Designing and Creating a New Salesforce Application

The process of making Salesforce applications. Going through the main stages of Salesforce development.

Developing any software is a complex process, and it requires a lot of skill and training. It is difficult to implement a wide variety of necessary methodologies and approaches. One of the most topical solutions as of today is a Cloud system. Professional developers are interested in creating Cloud systems within Cloud ecosystems. Among the best examples of incorporating such systems is the process of creating a Salesforce app, because it is all conducted in a Cloud.

As for the efficient and popular environments for developing Salesforce solutions, Force.com is a great option. A simple plugin allows integrating it effortlessly because the site was built using a Salesforce Integrated Development Environment. Among the tools that help in building Salesforce apps, there are metadata components, Visualforce, Lightning, Apex and many more. The data is preserved in local file storage, while the developers need to move all the information to the revision control system in order to apply changes and then to return it back. The most commonly utilized source control systems are Subversion and Git.

Professionals in a variety of areas have to work on a single app, keeping control of each of the processes involved. Usually, these people are the core specialists engaged in the development:

 

1. Product Manager –this person is essential for handling and confirming business requirements;
2. Release Manager – this specialist is taking care of product release dates;
3. Salesforce developers – they work directly on coding and developing the app;
4. Quality Assurance Manager – this specialist has an important task of testing the app for bugs and other issues;
5. Salesforce Consultant – the consultants provide business solutions in terms of optimizing the process.

The steps listed below constitute the process of Salesforce App development from start to finish.

The first step is setting up a Source Control repository system. It is extremely beneficial for any developer to have an individual repository for every single task. The same goes for metadata storage in a master branch.

As you already know, there are many professionals involved throughout the process of app development. The main task for a Release Manager is to create separate branches for each of the features. Each of these has to be assigned to a different specialist. Release Managers also help in making package.xml manifests and managing metadata. This includes transferring it to the master branch with the help of Force.com.

Direct development starts with writing codes in sandboxes. In Salesforce development, the sandboxes have no attachment to the whole production whatsoever. This is a necessary measure, which ensures that the actions taken inside of a sandbox will not interfere with the production in any way.

The developers have to connect their sandbox with the help of Force.com for recovering the metadata. The code is committed to the Git repository. However, they have to carry out some testing.

After that, the code is moved back to the sandbox to undergo more development. The finishing additions are made in the repository once again. The code can be committed only after the developers made sure that nobody was altering the code at the same time. The simultaneous work can result in various errors.

The following step in the development is testing. Quality Assurance managers create some fresh sandboxes and move the code there in order to work on it. In certain cases, the Quality Assurance specialists are only required to perform testing on a specific feature, instead of the whole code. In order to make this happen, they have to create partial sandboxes. These allow moving only necessary parts of the code.

Sometimes a few specialists work in one sandbox simultaneously. This is especially applicable to the most important features because such testing is more in-depth. If any drastic errors are discovered, the whole process needs to be started over.

The ultimate point in testing is examining user acceptance. Once again, the managers make new partial sandboxes to perform finishing testing. After that, the product has to be prepared for customers to see it. Some issues might arise on this stage as well, which means the process still has to be started from the beginning.

At last, performance testing is required when it is time for the application release. Another sandbox type is created. Intermediate sandboxes contain the most common application features. The final testing is performed here. If the app passes it, it is ready for the production.