequate time and resources for team members to learn and gain proficiency in the new environment, reducing the learning curve and boosting adoption rates.
Continuous Support: Offer ongoing support and assistance to address any issues or questions that may arise during or after the merge.
Merging multiple Salesforce environments into one can present its challenges, but it can also lead to significant rewards, especially when customers are actively involved in the project from start to finish. By diligently following these key steps, you can ensure the success of your project and enable your team to fully leverage the advantages of a unified Salesforce environment. We trust you found this article informative and valuable, and we appreciate your readership!
Aziz Benizy, Senior Business Analyst @ Waeg, an IBM Company
