Whenever you deploy with Gearset, more than fifty problem analyzers automatically check your deployment package, catching common causes of deployment failure and suggesting how you can fix them before you deploy. This saves you from having to work out what went wrong with your deployment after it failed, or deploying changes to source control that won’t be deployable to a Salesforce environment.
Many deployments would fail if it weren’t for these problem analyzers. They don’t just help you spot problems that are otherwise easy to miss during manual deployments, but also apply fixes when CI jobs run in Gearset, automating repetitive troubleshooting for your team.
Of course, you’ll want to see what Gearset’s problem analyzers are doing to your deployment packages. You need to understand why your deployment package is the way it is, both during the deployment and later if you come back to review your deployment history.
Better visibility into what problem analyzers are doing to your deployment packages
We’ve recently improved the visibility you have into the changes that problem analyzers make to your deployment package. You can already see that problem analyzers are going to take effect on your deployment package during manual deployments from the message that explains the problem and suggests the fix, which you can accept or reject.
In the example below, Gearset’s missing dependency problem analyzer has been triggered. This is because we’re trying to deploy a DiscountPercentage field on the Account object, but without the DiscountRate field on which DiscountPercentage depends. The problem analyzer suggests adding the Account object and its subcomponents because this will bring DiscountRate into the deployment package. Otherwise, the deployment will fail.
Problem analyzer messages like this one are transient, and only shown as you work through a manual deployment in Gearset. So to give you a way of seeing exactly what effect problem analyzers have had on your deployment package, we’ve added this information to the deployment summary at the end of the deployment flow. And since deployment summaries are permanent records that form part of your audit trail, you will now be able to return to earlier deployments and understand why certain items were included or excluded from the deployment package.
In this deployment summary, you’ll notice that Gearset tells us which items were suggested by a problem analyzer. The new DiscountRate field was the missing item that our DiscountPercentage field depends on. The Account object containing these fields, which is otherwise unchanged, has also been brought into the deployment package by the problem analyzer.
The ‘difference type’ icons in Gearset show you whether an item in your deployment package is new, different, deleted, or unchanged. A small cog symbol on the status icon now indicates whether an item’s status was the result of a problem analyzer.
You can also see this additional information in your CI job history. Gearset now shows you exactly what effect its problem analyzers have had on your CI deployments. Given that CI jobs run automatically, and no one manually accepts or rejects the problem analyzers’ suggested fixes, this change will make it much easier for you to understand the deployment history for your CI jobs.
We love getting product feedback!
If you find this added visibility helpful, or you can see a way to make it even better, we’d love to hear from you! It might just be that you notice how many times Gearset’s problem analyzers fix deployments that would have failed. If so, do let us know! And, as ever, you can give any other product feedback on our user forum, or using the live chat. Speak to you soon!