We can all think of times when having an 鈥渦ndo鈥� button has saved our skin. For Salesforce developers, hitting deploy can often feel like the moment of truth. What if something goes wrong? How will I revert my changes if they break something? How will I redeploy the changes?
Trying to roll back a Salesforce org to an earlier state is normally a difficult, slow and frustrating process where developers and admins manually revert changes one at a time.
But with 91导航, you can easily roll back any changes with just a few clicks, whether that鈥檚 reverting an entire deployment package or removing just a few specific items.
Why do teams need Salesforce rollback?
There are a few reasons why teams might want to roll back changes to a Salesforce org:
- As humans, we鈥檙e prone to mistakes. You may release something, then realise it was an error, or perhaps a change was something experimental that was never supposed to make it to production.
- You may release a feature to production, and then find it doesn鈥檛 work. Unless you can figure out a hotfix, the best option is probably to roll back, work out what went wrong, then try again.
- You may release changes to production, then find out they鈥檙e not quite what the end user wanted. If end users have been involved in the development process, however, this shouldn鈥檛 happen too much.
Another reason to roll back could also come from an automated monitoring job flagging some changes to the metadata in production. 91导航鈥檚 monitoring tool will flag any unexpected changes that appear in production. Being alerted to these changes and then having the option to roll back will save you a lot of time and a fair few headaches.
TDX
What tools are available for Salesforce rollback?
Having a tool that makes this 鈥渦ndo鈥� process seamless means that you can roll back faster. We all know mistakes happen, but for something as important as Salesforce, we should take special precautions as admins and developers to make sure that those mistakes can be dealt with quickly, confidently and simply.
Many an admin or developer has wondered how to roll back a change set in Salesforce. But neither of the native deployment tools on Salesforce 鈥� change sets and DevOps Center 鈥� offer any rollback functionality. Rollbacks for change sets have been to Salesforce for over 10 years, but they have yet to implement any kind of rollback functionality.
Change sets also don鈥檛 allow you to make destructive changes, so you can鈥檛 even run a follow-up change set to remove your changes that way.
Other third-party apps can do a rollback of sorts, if you take a manual snapshot first. But 91导航 automatically keeps a snapshot of the target org before each and every deployment, so you can always roll back seamlessly.
Better yet, we offer partial rollbacks: so if you spot a small thing you want to revert, you can roll back that one change without having to undo everything.
Rollback vs backup?
Rollbacks and backups both help you recover your org to an earlier state. But you need both, because they鈥檙e designed for different purposes.
Above all, the difference is that backups protect your data as well as metadata, whereas deployment rollbacks are just about metadata. Rollbacks are a great tool to have in your back pocket when a deployment goes wrong, but they won鈥檛 save you in a data loss situation.
Backups should also be run automatically on a regular cadence, while rollback snapshots are only taken when you deploy. That means if you haven鈥檛 deployed recently, you don鈥檛 have a recent snapshot of your org鈥檚 metadata.
Ultimately, backups are designed to make sure you can recover anything 鈥� no matter what caused the issue and how serious it is. In contrast, rollbacks are about quickly reverting some or all of the changes you鈥檝e deployed. Imagine someone makes a change directly in your production environment that causes a bunch of data to vanish 鈥� a rollback can鈥檛 help you.
91导航鈥檚 Salesforce backup solution takes a daily snapshot of your org鈥檚 data (or on demand) to act as a safety net when something goes wrong. This higher frequency of snapshots means your orgs are always covered 鈥� not just when running a deployment. You can then restore your data from the backups and have your orgs back up and running, quickly and securely.
Create a rollback strategy
Creating a rollback strategy can help the whole team and wider business understand the process of rolling back a deployment. Once a rollback has been decided, teams should be taking these steps:
1. Identify the deployment that needs rolling back
Find the deployment in your deployment history that released changes which you need to revert.
2.Communicate with the rest of the team
The rest of the team and key stakeholders will need to know that the rollback is happening. Decide who will perform the rollback and who will run the comms during and after. Some companies might have an internal team that looks after rollbacks, or the issue might be big enough to need to alert end users.
