Build Your Release Pipeline

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Describe the stages of a DevOps Center pipeline.
  
• Plan a pipeline based on your team's requirements.
  
• Describe the process for creating and activating a pipeline in DevOps Center.
  

This unit walks through the pipeline creation process to help you understand how DevOps Center pipelines work. Creating a full pipeline requires multiple Salesforce environments, which aren’t available in a standard Trailhead Playground, so we won’t be checking your work.

If you'd like to follow along, you can use any Salesforce orgs you have available, dedicated sandboxes or free Trailhead Playground and Developer Edition orgs. The environment type you select when connecting depends on the org:

• Sandbox: select Sandbox as the environment type.
  
• Trailhead Playground or Developer Edition org: select Production as the environment type.
  

What Is a Pipeline?

A pipeline in DevOps Center is an ordered sequence of stages that define how changes move from development to production. Each stage represents one environment and one branch in your source control repository. Changes move through stages from left to right, from development toward production.

DevOps Center provides a default pipeline that consists of stages: Development | Integration | User Acceptance Testing (UAT) | Staging | Production. However, you can customize this structure to meet your team's needs.

Plan Your Pipeline Stages

Every team’s pipeline is different. Some teams skip UAT. Others add a capacity testing stage. The key is to design your pipeline based on your business requirements, team size, and release cadence.

Before building your pipeline, answer these questions.

• Which environments do changes travel through? List them in order from development to production.
  
• Which branches correspond to each environment? Each stage needs its own branch. If the branch doesn't exist yet, you can create it during pipeline setup.
  
• Which projects will use this pipeline? You can connect a pipeline to one project.
  

CalcPro Pipeline Design

Your CalcPro project exists, but you need to answer a key question: How does a change get from a developer's sandbox to your customers?

Your team’s answer: A developer builds in the development environment, changes are integrated, and tested in Integration, users review in UAT, and changes go live in Production. You design a four-stage pipeline to make sure that every change follows the same route, every time.

Create a Pipeline

Name your pipeline and connect it to the CalcPro project.

1. In DevOps Center, select the DevOps Pipelines tab.
   
2. Select New.
   

3. In the Pipeline Name field, enter: CalcProPipeline
4. Select your Source Control System as GitHub.
   
5. Select Create a repository.
   
6. In the Repository Owner field, verify your GitHub account name is listed.
   
7. DevOps Center automatically populates the Repository Name field with the pipeline name.
   
8. Select Next.
   
9. From the Available Projects pane, select CalcPro.
   
10. Select the Move button (>) to move it to the Connected Projects pane.
    
11. Select Create Pipeline.
    

Your pipeline is ready with five default stages!

Configure Pipeline Stages

Your default pipeline has five stages: Development | Integration | UAT | Staging | Production. For CalcPro, you use a four-stage pipeline by removing the Staging stage.

1. In DevOps Center, select the DevOps Pipelines tab.
   
2. From the list, select CalcProPipeline.
   
3. Click on the Staging stage to delete it.
   

Now you have four stages: Development, Integration, UAT, and Production.

Connect Environments

Connect each stage to a Salesforce environment.

Connecting environments require dedicated Salesforce environments. You can connect sandboxes or free Trailhead Playground and Developer Edition orgs. When connecting, select Sandbox if you're connecting a sandbox, or Production if you're connecting a Trailhead Playground or Developer Edition org. The Development Environment stage doesn’t require a connected environment. Follow these steps to understand the connection process used in production implementations.

1. Select Connect Environment for the Production stage.
   

2. In the Environment Name field, enter: Prod.
   
3. Select the Environment Type as Production Org.
   
4. Select Connect and enter your production org credentials.
   
5. Select Confirm to confirm external access. If you receive an authentication error, retry the authentication.
   

Repeat steps 2 to 4 for the Integration and UAT stages using the values in this table.

Following along in Trailhead? If you don't have dedicated sandboxes, you can connect free Trailhead Playground or Developer Edition orgs instead. Select Production as the environment type for those orgs.

Create Branches for Pipeline Stages

Each stage also needs a branch in your GitHub repository. DevOps Center creates the Production branch (main) by default. Create branches for Integration and UAT, working from right to left. Start with the UAT stage. For the Development Environment stage, the branch is auto-created when the first work item moves to In Progress.

The Development Environment stage doesn't have a stage branch. Instead, when developers start working on work items, DevOps Center creates a temporary feature branch for each work item. For example, feature/WI-000001.

1. Select Specify Branch for the UAT stage.
   
2. Select Create a branch from main for this stage.
   
3. In the Branch Name field, enter: uat.
   
4. Select Save.
   

Repeat these steps for the Integration stage with branch name: int.

Each stage must have both an environment and a branch before you can activate the pipeline.

Activate Your Pipeline

After all stages are connected, activate the pipeline so your team can start moving work through it.

1. Review the pipeline stages from left to right: Development | Integration | UAT | Production.
   
2. Confirm each stage shows:
   
   • A connected environment
     
   • A specified branch
     
3. Select Activate Pipeline.
   

CalcPro Pipeline is now live!

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Decide How to Build Your Pipeline
• Salesforce Help: Build Your Pipeline