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Manage Your Releases with Blue Canvas and CodeScan

By Rebecca Jacobs | March 23, 2021

Manage Your Releases with Blue Canvas and CodeScan

CodeScan’s static code analysis solution benefits teams using Salesforce as their CRM system. We value the partner ecosystem within Salesforce and are always looking to team up with new players. We’re excited to introduce to you Blue Canvas, a Git-based DevOps and release management software that makes life simple for Salesforce admins and developers. Like CodeScan, Blue Canvas is a DevOps solution that integrates exclusively with Salesforce.

“Blue Canvas aims to do to Salesforce DX what GitHub did to Git. Only after GitHub built a delightful user experience for the Git protocol did adoption take off. We are trying to do the same with DX,” says Blue Canvas’ CTO, Alexander Brausewetter. “DX offers a bunch of plumbing in the form of CLI, APIs, and new metadata directory formats, but it still requires a lot of setup. Blue Canvas aims to be an easy way to leverage the power of DX tooling without the setup hassle.”

Blue Canvas addresses some of the common pain points you see in development: merge conflicts, manual steps, slow deployments, rollbacks, refresh environments, and manual testing. While Blue Canvas may not be as well-known as platforms like Copado, companies like Slack, Twilio, and Spotify are using Blue Canvas’ solution to develop and deploy. With their easy-to-navigate UI and the launch of their new API, it’s now easier than ever to integrate CodeScan’s code analysis solutions into Blue Canvas’ development pipelines.

Quick Deployment

Blue Canvas is a DevOps tool for both admins and developers, allowing them to manage project releases, without heavy training and the complexity of having to learn command-line interfaces. Making Salesforce releases accessible to teams allows for quicker project deployment, one of Blue Canvas’ prime features. Timewise, this means Blue Canvas can get Salesforce teams up and running in a matter of days, rather than months. The minimal training requirements, Git integration, and an easy-to-use interface allows SFDC teams to optimize workflows throughout the CI/CD pipeline and deploy within 15 minutes of a pull request.

Quality Gates & Pipeline

Blue Canvas allows Salesforce teams to set up quality gates in their release management flow, before deployments. Blue Canvas’ “quality gate” feature, at a minimum, includes a Salesforce validation and any required Apex unit tests. However, teams can build and expand upon this to gate their deployments on various quality checks. Teams can enforce peer review by requiring that certain pull requests receive explicit approval from team members before a merge can happen.

With CodeScan’s partnership, Blue Canvas can also offer automated quality checks and rules that users can create for project deployment. For example, users can set up a rule that if a deployment contains Apex code and is being pushed to UAT, it must pass a CodeScan quality check, ensuring that this code will scan for security vulnerabilities and run through CodeScan’s 350+ Salesforce rules.

Complete DevOps System

Developing on Salesforce can sometimes be more complicated and time consuming when trying to get your project off the ground. Teams turn to tools to make their lives easier when trying to produce quality projects, with low failure rates and tight deadlines. Tools help manage automation, releases, quality control, and continuous inspection of code.

Blue Canvas is a complete DevOps system, so you are able to manage all your Git to Salesforce projects in one place. Through the platform, the Git-Salesforce sync allows you to automatically sync your metadata through their source control tool, deploy projects on your CI/CD once a pull request has been accepted, audit your code and release management, and add testing and code review (with CodeScan) through webhooks or their new API. Blue Canvas’ merge editor makes it easy for teams to collaborate, oversee changes, and merge easily, with a 60% reduction in time to deploy. With their rollback feature, all changes made to your Git repository will be automatically backed up if you need to roll them back.

Additionally, the Blue Canvas makes auditing and compliance easy for Salesforce teams who have to manage multiple project releases. The solution offers history tracking, permissions settings, and reporting. Auditing your projects and deployment is made simple for all team members at all levels.

With Blue Canvas you can get your Salesforce teams up and running in a matter of days, rather than months. With quick onboarding and the CodeScan collaboration, you not only benefit from a reduction in deployment time, but also in quality control and testing of your code. Creating quality gates for your deployments, allows for a reduction in code vulnerabilities and project failures, which lets Blue Canvas offer a more robust DevOps solution to their clients.

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