Copado CI/CD

What is copado cicd? Where does it fit in the world of application development?

Copado CI/CD: Streamlining Application Development

Copado CI/CD is a specialized solution that is part of the broader Copado DevOps platform, designed primarily for low-code platforms like Salesforce. It incorporates automation into Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CD) pipelines.

1. Continuous Integration (CI): Copado CI/CD automatically and continuously merges source code updates from multiple developers into a shared repository (often Git). It runs automated tests on these changes to identify defects early in the development cycle.

2. Continuous Delivery (CD)/Continuous Deployment (CDep): It automates the process of delivering and deploying the integrated code to various environments (like testing, staging, and production). CD ensures the code is always ready for release, and CDep automates the final release without human intervention (if no human authorization is needed).

How Copado Fits into Application Development

Copado’s role is to act as the primary DevOps and release management platform for business applications, especially those built on the Salesforce platform, but it is also extensible to other SaaS clouds.

1. Enables DevOps for Low-Code Platforms: Traditional DevOps tools are often challenging to adapt to platforms like Salesforce, where development involves a mix of code, metadata, and configurations handled by both Pro-Coders (developers) and Low-Coders (admins). Copado is built to handle the nuances of Salesforce metadata and configuration, making DevOps accessible to the entire team.
2. Automates the Software Delivery Lifecycle (SDLC): It provides an end-to-end solution for the SDLC, covering:
   1. Planning: Aligning user stories with business goals.
   2. Building: Supporting Low-Code, Pro-Code, and Admins while automatically resolving merge conflicts.
   3. Testing: Integrating AI-driven and automated testing into the pipeline (Quality Gates).
   4. CI/CD: Orchestrating the release process, moving changes between environments, and automating deployments.
   5. Version Control: Integrating with Git to maintain a single source of truth for all changes and enabling features like instant rollbacks.
3. Shifts Left on Quality and Security: By embedding automated testing, security scans, and compliance checks directly into the CI/CD pipeline, Copado helps teams find and fix defects and issues earlier in the process (known as “shifting left”), leading to higher quality software and faster release cycles.
4. Improves Speed and Reliability: It replaces manual, error-prone deployment tasks with repeatable, automated processes, allowing teams to release updates faster and more frequently without compromising stability or performance.

In essence, Copado CI/CD takes the best practices of DevOps and tailor-makes them for complex, fast-moving business application environments like Salesforce, serving as the connective tissue that automates and manages the flow of changes from development to production.