Discover Developer Environments
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain what an environment is in Salesforce.
- Understand why developers use different environments and how they contribute to success in production.
Innovate Strategically with Environments
Ever wonder how developers take an idea and turn it into a functional application? It’s no small task, and it often involves working in more than one Salesforce environment.
Environments are instances of Salesforce that companies use to optimize and enhance their work. The most recognizable of these is the production environment, where each organization that deploys Salesforce has its set of licensed users. When a business first deploys Salesforce, its set of users becomes its own org, which encompasses all the data and customer interactions that flow through the business.
These orgs, or Salesforce environments for specific purposes and groups, help Salesforce and its customers maintain good data governance and keep the information that drives innovation accessible without sacrificing speed, efficiency, or safety.
Orgs play a key role in:
- Streamlining development workflows
- Delivering consistency and compatibility across enterprises with multitenant architecture
- Strategically deploying feature releases
But not all environments are the same. While any deployment of Salesforce can be an org, there are special deployments designed specifically for developers to do the critical work of creating tomorrow’s top apps.
There are a few different types of developer-focused environments, from the free core experience anyone can use by signing up for a developer account to more organization-specific sandboxes that help businesses stage and plan. Don’t worry, we cover all the nuances of Developer orgs, sandbox environments, and more. What matters for now is that there are several different “testing” deployments of Salesforce that developers use to efficiently build and launch their latest updates, try out new features, and test their current builds with upcoming releases.
Developer Orgs, Sandboxes, and More
Developer versions of Salesforce aren’t all that different from the version our customers use in their everyday business. They feature many of the same interfaces, capabilities, and guidance as any Salesforce org. But unlike others, these environments exist specifically to develop and test so that only polished builds make it to production, where everyday teams need to rely on them.
Put simply, you can think of Developer orgs as branches or copies of Salesforce that have specific, configurable features designed to help developers run tests and build new workflows strategically. By selecting a particular edition or enabling particular features, developers can see how their builds perform with different versions of Salesforce. With these orgs, there’s no risk of hurting productivity or credibility to try something new or see if an idea would work, giving developers the freedom to innovate without worrying about breaking anything in production.
When Should I Use Developer Environments?
Developer environments are useful for developing new apps that work in any Salesforce environment, or testing automations or updates you might want to make to a production version of Salesforce. They’re also useful for situations where you want to build something with Salesforce but not necessarily deploy it to a wide audience yet. From full teams of app experts to entrepreneurs building their first idea, developer tools in Salesforce offer anyone with a vision and time to spare an easy, intuitive, and complete way to turn that vision into a reality.
To get started, simply sign up so that you can access the orgs available to developers. All the information you need can be found on your Journey to Salesforce.
Already have access to a production environment? Even better! You can spin up a sandbox without a developer version account.
Developer Environment Limitations
Each type of developer environment has its own limitations, which can be things like not including metadata or capping the amount of data that an environment can use. While these limitations may be different from production, they shouldn’t get in the way of building and testing with confidence. We designed each developer environment with a purpose, and streamlining their features helps us keep these tools focused and functional for developers.
How to Use Environments
Each type of Salesforce environment has a dedicated purpose and a wide range of features designed to help customers achieve that purpose. Now that you know the basics, get familiar with what makes each environment special, including:
- What kind of data each uses
- Which teams use the environment
- How the environments support the wider Salesforce ecosystem
Let’s move on to unit 2, where we delve into environment types.