Description
Watch our Gearset accelerator session where we talk about best practice and game changing features in Gearset.
In this video we walkthrough:
- Compare and Deploy CPQ objects: Filter between specific CPQ, Advanced Approvals, and Billing objects to deploy alongside other metadata between your orgs and Source Control.
- External ID Setup: Learn how our external ID setup wizard can populate record IDs and reduce duplicate records.
Gearset Accelerator videos:
Transcript
Welcome to another installment into our webinar accelerator series. So, perhaps for those who aren't too familiar as to what we're doing here, basically, the team and I, we've been showing you various various different functionalities within Gearset to try and build your confidence and also, content with using different functionalities within Gearset.
So for today, Maroof will be showing our CPQ and billing functionality.
As mentioned in our emails, the aim for this session will be to have the knowledge in choosing and filtering between specific CPQ advanced approvals and billing objects to deploy along other Cypress data, and also how to use Gearset's error free ID wizard setup, to populate your record IDs, to prevent that duplication of records and also on how to deploy set records between your Salesforce orgs and source control.
As with our previous webinars, we don't have any formal process regarding questions. We do have dedicated time at the end, for anything to be asked. But where we can, while Maroof is demoing for us today, we have myself and also Antonio here on the call, who can jump in the chat and answer your questions.
So with that being said, I will pass over the floor to Maroof.
Awesome. Thank you, Beth. Hi, everyone. It's great to see you all here.
So, folks, as Beth mentioned, today, we're gonna be talking to you about CPQ.
Just to give you an idea of what to expect, first, I'm gonna be talking about some of the challenges that you may be quite familiar with that are associated with CPQ deployments and a lot of bit challenging.
We're gonna have a look at some of the ways in which Gesset can help, external IDs, for example.
And, also, I'm gonna show you how you can set up your orgs, very quickly so that CPUQ deployments within Giza are relatively stress free. So I'm gonna start by sharing my screen. And, Beth or Antonio, if one of you could just confirm, hopefully, you folks are seeing a tab that I'm sharing.
We are indeed. A nice bright yellow screen.
Awesome. Brilliant. So let's dive straight into this. So, why is it so difficult to deploy CPQ?
As I mentioned, if you're using CPQ as part of your Salesforce setup, you may recognize, some, maybe even all the challenges that I'm about to talk to you, talk to you about.
Let's start looking into them. So starting with challenge number one. So this is the creation and maintenance of external IDs. Now when deploying CPQ records from your dev sandbox to production, all of the Salesforce records of IDs have changed.
Now the most common approach to tracking CPQ records to work around this complexity is to use external IDs. And this means additional steps are required before you can even start to think about your deployments. Now, usually, this involves a whole host of tracking through spreadsheets, other additional manual steps, this can easily eat into your productivity and not to mention open the door to human error. So that's challenge number one.
Challenge number two is all about the dependencies and the complexity of the CPQ data model. Now I don't even know where to begin with the lens of complexity involved in this, data model.
Now this flowchart that I'm about to show you is not for the faint hearted.
So there it is right there. And this is the model from a few years back. So things have got even more complicated, more advanced since, you know, there's various levels of confuse confusion here within the flows, including objects referencing themselves.
You know, so you can easily end up going around in circles there.
Now challenge number three is around coordinating Salesforce metadata and CPQ deployments.
Deploying CPQ configuration data often have dependencies on your Salesforce metadata being in a particular state. For example, picklist values being present that your CPQ changes have a dependency on. And if they don't exist in your target, well, your deployments are doomed. So you need to be able to plan subsequent deployments to ensure both metadata and configuration data are present for your deployments to be successful.
Now having spoke about those last three challenges that I've just gone over, the fourth one is no surprise, and that is a lack of a reliable DevOps process. Now after everything we've gone through, there's no surprise that it's hard to integrate all of the additional countermeasures and steps into a typical DevOps release process. So CPQ deployments often lack an easy to repeat process, and this can cause teams big delays.
So there's some of the challenges on why CPQ deployments are so hard. Good news is Giza is able to help with this. So let's start looking at how we can go about this.
One of the things we mentioned is the external ID. Now that's gonna be a core component of what we run through today. I'm gonna shortly show you how to run the external ID wizard, which is, available as parts of your, Gear Set CPQ license. But before I go, go into that, I'm gonna talk about the steps to kind of align aux.
So before you can so I'm just gonna need to move this tab around so we can see everything. I'm hoping you folks and, Beth, if you could just confirm, can you see my gear set?
We have indeed.
Awesome.
Brilliant.
So as I was saying, before you can compare and deploy any CPQ configuration with gear set, both the source and the target CPQ and related objects must contain the gearset external ID field. So we're gonna come back to that, and I will show you how you can do that. But in order to kind of get these in sync, you've got a few methods that you can go by. So the first one is by running the, external ID on your production environment.
