Salesforce DevSecOps: CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Copado & Beyond

Explore core Git concepts, including repositories and remote repositories, commits as snapshots, branches for isolated development, merges for integration, and remote platforms for push and pull.

Set up your git environment by initializing local repositories with git init, navigating folders on macOS or Windows, and configuring global user name and email with git config.

Learn modern Git branching with Git switch, including creating and switching branches from master or dev, using -C for create-and-switch, and adopting feature, bugfix, hotfix, and release naming conventions.

connect a local repository to a remote GitHub repo using git remote add origin with the remote URL, then push changes to master or dev branches.

Explore git cherry-pick to move selected commits onto a release branch. Learn to create a master-based release branch, resolve conflicts, and raise a production pull request.

Learn how merge conflicts arise when two branches modify the same line and how to resolve them via pull requests between feature and dev branches, git commands, and UI tools.

Explore the GitFlow branching design pattern, its five branches (master/main, develop, feature, hotfix, release), and how it enables scheduled releases, collaboration without conflicts, and safer production deployments.

Explain GitHub flow: create feature or hotfix branches from main, push changes, open pull requests, and merge to main, noting its CI/CD focus and lack of release management.

Explore the continuous improvement cycle for CI/CD in Salesforce: planning, implementation, testing, deployment, and monitoring, with QA and regressive testing, and production release management.

An automated YAML-defined pipeline orchestrates stages and steps, runs on a runner, and triggers on push, pull request, merge, tag, or release to deploy artifacts.

Design branching strategies and environment workflows for Salesforce projects, using feature, hotfix, and release branches to promote changes across development, integration, staging, UAT, and production with zero-downtime deployments.

Create a Copado playground with up to 1500 credits on success.copado.com, configure a unique org, and authenticate with sf dx to begin learning Copado deployments.

Generate sfdx extension bundle, pmd extension bundle, and next gen data deployer extensions, then set up a Copado governed sfdx pipeline connected to a GitHub repository.

Discover how Copado's latest manage package introduces a new commit UI, refreshes the index, performs dependency analysis, selects changes, and commits with base and feature branch options.

Explore Copado terminology, including environments, credentials, Git snapshot, and GitHub organization connections, and learn how these link Salesforce orgs with branches to drive DevOps pipelines.

Explore how Copado deploys Apex components by creating a trigger, its handler, and a test class, adding the account count field, and validating with PMD and quality gates.

Deploy Salesforce profiles with Copado by creating a profile, setting object and field permissions for my projects and project task, and committing changes through phased steps.

Rename the permission set label from project tracker to project tracker permissions, create a user story, edit properties, commit changes on the correct feature branch, api name remains unchanged.

Create and activate data templates in Copado to deploy object data, define which fields to copy, and map accounts and contacts across environments using data schema and external IDs.

Learn how to enable and use Copado rollback to revert deployments, including setting system properties, enabling rollback per environment, and creating rollback promotions.

Set up VS Code for Salesforce development by installing the Salesforce extension pack, JDK 21+, and Salesforce CLI; create a manifest project and authorize an org.

Learn to create custom objects, fields, platform events, and tabs with Salesforce CLI using sf schema generate, including object labeling, API names, descriptions, and default feature and sharing model settings.

Use a manifest file and package.xml to deploy multiple components—apex classes, objects, fields, and permission sets—via sf project deploy start with the manifest path.

Export and import data with sf-data-export and sf-data-import in sf cli, using tree and bulk modes, plan files, and prefixes to migrate accounts and contacts between sandboxes.

Leverage the sf cli bulk API to export and import data, choosing CSV or JSON outputs, referencing query files, and polling asynchronous job status with a job ID.

Explore how a Salesforce dev hub org creates and manages scratch orgs for source-driven development and second generation packages using Salesforce CLI, VS Code, and GitHub as source of truth.

Learn how string replacement in Salesforce CLI dynamically substitutes values during deployment, using file-specific or glob patterns, environment variables, and reduces post deployment steps for credentials, labels, and profiles.

Automate scratch org setup by creating the scratch org, deploying changes, assigning permission sets, and performing data and post-deployment steps with a single script.

Retrieve the entire Salesforce metadata in batches with a shell script using a manifest full package xml and target org, enabling scalable ci/cd metadata management.

Understand GitHub Actions, an event-driven continuous integration and deployment platform for Salesforce CI/CD that automates builds, tests, and deployments via workflows.

Explore over 35 GitHub Actions event types to trigger your Salesforce DevSecOps pipelines, including push, pull request, workflow dispatch, schedule, release, and more, with practical path-based filters.

Define and access environment variables across workflow, job, and step scopes in GitHub Actions using env keys and $env.variable, with node, java, python, and Salesforce CLI examples.

Define and manage environment and organization level secrets in GitHub Actions, using consistent variable names across UAT and production environments to power reusable pipelines.

Learn when to use environment variables versus secrets in ci/cd pipelines, including public urls, file paths, booleans, and sensitive data like api keys and passwords, with rotation guidance.

Learn to optimize Salesforce DevSecOps pipelines by adding path and branch filters in GitHub workflows, ensuring pipelines run only for changes in the force app folder and chosen branches.

Enable JWT-based authentication with Salesforce by generating a certificate via OpenSSL, creating a connected external app, and configuring environment-specific secrets to securely log in from pipelines.

Enforce code coverage before deployment by validating with a dry run and failing the pipeline if thresholds like 82% or 85% aren’t met, with results in deploy_result.json analyzed by code_coverage.py.

Diagnoses a dashboard validation error blocking 82% code coverage in a Salesforce pipeline, and explains fixes to owner and run-as user to restore coverage.

Integrate SonarCloud with GitHub actions to perform static code analysis for Salesforce projects. Sign up to sonarcloud.io, authorize GitHub, and add a SonarCloud scan step in your workflow.

Post the validation ID as a PR comment and read the PR body to extract the deployment ID, updating environment triggers and permissions to ensure successful validation and deployment.

Learn to manage destructive changes in Salesforce deployments using GitHub Actions and the Delta plugin, including pre and post destructive changes and empty package.xml in a root folder.