Get to Know the Release Schedule
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Define release terminology.
- Describe the Marketing Cloud Engagement release types.
Innovation Ahead
At Salesforce, we don’t settle for good enough. We are always looking for ways to innovate and improve our products. We continuously ask: What can be enhanced? How can this be reimagined? Is there a way to make this more streamlined? Just like every homeowner has a home improvement list, every innovative tech team has a technology improvement list. And whether you’re renovating your home or developing software, you need a plan.
Lucky for you, we handle all of the careful planning behind the scenes, and you get to experience the results of our hard work in each Marketing Cloud Engagement release. These releases are designed to make sure our continuous improvements are successful and there is minimal impact to you—our customers. And when you know more about Marketing Cloud Engagement releases (such as the terminology, schedule, and lifecycle), you can better prepare to take advantage of these exciting innovations. Let’s get started.
The ABCs of Marketing Cloud Engagement Releases
As a Marketing Cloud Engagement user, it’s important to know when to expect releases, how we communicate about them, and how they can affect your account and day-to-day job. Let’s review Marketing Cloud Engagement release terminology so we can start with a common language.
- Agile development: A project methodology used to manage software development work. Agile methodology focuses on completing small, short-term tasks versus a waterfall approach that focuses on a large-scale project.
- Bug: An identified error or flaw found in our product that is being tracked for status and completion.
- Downtime: The amount of time a product is unavailable.
- Emergency release: A product update that occurs when an update needs to be made immediately to fix a bug that is impacting security or performance.
- Feature: A change made to Marketing Cloud Engagement that adds new functionality or improves current functionality.
- Freeze: A cut-off date for changes. Feature freeze relates to what will be added to a release and a release freeze refers to the date no additional changes can be made to an upcoming release.
- Functional test: A Quality Assurance (QA) test that evaluates a group of functional requirements.
- GA: Denotes a product feature that is generally available (GA) to all customers.
- Integration test: A QA test that tests if different parts of the system work together after updates.
- Known issues: Issues discovered and logged by members of the Trailblazer Community. These issues are monitored and tracked by Salesforce product teams as bugs.
- Lifecycle: The cadence of product improvements and fixes.
- Patch release: A weekly release that focuses on fixing bugs and known issues.
- Pilot features: A feature offered to a limited number of customers who have signed up to test that feature.
- Sprint: A short time period (often 2 weeks) when product teams work on a specific list of tasks.
- Stack: The database group that your Marketing Cloud Engagement account is part of. Your stack and specific database (called an instance) impacts your account’s release date.
- Unit test: A QA test to ensure an individual update meets requirements and follows expected behavior.
Marketing Cloud Engagement Release Schedule
Now that you have an idea of how we talk about releases, let’s review the release schedule. Marketing Cloud Engagement follows a unique schedule releasing three times a year, aligning closer to the Salesforce release cycle. In addition to those major releases, Marketing Cloud Engagement also conducts weekly patch releases, as well as emergency releases. Here’s what you need to know about each type of release.
| Release Type |
Schedule |
What’s Included |
Downtime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Major |
Three times per year |
|
No |
| Patch |
Weekly (On Wednesdays in the US) |
|
No |
| Emergency |
As needed |
|
No |
Release Schedule Exceptions
Datorama is now Marketing Cloud Intelligence.
There is an exception to this schedule. Marketing Cloud Intelligence has separate release procedures that can align with the Marketing Cloud Engagement release cycle. If you have Marketing Cloud Intelligence, you receive a communication when any new features are deployed in your account.
Check out the Salesforce Release Notes to learn release information for all Salesforce Products.
In the next unit, we take a closer look at the release lifecycle.
