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trublutrublu 

Can appexchange applications be deployed from sandbox to production?

Could anyone please help with the following questions? Thank you very much!

 

- Can managed appexchange applications be deployed from sandbox to production?

- Can unmanaged appexchange applications be deployed from sandbox to production?

- Can Eclipse exclude the custom fields added to standard objects by managed applications during deployment?

- Can Eclipse exclude the custom fields added to standard objects by unmanaged applications during deployment?

 

- What is the best way to deal with AppExchange applications? Install twice them on both sandbox and production? Or install them on sandbox, and then migrate them to production?

 

Please help. Thank you.
JonPJonP

AppExchange apps should be installed into production directly from the AppExchange.  They cannot be promoted from sandbox using deployment tools.  This is true for both managed and unmanaged packages.

 

However, after you install an app in production you can migrate your customizations and extensions from sandbox.  The Force.com IDE doesn't let you download or edit managed components, so the Force.com Migration Tool for Ant is your best bet when migrating these components.

 

Jon

salesforce.com Product Manager

trublutrublu

Jon,

Thank you very much for your help! So, if i already installed some appexchange apps on sandbox, and now want to migate all customizations and code EXCEPT the appexchange apps to production, is it at all possible? i will be using Exclipse to promote the code/customizations from sandbox to production.

Thanks a lot again. 

 

e.g.

 

- Can Eclipse exclude the custom fields added to standard objects by managed applications during deployment?

- Can Eclipse exclude the custom fields added to standard objects by unmanaged applications during deployment?

JonPJonP

The answer to both questions is a qualified yes.  The Force.com IDE gives you granular control over what components to download, when you use the Choose Metadata Components dialog to create your Force.com project.

 

There is no magic "exclude components that depend on packages" button, but you can elect not to include a particular custom object or any of its fields, for example, if you know the custom object is from a package.

trublutrublu

thank you again, Jon.

 

So, e.g.

- A custom field ABC has been added to the standard Account object by a managed application.

- Another custom field XYZ has been added to the standard Account object by an unmanaged application. 

 

When I promote Account to production by selecting ONLY the Account object to be promoted within Eclipse, Eclipse will simply ignore BOTH of the custom fields above?

 

Thanks for your confirmation!

JonPJonP

In your example, you may have to expand the Account object and only select the custom fields (and other sub-components) you want, that are not part of a package.

 

In the case of a custom field in an unmanaged package, I think it would migrate successfully anyway.  Unmanaged components are a little more flexible than managed components in this regard.

 

But if you do happen to migrate a custom field that was part of an unmanaged package (using the IDE rather than the package itself), you won't be able to install the package into production later because there will be a name conflict on that field.  Does that make sense?

 

(Managed packages use namespaces, so their components are uniquely named regardless of what's created locally within a particular organization.)

 

I hope that's more clarifying than confusing!  There's a bit of nuance to our metadata API...

 

Preeti LalwaniPreeti Lalwani
Please see this article on Salesforce sandboxes. They have answered all the commonly asked questions on Salesforce sandboxes:
http://www.flosum.com/definitive-guide-salesforce-sandboxes/