Auto industry changing business models

Automotive Cloud, if it is to unseat incumbent automotive applications, needs to be simple to implement, integrate and use, said Mike Ramsey, a vice president, analyst, at Gartner and longtime auto industry journalist. If Salesforce can create cloud software that anticipates and facilitates these new models -- and using it isn't a struggle -- the vendor will be the only one doing anything like it, Ramsey said.

Michael RamseyAnalyst, Gartner

«Automotive Cloud is not just a CRM system for automakers. » That represents a big IT project that automakers may consider Salesforce Automotive Cloud instead of building or buying -- and then integrating -- all those pieces themselves. But replicating the functionality of tools such as Salesforce Flow for Automotive automations and Analytics for Automotive outside of the Salesforce cloud would require a lot of developer code and integration work.

Salesforce's vertical industry playbook

Automotive Cloud follows the pattern of other Salesforce vertical clouds, where large companies such as clothing or consumer packaged goods manufacturers either didn't have relationships with consumers in the first place, or they were severed during the pandemic when retail stores closed. «Salesforce is trying to understand the realities of an industry, and then out of the box, it these data models and algorithms,» Miller said. « That's the problem Salesforce is trying to solve». Analytics for Automotive, part of Salesforce's automotive CRM, comes with industry-specific dashboards that provide overviews of sales performance, customer lifecycle and revenue trends.

Salesforce hopes Automotive Cloud will appeal to large dealer networks, which typically have 20 or more dealerships and sell cars from multiple automakers, said Achyut Jajoo, senior vice president and general manager for manufacturing and automotive at Salesforce. He added that Salesforce has targeted auto financing companies as well as regional operations groups for large automakers. That might provide an opportunity for Salesforce Automotive Cloud as these networks look to integrate customer data among its dealers.

Salesforce DevOps Center is where you can manage your releases, enabling everyone to deploy changes using a point-and-click interface. Say goodbye to boring change sets!

The aim of Salesforce DevOps Center is to follow modern best practices. Like Source Control, to help track changes automatically as you make them in development environments.

Almost all development teams share the same sentiment about change sets. They’re time consuming and bothersome to deal with

Some key features of the DevOps Center:

• Track your work. With Work Items, A new object designed for DevOps Center
• Track these changes automatically. By viewing a list of changed metadata components and being able to select the one you want to deploy. No more sticky notes to track changes
• Github as VCS. Currently Github is the only VCS available to integrate with DevOps Center, But other Version Control Systems are coming soon, Like Gitlab, Azure DevOps, BitBucket
• Deploy your changes with clicks. Check your deployment pipeline and visualize updated metadata components and select which one to deploy from one stage to the next. (Dev environment => Staging Environment => Production)

How about using the CLI, VSCode Or Github?

You can also use those, by working directly from VSCode or Github. You can commit changes directly to your team Source Control Repo, Create a branch, Merge Pull Requests whether it’s from VSCode, CLI or Github. That would instantly reflect in the DevOps Center User Interface, so other team members could come and see these changes.

How do I install it to my Org?

Well, currently, it’s in Beta Stage but you can enable it in your org from Setup,  if you have a Production Org with Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited or a Developer-Edition Org. To enable it:

• Enter DevOps Center in Quick Find then select DevOps Center
• Toggle to enable the DevOps Center
• Click Install Package
• Select Install for Admins Only
• Approve third-party access to login.salesforce.com and test.salesforce.com
• You can then see it in the Installed Packages

To access it from the App Launcher, you first need to create a new Connected App, To do so:

• Select App Manager from Setup and then Create new Connected App
• Type in these info.
  • Name: DevOps Center
  • API Name: DevOps_Center
  • Contact Email: support@salesforce.com
  • Logo Image Url:: https://tinyurl.com/doc-icon
• In Web App Settings enter the Start Url: /sf_devops/DevOpsCenter.app
• Click Save
• In Manage Connected Apps, Click Manage
• Click Manage Permission Sets
• Select sf_devops_NamedCredentials Permission Set, then save

Finally you can assign your team members the permission set to access the DevOps Center.