Hi all,

This month we have something different for you. Salesforce is a fantastic cloud platform to build apps. However when the app grows in size and complexity, deployment becomes challenging, repetitive, and requires a lot manual setup. As a developer, you'd like to ease the deployment pain with tools that enable automation in both deploying components and running tests. 

This month we have 2 Continuous Integration tool providers talking about how their CI tool can help improve salesforce developer workflow and productivity.

Gearset CI

Salesforce deployments are challenging. We’ve all suffered through building the same changeset again and again, opaque errors from the Metadata API and stitching together xml to make jenkins happy. With Gearset, we take a fundamentally different approach. Rather than focusing on the raw metadata, we’ve built technology that understands the objects your metadata represents and the relationships between them. Using this understanding of your org, Gearset can analyse and transform the metadata so your deployments succeed. Automating a broken process doesn’t make it any less broken, and we believe a new approach is needed to make continuous integration for Salesforce ingeniously simple.

Speaker bio: 

Kevin leads the team behind Gearset, the new service making deployment a breeze for developers and admins. After spending six years at Redgate building the leading source control and continuous integration solutions for SQL Server professionals, Kevin started Gearset with the mission to make release management on the Force.com platform ingeniously simple.

Copado

Continuous Integration is often a difficult process to get started, especially when it comes to the setup of Jenkins.  For many customers however, the replacement of Jenkins is not an option, and therefore the key here is not to find a tool that replaces Jenkins, but to find a process that seamlessly works together with your existing infrastructure.  Even though Copado is a full featured solution that brings, CI, Intelligent deployments and integrations with other project management system, the goal is not to replace any of these systems, but for Copado to deliver added value allowing you to select the process that works best for you.

Speaker bio:

Phil is the CEO and co-founder of Copado Solutions, the maker of Copado, Salesforce’s leading Cloud Deployment and Continuous Integration tool on the AppExchange.  Phil has been in the Salesforce eco-system for 9 years.  Prior to launching Copado Phil was a Solution Architect and has helped many 1000+ user organisations implement Salesforce in Europe and the US/Canada.  Together, Phil and his co-founder have almost 20 years Salesforce experience and they felt first-hand the difficulties that many customers are experiencing.  Their mission is to ensure that the Change & Release Management process for Salesforce is a painless and enjoyable one.

Agenda: 6:00 pm - doors open

6:00 - 7:00 pm - Socialize over beer and pizza

7:00 - 7:40pm - Gearset talk

7:45 - 8:25pm - Copado talk

8:30 pm - Head to the nearest pub

Thanks to Make Positive for continuing to host us and for being an awesome sponsor!

@MeetupOrganisers