And I'll show you how to do that. But in a nutshell, what that does is GISET will perform a metadata deployment and add external ID fields to your CPQ and related standard CPQ objects.
Gearset will then run a data deployment to populate the external ID, and this is derived from an existing Salesforce record ID.
So once you've completed step one, you can go and perform a full copy sandbox refresh. Now this will leave your production full copy sandbox perfectly in sync.
Once those two steps are done, you're ready to deploy from dev to full sandbox to production for better, CPQ configuration deployments.
So that's step one, option one.
Now option two, let's say you're unable to, you know, in some cases, refreshing developer sandboxes might not be a viable option. There is There is an option for you too there. And that is well, same again. You can run that external ID wizard on your production environment, and then you can run the wizard on the sandbox that you you're wanting to use.
And then use CPQ tool use a CPQ tool to move records, which we're gonna talk about very shortly in the next module.
So that's kind of your two options for getting things into SYK. But Wondering, right. Well, how do I get these external IDs in in the first place? Well, let's take a look into gear set and show you exactly how you can do that.
Now this is a really easy step, but if you head over under the burger menu over to your Salesforce orgs or go into your Salesforce org through the account, whichever way suits you best.
You will find all your orgs that are listed, on this page. Now for this demo, I've already done this. So I won't be able to show you the whole procedure, but I can show you how to go about it.
So this is the org that I wish to run the wizard on. By clicking here and running the CPQ external ID setup, I can start to run the external ID wizard and populate my, CPQ objects with, the external IDs. So you can see here I've already done it, so I can choose to remove it from here or rerun. If this is your first time with one of your orgs, then it might just say run. So let's go ahead and click this to see what happens.
So as I mentioned to you before, step one of this process will be doing a quick check, against every object just to make sure there isn't any, you know, we're not creating any duplicates.
Once this check has been completed, gearset if I go forward with this create because gearset external IDs, all of these CPU data items that you're seeing here, gearset will deploy the metadata external ID fields onto them. Such and then after that, deploy, make a data deployment with all the record IDs.
Or in fact, it's the Salesforce record ID flipped, for your external ID. And I hope that's all made sense. But if you do have any questions about this moving forward, please don't hesitate to reach out to us for us to explain further.
So that essentially is the, external ID setup. So once that's all done and you've got that across your environments, whether it's through option one, which was the sandbox refresh, or option two where you run the wizard on your subsequent, to the lower environment org, You're ready to start making CPQ deployments.
Now a quick caveat here. For those of you who are familiar with GESAT, you may have used our compare and deploy tool.
This process is very similar.
So some of you appreciate that, might be quite new to GIS set watching this.
A lot of the concepts that I'm about to run through are gonna be very similar. So I won't be able to go into every aspect of filtering. However, I would recommend you take a look at our compare and deploy webinar we recorded earlier on in the year, which is available. I'm hoping one of my colleagues will be able to paste the link into this chat, and we can follow-up with you afterwards.
That will give you a good idea on every aspect that I kind of skip over today.
Coming back to the CPQ deployment, let's, let's get one going. So here under the compare and deploy, I can go ahead and start to choose a source and target environment that I wish to migrate my changes across. So in this particular example, it's my c p q dev org here. That's gonna be my source.
And my production environment, c p q production environment here, that's going to be my target.
Now down the bottom here, you can see a comparison filter.
This is what's gonna give me some granular control on what I want to metadata, what CPQ data I want to retrieve it. So for this particular example, I've already got one set up, and it's one of the default. You can see it there. There is, CPQ configuration.
So that's the one that I'm going to choose. However, if you want, you can go into manage custom filters and get very granular about what you want to retrieve as part of your comparison, of course, your metadata, CPQ, billing, so on and so forth. For this example, this custom filter is fine, so I'm gonna go ahead and compare now.
This, you can see quite a lot of metadata items are being found here.
So in the interest of saving time, I've gone ahead and preloaded this so we can jump straight into the comparison.
So, Beth, could you just confirm we are looking at my comparison screen?
We are indeed.
Perfect.
Excuse me.
Okay. So this is essentially the difference viewer in, in in Gear Sets compare, functionality. So once we've picked our source and our target environment, Gear Set is giving us a breakdown of every metadata and CPQ type that we've chose to retrieve so we can have a look at how they appear in our source and in our target.
So you can see here along the top, we have all items new, changed, and deleted. And, essentially, what they represent is exactly as they say. So all items that are part of this comparison can be found here. Anything new will show you items that are in my sun, in my source that aren't available in my target.
Changed items will show you items that are available in both orgs. However, there's some changes made as you can see here. And then finally, deleted.
