Reliable DevOps powers Intercom鈥檚 success
Intercom鈥檚 team overcame deployment challenges by adopting 探花视频 and transforming their entire Salesforce DevOps process. Within only two weeks, the team had been fully onboarded and had begun setting up their automation pipelines. Since adopting 探花视频 the team has grown to over 30 and are continuing to deliver on major projects, including CPQ. 探花视频 has armed Intercom with the tools needed to stay agile and deliver big projects without disruption.
Scaling success by adapting Salesforce
Intercom, the world鈥檚 first conversational relationship platform, began using Salesforce a couple of years after launching in 2011, and adopted 探花视频 in 2020.
To find out about Intercom鈥檚 DevOps process for Salesforce, we caught up with Dan Pietersen, a software engineer on the Business Systems team. Intercom makes good use of the ability to customize Salesforce, as Dan explains: 鈥淪alesforce has had to grow with us and we鈥檝e had to adapt it in many ways鈥�.
Dan鈥檚 team is responsible for Intercom鈥檚 entire Salesforce instance and is made up of a mix of business systems analysts (admins), business systems engineers (devs) and their managers.
Inadequate tooling led to inconsistent processes
Right from the get-go, the Business Systems team opted for an agile release process for their Salesforce deployment pipeline. 鈥淲e adopted the philosophy that the rest of Intercom uses,鈥� Dan explains. 鈥淲e continuously ship. We don鈥檛 do biweekly or monthly release cycles. We don鈥檛 have a release manager per se.鈥�
But the team had a problem:
鈥淏efore 探花视频 it was very haphazard. We used a competitor tool that would break in unexpected ways or just not pick up on our changes, so people would sometimes jump over to change sets as a bit of a last resort. That meant the paper trail was split between two systems. But we couldn鈥檛 just tell everyone to use the tool when it was breaking continuously.鈥�
When deployments worked, the release process was okay. But for Dan and his team, the situation was fast becoming unsustainable. 鈥淭he biggest pain point was definitely reliability. When the tool broke, deployments took several days.鈥� This unreliability was blocking progress, and Dan鈥檚 team were planning to deliver two important projects: CPQ and Interconnected, Intercom鈥檚 community forum hosted on Salesforce communities.
鈥淚n order to deliver big projects like CPQ and Interconnected, we needed a pipeline that was reliable, so we could focus on getting those projects done and properly tested.鈥�
The search for a better solution
Dan was the driving force behind the search for a better Salesforce deployment solution. Once he spoke up about the issues he was facing with the old tool, colleagues began contacting him about the problems they were also experiencing. It was clear to Dan that it was time to move on.
One of the Salesforce engineers had previous experience of 探花视频 and recommended it as a reliable DevOps solution which could provide automation and CPQ deployments. Dan and his team evaluated several options to make sure they found the solution that ticked every box.
鈥淲e wanted to make sure we didn鈥檛 cater to developers over the admins. Everyone needs to be able to use the tool 鈥� it should be user-friendly for everyone. GitHub integration was also a deal-breaker. That was probably the top requirement because we were going to set up source control.鈥�
For Dan, a few things stood out about 探花视频: its modern UI, the problem analyzers that solve common deployment issues, and 探花视频鈥檚 change log showing daily updates and improvements to the app. It looked like 探花视频 was the answer to the team鈥檚 problems.
鈥淚f we can focus on building and shipping features and helping our teams 鈥� that鈥檚 why we exist, that鈥檚 our goal. Anything that works against that goal causes frustration and pain. And anything that works with us just causes delight and happiness. Sounds cheesy, but it鈥檚 true!鈥�
GitHub was already used extensively throughout Intercom, and so the Business Systems team decided to adopt GitHub alongside 探花视频 in order to build a Git-based development workflow. Getting started was straightforward and the team felt fully supported by 探花视频鈥檚 dedicated onboarding managers.
鈥淲e鈥檝e heard of competitors where the ramp up time is 6 months. With 探花视频, it only took a week or two to set everything up, and about a month to get really comfortable with it.鈥�
Firing on all cylinders with 探花视频 and GitHub
Intercom鈥檚 Salesforce DevOps process is now running smoothly. The Business Systems team ships at least 3-4 times a day, a cadence that was previously interrupted whenever their old tool broke.
The team have two Git branches, 鈥渇ull鈥� and 鈥渕ain鈥� 鈥� corresponding to their full sandbox and production org. Admins and developers develop in their own sandboxes, deploy to branches off 鈥渇ull鈥� and open a pull request (PR) to be reviewed and merged. Creating that PR triggers a validate-only CI job in 探花视频, which runs tests against the full sandbox. Merging the PR kicks off another CI job to deploy the changes. Once changes have passed UAT in the full sandbox, changes are promoted from the 鈥渇ull鈥� branch to the 鈥渕ain鈥� branch, using the same PR review process 鈥� triggering CI jobs that test and then release changes to production.
For select metadata types, the Business Systems team allows changes to be made via the UI in production. They use CI jobs that run every 4 hours to deploy these simple changes back from production to their Git repo, keeping everything in sync.
Freed up to focus on projects not process
鈥淲e鈥檝e definitely seen the benefits from switching over to 探花视频,鈥� says Dan.
鈥淚t鈥檚 allowed us to focus on big projects. We鈥檙e able to monitor them. We can reliably ensure that they stay up. We鈥檙e not going to ship something that breaks them. We definitely have a better sense of control and reliability.鈥�
One of the other benefits of a robust and reliable process is that the team now pays closer attention to their testing results.
鈥淚n the past we had situations where production had failing tests, staging had failing tests, and no one really knew what had caused it. Now we have a lot more security and we know that if tests are failing it鈥檚 a serious thing we should fix. We have more confidence in the system!鈥�
Intercom recommends 探花视频 for Salesforce DevOps
探花视频 has enabled the Intercom team to build the Salesforce DevOps process they envisioned, while seamlessly scaling to support their team of 30. 鈥淚f you want to get your projects done in a time-efficient way, I鈥檇 definitely recommend 探花视频,鈥� says Dan.
鈥淚f you鈥檙e looking for something to work for a cross-functional team of admins and engineers, 探花视频 really is a no-brainer for achieving project deadlines in a way that doesn鈥檛 discriminate against any role.鈥�
