What is Copado? Features, Certification and How it is used in Salesforce

A 100% native solution that got backed by Salesforce itself, Copado has had a really interesting journey. As companies continually work on faster innovation to stay ahead in the game, maintaining a Continuous Agile Train that learns is the driving force behind today’s DevOps team. Copado aims to help enterprise DevOps teams obtain an integrated solution that can seamlessly manage the entire release & deployment process in an efficient, error-free, and compliant manner. Given that Copado aims to automate manual tasks in DevOps, there is no doubt that Salesforce didn’t think twice to back it.

The first company to support Salesforce users with a native solution, Copado helps bring together Admins, Architects, and Developers together. The solution unites the team and makes DevOps a team sport with dedicated players rather than a relay. As a Salesforce solution that enables visualizing Agile trains on a real-time basis, Copado can also be a valuable suite for business planning units and other IT departments to help understand the value chain within the organization. 

New features, upgrades, and updates at their fastest production rates – this is the aim of every enterprise aiming big. Copado overcomes the complexity and high cost of Salesforce deployments by making application changes faster. Organizations that have benefitted from Salesforce, will be available on turbo boost Salesforce features using Copado.

5 Copado Tools: All you need to know

 Copado has 5 comprehensive tools that take over the monitoring of the entire DevOps process:

1. Copado Plan

The key to a good upgrade is the purpose behind it. Copado Plan turns Epics and User stories into tangible production-ready software. An invaluable resource for Agile, Lean, Six Sigma as well as Scrum teams, Copado comes inbuilt with the ability to support Kanban boards, Agile dashboards, Sprint walls, and Work Manager. With such a comprehensive base that covers all the basic needs to meet your daily and weekly targets, Copado enables enterprises to quickly track all ideas and activities at every development stage. This will help keep your team aligned with all code changes linked directly to User Stories. 

2. Copado Test

When learning is involved, testing is inevitable. Copado Test is designed to make the coder life error-free! An end-to-end testing solution, Copado Test improves code quality to deliver releases that will require fewer alpha tests. Copado Test can provide testing support for Apex Tests, Manual test scripts, Pull Requests, Static code analysis, and Selenium. Streamlining the testing process is the biggest bottleneck in release trains, and this suite is ready to help you iron out the creases.

3. Copado Comply

The tug-of-war between legal and DevOps is never-ending. Copado’s framework enables IT teams to easily balance what works, what doesn’t, and what might. More importantly, protecting company data is key.  Ensuring that any changes post-testing comply with enterprise principles, Copado Comply’s deep scans on a periodic basis helps smoothen deployments at an organic level.

4. Copado Release

With core release management capabilities, Copado Release provides a single source of truth for your Metadata by integrating User Stories, Metadata Rollbacks, and Environment Branches. Copado Release is a crucial tool for the DevOps network in your enterprise as it can help you manage parallel releases. With Commits into Version Control, and Deployment into Salesforce, this tool drives consistent and predictable deployments that can be easily audited.

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5. Copado Monitor

Scaling the monitoring process from macro to micro, Copado Monitor gives better visibility across all boards to ensure quality compliance. Pre-built Reports and Dashboards help your team stay focused on the job at hand, saving precious time.

The above Copado Tools are built on an orchestration engine known as the Copado Release DevOps Platform. The platform enables you to manage security and authentication, job scheduling, integration with CI tools, and more. 

Who will find value in Copado?

• Change Managers
• Continuous Improvement Specialists
• Software Test Centres
• Selenium Testing
• Legal
• Admins
• Scrum leaders
• LSSBB

Understand the best way to maximize the output of your Salesforce with a DevOps strategy.

Read Also: What Is Mulesoft? Features, Certifications, & Integration With Salesforce

Copado Certification

Just finished your two-day Lean & Agile training program, but want more technical value? Struggling to achieve success with Agile, but can’t get customers to trust you because you’re failing with Lean & Agile processes? Copado certification can help you hone your DevOps skills at a core technical value. Here’s everything you need to know about each of the certifications:

• DevOps Administrator

The Copado Administrator Certification Trail includes 7 modules. Completing the modules would take approximately 7 hours. It is recommended that you have Salesforce Admin Experience and Salesforce Application Lifecycle Experience before taking up the course.

