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    12Aug, 2023

    What is Copado?

    Copado is an end to end dev-ops solution built natively on Salesforce. Copado helps customer manage every part of the development lifecycle.

    It provides features such as Automated Deployment, Version Control, Schedules Metadata Backup, Automated Regression Testing. Copado can be installed in a Salesforce Org. Copado can be used to implement Agile, improve Quality Check, improve collaboration and Integration with GIT. Copado offers static code analysis suing PMD, SonarQube or CodeScan.

    Copado features:

    ✩ Version Control & Backup: Identify changes in every release, schedule backups of metadata, and quickly restore previous versions.

    ✩ Connect Any Org: Deploy metadata between any sandbox, production, testing, or scratch org-and
    connect git repositories.

    ✩ Continuous Integration & Automation: Setup C processes and deploy automatically on a schedule or by a webhook trigger.

    ✩ Team Collaboration & Sharing: Share changes with team members and ensure everyone is aligned with in-app chat and notifications.

    Copado dev-ops supports

    ✩ Salesforce

    ✩ Vlocity

    ✩ Mulesoft

    ✩ Heroku

    ✩ Veeva

    ✩ Ncino

    ✩ Salesforce CPO

    ✩ Google Cloud

    ✩ Cloudcraze

    ✩ Clariti

    ✩ Conga

    9Aug, 2023
    𝘽𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝘼𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙮𝙨𝙩: Part.1 Identify the requirements

    This part will cover the diverse forms of requirements and the sources from which a business analyst can discover them.

    Who is Business Analyst

    Salesforce Business Analysts are highly skilled professionals who play a critical role in the success of Salesforce implementations. They have a deep understanding of both business and technology, and they are able to bridge the gap between the two. Salesforce Business Analysts are in high demand, and they can command a high salary. If you are interested in a career in Salesforce, becoming a Salesforce BA is a great option. Following are the main responsibilities of BA.

    • Understanding project context and characteristics for effective planning.
    • Identifying user requirement sources for a better scope understanding.
    • Prior planning leads to understanding scope, stakeholder expectations, and analysis workload.
    • Creating a well-thought-out business analysis roadmap for success.
    • Business needs are gaps between current state and expected goals.
    • Activity occurs in project planning or pre-project phase.
    • Planning to identify good quality sources for business needs and requirements.
    • Sources include stakeholders, documents, existing processes, observations etc.

    Type of requirements

    Business requirements:

    An example of this is if you are implementing a new system or functionality. These requirements are the most complex to understand, as there are too many unknowns. These requirements describe the high-level functionality that the business needs.

    Stakeholder requirements:

    Also called user requirements, these are features and functions that the users need and specify how they interact with the system. Getting to know the stakeholders’ needs and wants is critical because, often, they may not be able to articulate them clearly. This is very critical as stakeholder requirements are later translated into system requirements. Any flaws here get amplified at later stages and result in rework.

    System requirements:

    These requirements describe the characteristics of the solution. There are two types of system requirements:

    Functional: Describes a specific set of capabilities

    Non-functional: Describes the characteristics

    Transition requirements:

    These are transient requirements and are needed for a short period. Make sure that you discuss and get details around transition requirements. They are essential and critical to project success.

    Source where BA can identify requirements

    ► Stakeholder Identification

    ► Organizational Exploration

    ► Evaluation of Current System Utilization

    ► End User Identification

    ► Breakdown of User Needs

    ► Walkthrough of System Functionality

    ► Engaging in Active Participation

    ► Assessment of Pre-existing Systems

    ► Taking Notes and Documentation

    ► Acknowledging Assumptions

    ► Participation in Meetings

    Tips for success

    ✩ Understand Needs:

    Identify the requirements of the business to provide effective solutions.

    ✩ Gain Trust:

    Build a strong rapport with stakeholders to establish trust, fostering a successful analysis effort.

    ✩ Early Engagement:

    Initiate the trust-building process early in the business analysis work.

    ✩ Know Stakeholders:

    Acquire knowledge about stakeholders through organizational charts and social profiles.

    ✩ Scheduled Meetings:

    Set up meetings in advance, considering suitable time, location, and communication medium.

    ✩ Agenda Preparation:

    Create and share meeting agendas a day or so before the meeting.

    ✩ Meeting Facilitation:

    Encourage active participation and mediate conflicts during discussions.

    ✩ Note-Taking:

    Assign a skilled team member to take notes and distribute meeting minutes.

    ✩ Follow-Up:

    Ensure clarity and consensus on high-level requirements through follow-up as needed.

    ✩ Avoid Solution Design:

    Focus on understanding business requirements rather than designing solutions.

    ✩ Highlight Constraints:

    If a requirement isn’t feasible due to design constraints, communicate it honestly and put it aside for later discussion.

    ✩ Design Thinking Approach:

    Prioritize people’s needs over feasibility, emphasizing usability and user experience.

    ✩ Comprehensive Understanding:

    Aim to grasp the complete situation without immediately suggesting options or solutions.

    ✩ End User and Stakeholder Input:

    Seek input from end users and stakeholders on how their needs benefit them and their business unit.

    ✩ Workaround Evaluation:

    Determine whether workarounds exist for unmet needs and understand their implications

    28Mar, 2023
    Improve Performance of SOQL Queries using a Custom Index

    SOQL queries must be selective, particularly for queries inside triggers for the best performance. To avoid long execution times, non-selective SOQL queries may be terminated by the system.

