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6 Salesforce Coding Best Practices

Josh Rank
June 1, 2022

Adhering to Salesforce coding best practices helps streamline and optimize DevOps pipelines to produce better products at an accelerated pace.

Why It Matters: Salesforce coding best practices synergize the efforts of your team with the goal of producing more secure products as efficiently as possible. Best practices are habits and tactics generally regarded as providing the most optimal results. Incorporating best practices into your process will:

Lead to an increased ROI by minimizing repetitive work.
Increase team member satisfaction because their efforts are streamlined.
Enable Administrators to better manage their teams when members know what to expect.

Here are 6 Salesforce coding best practices that help DevOps teams see the greatest returns from their development pipeline:

Utilize Static Code Analysis
Implement Source Code Management
Prioritize Quality Over Speed
Automate as Much as Possible
Keep Data Security in Mind
Back Up Everything

1. Utilize Static Code Analysis

The strength of your code is the single greatest factor in the success of your DevOps project. This is the infrastructure upon which the rest of your product will be built. And just like with a house, faulty infrastructure can lead to dangerous outcomes.

Providing your team with proper tooling gives developers the support they need to create reliable updates and applications every time.

Enabling your team to produce the strongest possible structure is the first Salesforce coding best practice. Even the most skilled developers make mistakes, which can result in potential data security vulnerabilities and failed deployments.

Static code analysis is an essential tool that provides complete visibility into code health from the moment it’s written all the way to deployment.

This automated tool supports your developers as they incorporate the rest of your Salesforce coding best practices. Lines of code are checked against a set of internal rules. Errors are flagged the moment they are introduced into the code repository, making it much easier for developers to immediately fix them before they snowball into larger, more costly issues.

Intentional practices combined with strong tooling create the best atmosphere for developing reliable code. Your updates and applications are immediately made more secure and reliable.

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2. Implement Source Code Management

Working on a multi-developer team offers the ability to split responsibilities when building a new application or update, leading to expediting the building stage of the DevOps pipeline. More companies are working remotely, which opens up the labor pool to worldwide possibilities instead of being restricted to those in your immediate area.

This can be very beneficial, but it can also lead to errors such as code overwrites and incompatible lines of code.

More hands in the pot can lead to more mistakes; this is inevitable. Extra levels of care and attention are needed to address this increased potential for errors.

Source code management is the process of tracking all changes to the master repository of code for an update or application.

Version control is a method of source code management and is the cornerstone of a developmental organization. It allows developers to manage software revisions by tracking each update with a time stamp and personal signifier, which allows the team to roll back incongruous updates if a discrepancy is found.

Additional insight creates a trail of breadcrumbs that can be followed should a piece of code negatively interact with another aspect of the update or application. Personal signifiers ensure nothing gets confused with something else. Accountability is important and source code management is the only way to ensure a team is able to know who is responsible for specific changes.

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3. Prioritize Quality Over Speed

Being the first to market with a new application or functionality is incredibly attractive. It positions you as a leader in your industry. And from an operational perspective, speeding through the application development lifecycle signals proper usage of resources and a minimization of waste.

However, prioritizing speed will often come at the expense of other important aspects of a DevOps project, such as security and quality.

Mistakes are much more likely when we push developers to move as quickly as possible. There needs to be a sweet spot between prioritizing quality and emphasizing the importance of speed. Automated testing tools reduce manual touchpoints while verifying proper coding structures.

Utilizing automated release tools and code quality tools enable the expedited delivery of applications as well as ensure that proper testing continues to take place.

A failure to properly test projects leads to what’s known as technical debt—known issues within an update with the understanding that they will need to be resolved later. Most Salesforce environments contain at least some technical debt unless they’ve invested the time to search and target it.

Unfortunately, many of these instances remain unresolved, creating data security vulnerabilities and bugs in the live environment. Avoid this by insisting on proper testing to get it right the first time.

