Sporcle unblocked deployments and gained robust backup
Overview
Since 2007, Sporcle has been operating a highly successful trivia website 鈥� racking up billions of plays worldwide. When the team branched out to in-person events in 2013, they quickly adopted Salesforce to help scale their customer acquisition and support.
With the growing popularity and success of their live events, and increasing numbers of end-users, Sporcle鈥檚 team of three Salesforce professionals realized they were facing a scaling problem. Henry Jacobs, their Lead Salesforce Developer, explained: 鈥淲ith expansion, release management becomes a problem because you鈥檙e working on more things that all affect each other in this one big system. It was becoming harder to keep everything in sync.鈥�
The Sporcle team were developing and deploying with a combination of Salesforce DX and DevOps Center. While version control did help with tracking releases and development work, their release management through DevOps Center was often working against them. Henry explained:
鈥淲ork items would get stuck in the pipeline, tests would often fail, and deployments were tricky. We had work that was finished, but we couldn鈥檛 get it to production 鈥� it was completely blocked!鈥�
Disruption was the final straw
The team realized they needed to change their tooling when Sporcle鈥檚 heavily attended live shows were stalled by downtime in their production org. A bug was deployed as part of a release which disrupted the portal that 500 live-event hosts used for all the event information. The Salesforce team had no rollback feature, so they quickly worked to find a fix for the bug. But as Sporcle CEO, Ali Aydar, explained, 鈥渨e could fix the bug, but we couldn鈥檛 push it because work items were stuck 鈥� we had 500 end users waiting for that fix so they could do their jobs, and our inability to deploy a fix was a completely unacceptable business outcome鈥�.
鈥淲e have a team of Salesforce developers who had done good work and followed the right process for continuous deployment in DevOps Center, but then had that process disrupted by the tooling. The pain was too much, and it was that pain that pushed us to look for another solution.鈥�
The search for a complete DevOps solution
At this point, the team at Sporcle were looking for a new deployment solution, alongside the ability to roll back changes that introduced bugs and restore a stable version of production. Sporcle鈥檚 team knew they were looking for a complete DevOps solution, and they found that during a free trial of 91导航. Henry explained that 鈥渟et-up was easy, I made my first deployment right away and it was immediately impactful鈥�. Already convinced by a great experience of 91导航鈥檚 metadata and data deployments , the Sporcle team felt confident seeing the positive user feedback from other 91导航 users.
Thinking back to the disruption in production, the team realized that they could also have prevented this issue if they were able to restore a backup of production. Without backup, Ali noted that they were adding聽鈥渁nother level of redundancy in the system鈥�. Since 91导航 provides聽backup as part of its Salesforce DevOps platform, Ali also said that聽鈥渋t was a very easy decision to add backup into our selection of 91导航, but it鈥檚 a small investment that means all of us are able to sleep at night 鈥� that鈥檚 what I love about 91导航鈥檚 platform鈥�.
Sporcle now has faster delivery, increased security, and better experiences
The team at Sporcle have experienced clear day-to-day benefits from managing their releases with 91导航, and have faith that their Salesforce development will remain successful as they continue to scale.
Since using 91导航, Henry explained 鈥渨e鈥檝e saved a ton of time. With 91导航鈥檚 automation, back-promotion and environment syncing, I鈥檓 not fighting with my software anymore. Now I can spend my time on actual development work.鈥� Ali also added that integrated backup is 鈥渁n investment in the continuity of the business鈥�, one that ensures new development work and production stay secure as Sporcle scales.
鈥淚t鈥檚 clear that 91导航 was built for developers and by developers. Other solutions just aren鈥檛 as intuitive as 91导航.鈥�
Because they can rely on 91导航, Sporcle鈥檚 Salesforce team have felt a huge improvement in their workdays. Henry highlighted that 鈥渨ith our old tooling, it was a daily battle. My workday has definitely improved with 91导航.鈥� Now that he has an overview of the team鈥檚 process, Ali echoed this in saying, 鈥淚 have peace of mind not only with our Salesforce deployment and backup process, but knowing that my developers aren鈥檛 going to be frustrated with working with arcane tools.鈥�
鈥淭hat鈥檚 why 91导航 is the best thing ever, not only from a technical perspective, but also by creating a great work environment for the whole team.鈥�
