Merck
Customer Story

What problem were you looking to solve?

We needed a developer and environment engineer to be able to share management of a build. Change Sets, while nice, are not complete enough and we see them as solutions for small instances. We not only needed to deploy metadata changes on the fly, but also to schedule them. Also, sandbox reporting was critical.

Essentially, we needed a centralized toolset to manage a broad range of sandbox instances. It also had to handle complex situations, so environment engineers can interrogate sandbox changes as well as maintain builds.

How does Snapshot solve the challenge?

It gives us a core toolset to handle a wide range of sandbox instances, with reporting and build management It allows us to retain the builds in a source code repository indefinitely.

What part does it play in your process?

We use Snapshot to manage the builds between environments and releases to production. Essentially, we use it right now to create the metadata build and look forward to using it to work with data in a Continuous Integration fashion. We also use it to interrogate sandboxes for changes. Developers use it to document changes as well.

What efficiencies have you gained using Snapshot?

By using Snapshot, we have a centralized standard solution to manage builds for Salesforce.com applications. A solution that can retain the build and leverage version repositories. Since the solution is standardized and provides us robust build management solution, we now have a worldwide set of resources across different time zones to share in the responsibility of releasing builds.

What’s your main takeaway from using Snapshot?

Our experience has been wonderful. The toolset allows for a very flexible and intuitive approach to managing sandboxes and builds on the Salesforce.com platform, while retaining build information for a longer period of time. It provides an agnostic way of managing across a multitude of sandboxes and is flexible enough to manage builds/product releases while handling administrative and reporting tasks. Also, Metazoa is always moving the toolset into the new directions, such as Continuous Integration, giving us the confidence that we will to continue to grow and have a centralized environment management service. Snapshot is now our main Salesforce.com sandbox and build management solution.