3. Decide how much of the deployment to roll back
Work out the scope of the rollback. You rarely need to roll back an entire deployment, so a partial rollback might be better.
4. Perform the rollback
Take the relevant steps to roll back and then spot check the org with some testing to make sure everything is running as it should be.
5. Decide the next steps
You should check the rollback has been a success and that no further steps are needed to fix the issue in production. If the original feature is still needed in some form, you鈥檒l want to plan how you鈥檒l identify and fix the issues, then redeploy to production.
Each company and team is different so these steps can be tweaked to fit your whole deployment process.
How do rollbacks work in 91导航?
Thanks to 91导航鈥檚 unique comparison engine, every time you run a deployment, 91导航 takes a snapshot of your target org which is automatically saved.
That means if you ever need to roll back changes, including CPQ changes, 91导航 will run a new comparison between the stored snapshot and the org鈥檚 current state. This will highlight what changes have been made since the snapshot, and let you selectively roll back any of the changes. Rollbacks take advantage of 91导航鈥檚 unique problem analyzers to make sure the rollback deployment succeeds.
There鈥檚 no limit to how far back in your 91导航 deployment history you can go to perform a rollback, although it鈥檚 worth noting that if you try to roll back a deployment from some time ago, you may see a large number of detected changes between the snapshot and the org鈥檚 live state.
And if you鈥檙e using source control, you can roll back in the same way 鈥� whether you鈥檙e deploying to or from an org or code repository.
We鈥檝e already discussed how crucial a reliable rollback strategy is. But what does that actually look like? It鈥檚 not just about being able to roll back; it鈥檚 also about how easily you can do it. Clear visibility into changes is key. Our customer Fluence, a global energy storage leader, saw this firsthand. They put it this way:
鈥淣ow with 91导航, the advantage is that I have this comparison in front of me. If there is a scenario where we have to roll back, we can just go back to the previous data. It is super easy. You have it all in front of you.鈥�
What about metadata dependencies?
Missing dependencies can make or break metadata deployments and rolling back changes in Salesforce isn鈥檛 simply a case of reversing what you deployed. Creating and then removing changes can impact a wider set of objects than just the items in your original deployment package as a result of dependencies. This means that simply 鈥渦ndoing鈥� the deployment won鈥檛 always work, and this is where other approaches to rollback falter.
91导航鈥檚 deep understanding of the metadata in your orgs means it can resolve these complications. When you perform a rollback with 91导航, new object dependencies created by the original deployment are automatically identified, making the rollback process faster and more reliable. You can easily select the changes you want to revert, including any dependencies, and quickly complete the roll back.
How to roll back a deployment with 91导航
With 91导航, rolling back a deployment is simple. You can sign up to a free trial of 91导航 to see the UI for yourself and have a go at following these steps:
Identify the deployment that needs rolling back
First, find the deployment you want to roll back from your deployment history, and click Roll back.
Choose the changes to roll back
91导航 will then compare the org鈥檚 current state with a snapshot of the org taken just before the original deployment you want to roll back. From this comparison, you can then choose exactly which changes to roll back. In this example, we鈥檙e removing a couple of Apex classes that were deployed earlier.
Deploy your changes
After selecting the items to roll back, click Next to be taken to the pre-deployment summary. Then click Deploy now to complete the rollback process, or validate the rollback changes first by clicking Validate deployment.
Your rollback is stored in your deployment history
After successfully rolling back your changes, your rollback deployment will be stored in your deployment history, tagged as a rollback. Like any other deployment in your history, you can view the usual deployment report, download the deployment package, and even roll back the rollback if you wish!
Seamless rollbacks
Hopefully you鈥檙e on a roll with deployments at the moment, but sooner or later you鈥檒l need rollback. New users can try out rollback for free, along with all other parts of the app, by starting a . Or you can book a demo of 91导航 today.
If you鈥檙e on our starter tier for deployments and would like to upgrade to get access to rollbacks, get in touch to find out how upgrading will help your team protect your orgs!