Deleted will show you, any items that have, that appear in our target but not in our source.
So let's talk about this deployment. So I picked out a few examples to kind of show you how the CPQ tool works, and we're gonna build out a comparison, and show you how you can prepare that for deployment into your target environment.
So the first thing we wanna take a look at is smartwatches.
So I've made some changes, added a new product, and this is a brand new product. It's not been, in our, in our catalog before. So really excited to launch this. Now I'm gonna go ahead to new as part of my filter.
I could find it in all, but I'm gonna go to new just to help filter down the search. Now I've got a whole heap of options here, but if I wanted to refine further, I could just search for it. And it's a smartwatch that I would like to, move over today. So I can start searching it, and there it is.
So I can see the c base level, CPQ product to the smartwatch right there.
Now if I click here, I'm choosing to, I'm clicking on here to kind of add that to my, compare deployment package. But you'll see this little arrow here. And by clicking into this, it's showing me a whole host of related items.
Now this is quite interesting because I've got various bundle options that are associated with, this product. For example, the smartwatch band, the u USB c magnetic smartwatch charger, and various other parts that I want to include as their part of, you know, the bundles that I sell. So through here, I can choose to click on the ones that I want or get very granular and deselect what I don't want to migrate into production.
I'm just gonna unclick all of these for now. You'll also see various other product features that are related being flagged up here. And then finally, the CPQ price book entry along the bottom there where it's showing me the price of the product.
So, obviously, I've clicked here to select the smartwatch, but by click clicking here on the related, it'll, gearset will make sure that, I mean, kind of encapsulating everything that's associated with my base level CPQ products. Now isn't that such an easy way to kind of bypass all of those data models that are in play?
It certainly beats a spreadsheet in my mind.
So there we go. So we've got the most exciting part of our launch done, the smartwatch.
But, unfortunately, there are other pop up things that we need to include.
Luckily, GearSet's gonna be really easy. Gonna help me make those changes incredibly easily. So the next product that I wanna talk to you about is well, next thing or feature within GearSet I wanna talk to you about is precision deployments.
So now I'm gonna head over to changed items. Let me just move smart from the field search.
And I am gonna look for a product called the smart four k smart video camera. There it is.
So here's a product that I only want to make a few changes to.
Now you can see here along the top that I've made a change to description on the product because we're putting this on, an exclusive Black Friday sale, and I've made those notes here. This is the only change that I'd like to migrate today, for example, let's say.
But there are other changes that have been changed, you know, in terms of the non discountable here, and some size options, I believe, down the bottom. Now if I wanted to, you can see here it says zero out of three selected. I've got two options here. I can go in and be really granular about exactly the line that I want to, exactly the, I guess, part of the product that I want to migrate as part of our deployment, or I can go ahead and select select it all by clicking one. So GIS is actually giving us a very granular approach. Now this works in our metadata deployments, and you can see it's, parallel in our CPQ deployments also.
And final thing I wanna show you is about condition errors.
Now, for example, you may have some products, you know, so some rules in place that ensure that you can't deploy, let's say, a product feature without deploying that product itself or their, you know, their their rules set up, in in order for your, org to work the way you need it to.
Well, here, I guess that can do so. So I'm gonna go over to change, and I'm gonna search for a product feature that there we go. It's this one here. So it's the disable and remove electrical installation.
So if I click in here, this is a CPQ error condition that I've set up. Now you can see if I click into this arrow here, it's got some dependencies, various other custom objects and various other rules that are set up here.
Now in an ideal world, you know, I'll I'll remember that, and I'll click on everything. But human error can easily happen. I could easily forget to, you know, click down here and bring in everything that's associated.
So when that's the case, I'm gonna show you how Gitset will tackle this error on my part and help me resolve this.
So now that we've built out our, deployment package, I'm ready to move this and, start the process. So at this point here, I will click next and there we go. Guess that will kick off the problem analyzer page. Again, I appreciate we've skipped over quite a few of the steps involved, and there's various other steps within both comparison and this page.
And I will ask you to refer to our initial compare and deploy, webinars. That'll give you a real good insight into how some of these features work if you haven't seen them yet.
Okay. So let's have a look. So in our problem analysis and environment variable page, we've got some issues that have, been flagged here by GISA.
So let's take a closer look at these.
If I click into that, you can see here. So everything that was associated with this condition error, gearset is actually flagging to me that I should add these. So gearset is, based on its knowledge of Salesforce, is running a quick kind of due diligence on our on your behalf. And this is gonna be telling me that, hey. You know, in order for you to kind of deploy this across, you're gonna need to include the other associated, the, you know, the other related objects here. So I'm gonna choose to listen to gear set. There's also a, metadata.