    Selective SOQL Query Criteria

    A query is selective when one of the query filters is on an indexed field and the query filter reduces the resulting number of rows below a system-defined threshold. The performance of the SOQL query improves when two or more filters used in the WHERE clause meet the mentioned conditions.

    Custom Index Considerations for Selective SOQL Queries

    The following fields are indexed by default:

    • Primary keys (ID, Name, and Owner fields).
    • Foreign keys (lookup or master-detail relationship fields).
    • Audit dates (such as SystemModStamp). 
    • Custom fields marked as External ID or Unique.

    A Custom Index can’t be created on these types of fields:

    • Multi-select Picklists.
    • Currency fields in a Multicurrency Organization.
    • Long text fields. 
    • Binary fields (fields of type blob, file, or encrypted text). 

    Examples of Selective SOQL Queries   

    To better understand whether a query on a large object is selective or not, let’s analyze some queries. For these queries, we will assume there are more than 200,000 records (including soft-deleted records, that is, deleted records that are still in the Recycle Bin) for the Account sObject.


    Query 1:

    SELECT Id FROM Account WHERE Id IN (<list of account IDs>)

    The WHERE clause is on an indexed field (Id). If SELECT COUNT() FROM Account WHERE Id IN (<list of account IDs>) returns fewer records than the selectivity threshold, the index on Id is used. This will typically be the case since the list of IDs only contains a small amount of records.


    Query 2:

    SELECT Id FROM Account WHERE Name != ''

    Since Account is a large object even though Name is indexed (primary key), this filter returns most of the records, making the query non-selective.

    Query 3:

    SELECT Id FROM Account WHERE Name != '' AND CustomField__c = 'ValueA'

    Here we have to see if each filter, when considered individually, is selective. As we saw in the previous example the first filter isn’t selective. So let’s focus on the second one. If the count of records returned by SELECT COUNT() FROM Account WHERE CustomField__c = ‘ValueA’ is lower than the selectivity threshold, and CustomField__c is indexed, the query is selective.

    Query 4:

    SELECT Id FROM Account WHERE FormulaField__c = 'ValueA'

    The following rules have to be true in order to index a Formula Field:

    • The formula contains fields from a single object only (not relationship fields).
    • The formula field doesn’t reference any non-deterministic functions (e.g. SYSDATE).
    • The formula field doesn’t reference any non-supported fields for including in indexes.  This list isn’t documented anywhere specifically (there are lots of special cases), but in Spring 12(176), createdById was non-supported, but in Summer 12 (178), it is supported.  Same story for CreatedDate.
    • The formula field doesn’t contain references to Primary Keys (e.g Id) 
    • The formula field does not use TEXT(<picklist-field>) function
    • If the formula references any Lookup fields, the field must not have the option “What to do if the lookup record is deleted?” set to “Clear the value of this field.”

    28Mar, 2023
    Query Plan Tool

    Enable and Use the Query Plan Tool

    1. In the Developer Console, click Help | Preferences
    2. Set ‘Enable Query Plan’ to TRUE.


    Once enabled in the Developer Console, you can access the Query Plan Tool in the ‘Query Editor‘ tab of the console.

    To use the Query Plan Tool, simply enter a query in the Query Editor and press Query Plan to displays all query operations and the cost of each for the SOQL provided.

    Reasons to use the Query Plan Tool

    Use this tool to check the Query Plan for any SOQL queries that execute slowly. It will provide you with insight on the different plans and should you have some of the filters indexed, provide the cost of using the index compared to a full table scan.

    If the cost for the table scan is lower than the index, and the query is timing out, you will need to perform further analysis on using other filters to improve selectivity, or, if you have another selective filter in that query that is not indexed but is a candidate for one.
     

    Determine if a filter is selective:

    • Determine if it has an index.
    • If the filter is on a standard field, it’ll have an index if it is a primary key (Id, Name, OwnerId), a foreign key (CreatedById, LastModifiedById, lookup, master-detail relationship), and an audit field (CreatedDate, SystemModstamp).
    • Custom fields will have an index if they have been marked as Unique or External Id
    • If the filter doesn’t have an index, it won’t be considered for optimization.
    • If the filter has an index, determine how many records it would return:
    • For a standard index, the threshold is 30 percent of the first million targeted records and 15 percent of all records after that first million. In addition, the selectivity threshold for a standard index maxes out at 1   million total targeted records, which you could reach only if you had more than 5.6 million total records.
    • For a custom index, the selectivity threshold is 10 percent of the first million targeted records and 5 percent all records after that first million.  In addition, the selectivity threshold for a custom index maxes out at 333,333 targeted records, which you could reach only if you had more than 5.6 million records.
    • If the filter exceeds the threshold,it won’t be considered for optimization.
    • If the filter doesn’t exceed the threshold, this filter IS selective, and the query optimizer will consider it for optimization.

    Indexed field does not appear in the list of plans

    If the query you provided contains an Indexed field in the filters, the plan will be shown for that field only if you are using a supported operation against that field.

    Here is a list of unsupported operations:

    • Custom index will never be used when comparisons are being done with an operator like “NOT EQUAL TO”
    • Custom index will never be used when comparisons are being done with a null value like “Name = ””
    • Leading ‘%’ wildcards are inefficient operators that also make filter conditions non-selective
    • When using an OR comparison, all filters must be indexed and under the 10% threshold. . If you have a non-indexed field or one is above 10%, the plan will not be displayed.

    Does the Query Plan Tool display index candidates or fields that can be indexed?

    The Query Plan tool will only show Indexed field statistics in the Plan’s section, not fields that could be indexed. This tool will not provide information on fields that can be indexed.