With roots in 19th-century France, Schneider Electric delivers digital energy management and automation solutions around the globe. Combining leading energy technologies with real-time automation, software, and services, the company enhances the efficiency and sustainability of commercial and residential buildings, data centers, infrastructure projects and industrial processes.
In 2017, Schneider Electric deployed Salesforce to underpin its digital transformation strategy. A team of 30 developers operated one production and three full-copy sandboxes, along with five Lightning developer orgs. Three years in, Santosh Swain, the company’s technical lead for Salesforce, observed that hurdles in the DevOps process were preventing the team from maximizing the platform’s capabilities.
Code Repository
Code to User Stories
Version Control
Deployment Time
Merge conflicts, lack of version controls and the inability to keep sandboxes in sync made it difficult for team members to collaborate effectively. These gaps also made it challenging to release new features on time.
“We needed a DevOps process where we could follow along with the entire methodology, deliver things less disruptively, create a better developer experience and have smooth releases,” Swain says.
By serving as a code repository, providing version control, and associating code to user stories — Copado has helped Schneider reduce errors. Copado also allows them to sync and deploy to multiple environments with a few clicks, and seamlessly integrate with Cheetah, a digital marketing solution. By flagging merge conflicts, Copado helps save Schneider hours of time and effort.
Today, the team is equipped to do releases every three weeks through its regular sprint cycle. The team can now prepare 100 user stories in a couple of hours then deploy them the next day within three or four hours.
The team has already leveraged Copado to move toward continuous integration. Going forward, Swain plans to transition to a Salesforce DX project structure where the team can create scratch orgs, manuals and unlocked packages. The goal is to achieve full continuous integration and delivery to provide the best customer experience.
“I would definitely recommend Copado,” Swain says. “It’s native to Salesforce, and features like the CLI, advanced data modeling, and the CI process have a great value-add. Hands down, this is one of the best- developed and most useful tools around.”