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4. Automate as Much as Possible

Integrating lines of code into a single repository, testing, and scanning for bugs are examples of DevOps processes that can be highly repetitive when performed manually. People can unintentionally tune out when performing tasks such as these, which leads to mistakes.

Beyond that, manual tasks are incredibly time-consuming and take your team members away from more pressing issues.

Tasking a team member with searching through the immense amount of code included in a new update or application equates to time lost, especially when compared to the increased productivity of utilizing automation.

Automating these tasks ensures they are properly addressed while accelerating a project to the next stage of the Salesforce DevOps lifecycle.

We’ve discussed how static code analysis automates essential code checks, but other tools like CI/CD and data backup & recovery should also be included in your DevOps strategy. These powerful DevOps tools work together to create a system of checks that reduces errors and expedites processes.

Automation can be the largest contributor to optimizing your Salesforce DevOps pipeline this year. Look at your existing development processes. Where are the bottlenecks? There’s a good chance that whatever problems you’re facing could be addressed with an automated tool.

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5. Keep Data Security in Mind

DevOps has gained traction over the last decade as the go-to mindset for software development. It has revolutionized the approach for many developers and provided amazing results. But speed and functionality aren’t the only considerations to keep in mind when developing new updates and applications.

As we’ve seen with many recent high-profile data breaches, data security has become an essential consideration for every aspect of your company’s platform.

The potential risks justify the investment it takes to provide your team with the tools they need to create secure products. Avoiding mistakes while working on a secure platform goes a long way toward preventing catastrophic data breaches.

Data security needs to be kept in mind when writing code, right alongside functionality. Integrating constant, focused attention creates the most secure results possible.

The first step to protecting your system begins with reliable coding practices. Give your team the code scanning tools they need to avoid contributing to data security vulnerabilities.

Static code analysis generates the insights your team requires to confidently produce quality code without spending an exorbitant amount of time testing. Even the best developers are prone to mistakes—leverage automation to correct them.

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6. Back Up Everything

One major aspect of establishing a complete data security strategy alongside your coding practices is to ensure you are prepared for worst-case scenarios. This goes along with the idea of giving your developers the tools they need to adequately perform their duties.

A data loss event can eliminate essential data relationships and metadata that negatively impacts the development environment as a whole.

Having a recent data backup, and the ability to quickly recover that data, ensures proper functionality and allows your developers to produce the best applications and updates possible.

Salesforce coding best practices often center around the direction, approach, and tools available to your team members. Proper preparation is the only way to stay in front of the evolving landscape. Being caught unprepared leads to lost revenue, wasted time, and missed opportunities.

Adhering to Salesforce coding best practices gives your team its best chance to avoid costly errors.

Strong updates and applications rely on consistently high-quality code. Combining best practices with automated tools creates the uttermost possibility to avert expensive mistakes.

The failure to provide a proper coding environment results in poor code quality and error-prone products. Keep these factors in mind when creating your Salesforce DevOps strategy.

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Next Step…

Salesforce static code analysis tools are an essential aspect of enabling your developers to produce the best possible code. These powerful tools, combined with adherence to best practices, results in stability, security, and high-quality products.

Learn more here.

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FAQs

What is source code management?

Source code management is a method of tracking code changes in a shared repository with a tool like version control.

Why should I use Salesforce best practices?

Coding errors can result in failed deployments, buggy releases, and data security risks. Adhering to Salesforce coding best practices increases your chances of streamlining operations and avoiding negative outcomes.

What is DevSecOps?

DevSecOps is the next iteration of DevOps, which introduces data security considerations throughout the development lifecycle instead of only at the end.

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6 Salesforce Coding Best Practices

1. Utilize Static Code Analysis

2. Implement Source Code Management

3. Prioritize Quality Over Speed

4. Automate as Much as Possible

5. Keep Data Security in Mind

6. Back Up Everything

Next Step…

FAQs

Develop high quality, secure code!

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