Current limitations when collaborating on the same component between multiple developers
At the moment only 1 branch is active on an instance, switching the branches is very complex and time-consuming and you may lose some work if you are not careful. What most customers do at the moment is use the same branch for the individual application and all developers work on the same branch or have multiple developer instances to manage different branches and then merge them.
What is a developer sandbox and how does it help the developers?
A dev sandbox is an abstraction on an instance that feels like an entirely different instance, despite sharing the same components under the hood. Dev sandbox allows multiple developers to collaborate on the same component on the same instance but in their own specific branches.
How do I merge flows?
Flows have always been a pain when collaborating with multiple developers because flows are captured as XMLs and you cannot merge flows EVER when they act as XMLs but do work with other areas of the platform as that is code (e.g. script includes, business rules, etc), with the CreatorCon keynote this year it was released that flows will not act as code! This means that flows in the backend will be code and can be easily merged when merging branches.
When will it be out?
It will be released to the public later this year
How will this work?
On the dev instance, a developer will be able to raise a request for a sandbox and work on the sandbox-specific branch and these branches can then be merged in real-time. I believe these requests first need to be approved and there will be a limited number of sandboxes that developers can request. Also, it may be a paid package altogether.
Want to hear more insights on what was released at the Knowledge for Developers, watch the keynote here - https://www.servicenow.com/events/knowledge/2024/sessions/creatorcon-keynote.html
Note: Developer sandboxes and flow as code were launched at Knowledge 2024 and the content is created from the initial views. These should be referred only for learning purposes of how this can help you overcome some of the really painful issues we all developers have.
6 Comments
