Parallel Development

As I mentioned in my previous post, universal sandboxes allow for parallel development which has a HUGE impact on how Engagement Cloud can be configured by a team of admins.

Parallel Development

So let’s see how 2 admins, Michael and John, each in their own sandbox, can extend Engagement Cloud in parallel.

So imagine … Michael starts adding fields to the account object. He places those fields on dynamic layouts, just as he always has been used to. In the background though, the account object has been locked for Michael’s sandbox only. Object locking, what is that all about you say???

Object Locking

Object locking is all about reserving an object for a sandbox, securing it so that nobody else can make changes to that object. But it leavs all other objects available to be extended in other sandboxes. Object locking is the core functionality that allows parallel development.

In the meantime, John has started extending Engagement Cloud in his own sandbox. He notices the account object was locked by Michael. Hence he cannot extend the account object, but he is perfectly capable of extending the opportunity object.

Notice also how hovering over a locked object will highlight which sandbox has locked an object.

I suggest from now on to put the name of the primary user of a sandbox into the sandbox name so other users can see for whom an object has been locked.

Publishing Sandboxes

Whilst Michael is still making his changes, although John started after Michael, John finishes his extensions first and decides to publish his sandbox. This makes his extensions permanent and available for all users.

Refreshing sandboxes

When Michael finishes his extensions and tries to publish his sandbox, he notices that his sandbox no longer is synchronized with the mainline environment. The sandbox publishing mechanism has noticed other sandboxes have been published since Michael’s sandbox was created and proposes to synchronize Michael’s sandbox to bring it up to date again.

For Micheal, refreshing his sandbox means the changes made by John are also being imported into Michael’s sandbox to make it up to date so that Michael can publish his sandbox just like John did before him.

Gone with the flow

Parallel development will change dramatically the way Engagement Cloud is extended. No more integration sandboxes, no more sandbox publishing guardians, no more unnecessary admin tasks to extend Engagement Cloud.

Everybody can make a sandbox whenever needed, without checking who is already doing what, and anybody can publish a sandbox without checking whether they are cleared to do so.

Everybody wins !

Universal Sandbox is for the moment under controlled availability and is an opt-in feature. More info can be found here.