• DevOps Developer

The Developer trail includes 11 modules. It would take up to 12 hours to complete the certification curriculum. You require a Salesforce Administration certificate to take up the course. It is also recommended that you have experience as a Salesforce Developer.

The certification would cost 250 USD and the exam can be taken online. It is available on-demand. The certificate must be maintained after every new release, and the price for the same is free for the first attempt.

Apart from the certification courses, the Copado Academy also has other modules that Architects, Developers, and Admins can find useful. The courses are delivered on an online platform with 24/7 availability. You get full playground access with the platform, and the curriculum includes hands-on learning exercises. Given that the certification trail is role-based, it is very helpful in understanding how you can benefit yourself and your organization with this course.

Taking up the course also gets you in touch with the Copado Pathfinders and an Active answers community who would be invaluable resources in your career journey.

Salesforce Integration

Given that Copado is 100% native, Salesforce installation is a breeze. Ensure that all users in your org who are installing the package have licenses or grants to access managed package objects and Push Topics objects. You require the Platform license to use Copado. Copado user must also have permission to Modify All data and has API Enabled permissions so that metadata deployments don’t fail. 

Copado users need not be administrators or have access to product data. Once you have all the essentials sorted you can log in to, Success community and install Copado. Once everything is set up, you can define a release process and make the changes to align Copado with your process. Get a graphical overview of the steps and ensure that you know what quality gates you would Copado to undertake. The dashboard is informative and includes all the necessary links to support, documentation, and blogs. Make use of Copado Academy resources so that you get everything right. Implementing software solutions to control deployments may disrupt some progress, but the ROI is immense.

Several items that you need to take care of when rolling out Copado in your organization.

Top features of Copado

As a full-circle solution for the entire development chain, Copado offers simplicity from the bottom-up. But here’s what everyone loves about automation in DevOps using Copado:

• Lightning ready suite
• Continuous Integration
• Automated Metadata backups
• Interactive UI and automated reports
• Version Control

MassMutual’s experience with Copado provides a complete overview of how a growing organization can make full use of DevOps automation. After Copado integration, the company could use Bitbucket as a single source of truth and be able to achieve Centralised versioning. Copado also offered Failure Traceability to ensure non-repetitive errors. The company was also able to achieve full-scale task delegation at all levels.

Top organizations like Coca-Cola, Siemens, and Volvo have used Copado to their cycles and are seeing the benefits of it. The company has seen back-to-back wins in CI/CD, includes Fall 2019 G2 grids for Best Continuous Integration and Best Continuous Deployment Software. The company reported blockbuster FY2020 results and continues to grow its customer base. With a whopping 140% Year-on-year growth and a 500 strong customer base, it seems that future releases and updates are inevitable. 

Moreover, given that Agile and Lean are now peaking in terms of integration for the sake of driving sales, it is inevitable that more is to come for burgeoning Industrial Revolution 4.

Learn more on how Copado Announces Salesforce DevOps Certification Program to Support In-Demand Skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Conclusion

By simplifying release processes, Copado can help organizations succeed in Employee Productivity numbers – the core metric for good ROI. Agile planning, pipeline management need not be just on paper anymore. This can offer numerous value in terms of building confidence with your customers. The company has announced that it will open its doors in India soon and the company expects to employ up to 20000 professionals to help Salesforce and DevOps coagulate in the Silicon Valley of the East. DevOps 360 by Salesforce is also a step in the right direction for Copado. With the trend looking upwards, Salesforce Admins and Developers can seriously look into Copado as an option to streamline processes in your organization, or as a viable tangent for your career.

We here at Cyntexa have expertise in Copado with Copado Certified administrators and Developers. To know more contact with us.