Insight: SalesforceDX for Admins

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re talking to Zayne Turner, Lead Developer Evangelist for Salesforce, to talk about what SalesforceDX means for those of us who don’t necessarily think about coding every day.

More about this Insights session: the meanings of mysterious acronyms revealed, the ideas behind what DX does, and working with your Developers to co-build together.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Zayne Turner and Gillian Bruce.

Why SalesforceDX is really about managing change.

Zayne recently gave a talk at TrailheaDX about SalesforceDX and what it means for Admins. We thought that it was pretty great, so we wanted to get her on the podcast and talk through the ideas she presented.

“Something that’s really exciting about DX is that it’s really trying to help us change how we can move our metadata around,” Zayne says, “it helps you manage how you change your environment.” This is especially helpful when you’re trying to iterate something because DX keeps a long-term record of what you’ve done to your Org. It’s giving you more options. “Right now, how you get at those tools is through the command line, largely,” Zayne says, but it’s important to take a look at what’s possible so you’re ready when those tools evolve.

Acronym mysteries revealed.

“At its core, the Salesforce Developer Experience started as, ‘Let’s rethink how can we enable to build on the platform,’” Zayne says. The Salesforce CLI (Command Line Interface) has been around for awhile, but now in combination with changes about the platform, SalesforceDX, we can now do new things in new places.

“There’s another piece,” Zayne says, “which is how we manage changes and deployments. The functionality behind SalesforceDX is bringing new things into our app development lifecycle.” This is what she gets into in her TrailheaDX talk. There’s a whole new environment called a Scratch Org, which lets you experiment with changes in a temporary environment that looks a lot more like Production but is more temporary than a Sandbox. With this and other changes, it’s important to keep up with the terms and what’s possible so you’re ready when new tools are added to work with them.

Building together means everyone wins.

The other aspect of keeping up with SalesforceDX is that it forces you to think about how you interact with your Dev. If you want to get started, the best place, as always, is Trailhead, where there is a whole series of SalesforceDX content. If you learn together, you can have a conversation about what’s doable and how you can look forward to the future of your Org.

The key is to engage with your Developer and see if the tools work for you. The goal is to work together and co-build, with the Dev setting up the Scratch Org so the Admin can go in and build, and then ultimately the Dev pulls the changes into production when they’re right. “You’re going to discover new things about how the tools do and don’t work for your team,” Zayne says, “Admins know their orgs and that knowledge is what you need when you’re starting to look at how DX can help you move changes between environments.”

Trailhead

• Get Started with SalesfoceDX Trail: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/trails/sfdx_get_started

Blog

• Getting Started with SalesforceDX series: https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2018/02/getting-started-salesforce-dx-part-1-5.html

Twitter

• Zayne: @zaynelt
• Gillian: @gilliankbruce
• Salesforce Admins: @salesforceadmns

We want to remind you that if you love what you hear, or even if you don’t, head on over to iTunes and give us a review. It’s super easy to do, and it really helps more Admins find the podcast. Plus, we would really appreciate it.