Config metadata has changed, and that's gearset has bought me a flag here just to say that I need to include this. So this is Gearset doing some due diligence on our behalf so that as we go through, it's picking up on anything we may have missed.
So now with that, I guess, extra peace of mind knowing that, this has been referenced against my, environments, I can move forward to the pre deployment summary.
So the pre deployment summary is essentially a breakdown of everything that's about to happen. So I've built out my deployment package. Now Gearset's telling me what's going to be happening. So it the deployment will take place in two parts. Firstly, you can see here a list of all the metadata items that we're going to be deploying followed by the subsequent CPQ config data items that we've selected as part of this comparison.
Here, I can give this a name. So, for example, this could be the webinar demo. Not a very original name, but it will do the trick for now. And then so that my colleagues and everyone else in the team know, I can add some notes here.
So I don't know. Let's say, for example, webinar c p q deployment, demo. Oh, we get it. You can also if you're using Jira or as as your DevOps Ops work items, you can associate with relevant tickets and, stages within your, workflow.
And then finally, you've got two steps here. So you can go ahead and deploy now, or you can run a validation against, your environment. So I'm gonna run the validation just to kinda showcase what's happening there. So this here is a, I guess, a last kind of layer to give you some peace of mind before you hit deploy.
And, what's happening here is Giza is validating against your or in this case, my target environment just to make sure all the metadata this is only for the metadata, that these components will work once we make the deployment. So you can see the validation is successful, has succeeded.
I've got peace of mind. I'm really happy, and I could go ahead and deploy now. Now for this particular, what's it called? Sorry. This particular, deployment, we've got folks that are still kind of, you know, on on the live end environment as this is going to production. I don't really wanna disrupt their workflow. So I'm gonna go ahead and choose to, set this for, let's say, Saturday at twelve AM.
I'm gonna I need want to add a Slack integration, email the results to me to myself, and then save and schedule this deployment for later on.
And that essentially is that's it, folks. That's everything I wanted to kinda run you through.
So, hopefully, that gives you an idea in terms of how the CPQ, CPQ deployments are working in gear set, how we are helping with that. And, hopefully, having watched this, you'll feel confident to go in and start having a look at your CPQ question marks. So I'll hand over to Beth and Antonia.
Awesome. Thanks, Ruth. Nice little finish of a loony tune. That's all folks.
Brilliant. No. That was perfect.
Yeah, we have a few questions kinda pop up, in the chat as well.
The first one being, someone's quite experienced with a compare and deploy functionality, and they said, can you roll back just like you do in a in a comparison like you compare and deploy? Is that possible?
You can roll back, changes in a record, but, we cannot delete records from your org. So it will not be possible to, do a deployment, add the new records to your org. But if you have modified records, that will be possible.
Awesome. Now that's perfect.
And also kind of in relation to, people using our compare and deploy, functionality, are you able to refresh single line items like, a normal compare and deploy?
Are you able to do that?
For the metadata, you can refresh a single field, a single flow, something.
For the CPQ, you will have to refresh the entire category. So custom, products, product rules, you cannot refresh single items.
Lovely.
Perfect.
I don't know if we've got any more other questions at the moment. So, folks, if you do have anything else, any other burning questions, please let us know. Now you've got myself, Stephanie, Maroof, and Antonio here. But if you do have any other kind of outstanding questions, of course, you can email us, at success at gearset dot com.
Or if you're perhaps struggling when you're doing CPU deployments as Maru, very lovely she said that they aren't the easiest or nor the nicest at the best of times. We do have our fabulous in app chat team, that can be on hand to answer any questions that you may have, if you do run into any trouble. So rest assured you aren't alone in this process.
And, also, I did want to flag here as well, of course, we've been referencing kind of our previous webinars, that we've been showing various different functionalities, and going through different parts of gear set. We do have our learning modules kind of tied, within those webinars too. So you have that as kind of a a learning module if you want a kind of guidance there, whether you'd be completely brand new to gear set or one kind of a refresher.
We have those there, and we'll be sending a follow-up email after this as well so you can have that to hand.
But just as a point of reference, you've got loads of kind of resources to you folks. So you definitely, don't be be struggling in silence.
So yes.
So I can't see if there's any other more questions.
So, again, if you do have anything else, just reach out to us.
But with that, thank you so so much, Maru, for for showing all of us, CPQ deployments. And hopefully, you folks at home feel a lot more confident, and kind of have that better understanding of how CPQ works within Gear Set, and even with our kind of external ID wizard, how that can really benefit with those deployments as well with kind of creating duplicates and whatnot.
So, with that being said, again, this is all being recorded for you to have a look at after this.
We will see you all in the next installment for our webinar series, and thank you so much for joining. And thank you, Antonio and Marie, for joining as well.
See you all soon, folks.
See you all, folks. Bye.
