--- schema_version: "1" id: 929e469a4b1e19909b4de328be67cee1f132c077f141b9040dc1c2f68dd3fa7e title: Combine Work Items in Lifecycle Center collection: admin version: current locale: en-us portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/platform/264-0-0/devops_center_combine_work_items.md canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.devops_center_combine_work_items.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 source_site: help.salesforce.com content_type: documentation content_hash: d5d7601d26ee9a369d06af8f9b716b7e8ba75ae16fa9ede0a19a77e7e0d887a7 description: Use combine work items to prevent conflicts when promoting individual work items with custom promotion. When work items in a stage share metadata or depend on each other, promoting them individually results in conflicts or blocked promotions. products: - Salesforce Platform release: "264" --- # Combine Work Items in Lifecycle Center Use combine work items to prevent conflicts when promoting individual work items with custom promotion. When work items in a stage share metadata or depend on each other, promoting them individually results in conflicts or blocked promotions. ### Required Editions
Available in: Lightning Experience in Professional (API access required), Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions
Not Available in: Government Cloud Plus. Contact your Salesforce account executive for more details.
Not available in: EU Operating Zone. EU Operating zone is a special paid offering that provides an enhanced level of data residency commitment. Lifecycle Center is supported in orgs in the EU that aren’t part of EU OZ, per standard product terms and conditions.
![Note](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-platform-devops_center-264-0-0-production-enus/166010c3-4c34-4087-92ad-aea917baf524/images/icon_note.png) Note The combine work items feature works differently in Lifecycle Center and DevOps Center (Managed Package). This information pertains to Lifecycle Center. To learn about this feature in DevOps Center (Managed Package), see [Lifecycle Center](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.next_generation_devops_center.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Lifecycle Center (formerly next-generation DevOps Center) brings modern DevOps best practices to your team with an AI-powered, click-based user interface (UI). Built on the principles of DevOps Center (Managed Package), Lifecycle Center serves as a central development hub where your team can collaborate—with built-in governance that keeps coding agents and users safe and compliant."). During custom promotion, Lifecycle Center identifies work items in the stage that share metadata components or have dependencies. It then gives you these options: - Combine work items: Lifecycle Center combines the identified work items in a dependency-safe order so you can promote them without conflicts. - Continue with custom promotion: The promotion may conflict or fail. For detailed instructions on combining work items, see [Promote Individual Work Items from a Stage](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.devops_center_custom_promote_work_items.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Move approved work items forward without waiting for the entire stage to be ready. Select specific work items for promotion, while others remain in their current stage until they’re ready."). ![Important](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-platform-devops_center-264-0-0-production-enus/166010c3-4c34-4087-92ad-aea917baf524/images/icon_important.png) Important Combining work items is irreversible. Lifecycle Center combines work items in the order that you created them, from oldest to newest, until all changes are in the newest work item’s feature branch. Lifecycle Center then removes the obsolete branches for the older work items. Because Lifecycle Center merges all metadata components into one work item, keep each work item’s scope small and limited to related changes. ![A flow diagram showing combining three work items](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-platform-devops_center-264-0-0-production-enus/166010c3-4c34-4087-92ad-aea917baf524/devops_center/images/devops_center_combine_work_item.png) ## Scenarios for Combining Work Items Review these scenarios to understand when to combine work items. ![Example](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-platform-devops_center-264-0-0-production-enus/166010c3-4c34-4087-92ad-aea917baf524/images/icon_example.png) Example Scenario 1: Two work items change the same component Work item WI-000001 adds a validation rule to the Account object. WI-000002 changes the same validation rule. Both work items are available on the same stage. If you promote only WI-000002 with custom promotion, the source control repository can’t decide which version to select, and a conflict occurs. What you do: Combine work items WI-000001 and WI-000002. Lifecycle Center merges WI-000001 and WI-000002 in the order they were created. It keeps the latest version of the validation rule, and promotes the combined result. Both changes move to the next stage together. ![Example](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-platform-devops_center-264-0-0-production-enus/166010c3-4c34-4087-92ad-aea917baf524/images/icon_example.png) Example Scenario 2: One work item creates an object, another changes it Work item WI-000003 creates the custom object Issue\_\_c and WI-000004 adds the field CreatedById to Issue\_\_c. Both work items are available on the same stage. Promoting WI-000004 alone using custom promotion fails because the target stage branch doesn’t have Issue\_\_c yet. What you do: Combine work items WI-000003 and WI-000004. Lifecycle Center combines WI-003 and WI-000004 in dependency order (create first, then change), merges them to one branch, and promotes. Issue\_\_c and the new field move to the next stage together. ![Example](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-platform-devops_center-264-0-0-production-enus/166010c3-4c34-4087-92ad-aea917baf524/images/icon_example.png) Example Scenario 3: Multiple work items share components Work items WI-000005, WI-000006, and WI-000007 modify the same Apex class. If you select only WI-000005 and WI-000006 for custom promotion, Lifecycle Center identifies the overlap with WI-000007. What you do: Combine work items WI-000005, WI-000006, and WI-000007. Lifecycle Center replays the commits to one branch (newest) and promotes. This way, you avoid conflicts and the need to promote WI-000007 separately later. If you don’t combine work items in these scenarios, and continue with custom promotion, you may need to resolve merge conflicts manually or promote dependent work items in the correct order. Combining brings all related work items into one promotion and avoids those steps. ## Track Combined Work Items After you combine work items, and promote the newest work item through the pipeline, Lifecycle Center updates the status of all work items and records the activity. Use the work item status and pipeline stage view to track the outcome. ## Work Items Status When work items are combined, the Work Item Status section in the Work Items tab shows the outcome after combining work items. For example, WI-000130 and WI-000129 were combined with WI-000131. WI-000131 is the one that moves forward. - For WI-000131 (moves forward), you see the Promoted status with the message: "WI-000130 and WI-000129 were combined with this work item." - For WI-000129 (which was merged in), you see only the message: "Work item combined with WI-000131." Click the link to track the work item that moved forward. ![Combine work item representation in the work item status section](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-platform-devops_center-264-0-0-production-enus/166010c3-4c34-4087-92ad-aea917baf524/devops_center/images/next_gen_combine_wi_status.png) ## Pipeline Stages After you combine work items and promote, the work item moves forward to the next pipeline stage under the latest work item number. You can identify a combined work item in the pipeline by the ![Combine work item icon](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-platform-devops_center-264-0-0-production-enus/166010c3-4c34-4087-92ad-aea917baf524/devops_center/images/next_gen_combine_wi_icon.png) merge icon. ![Combine work item representation on pipeline](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-platform-devops_center-264-0-0-production-enus/166010c3-4c34-4087-92ad-aea917baf524/devops_center/images/next_gen_combine_wi_pipeline.png) ## Externally Merged Changes If you externally merge one of the work items with shared components directly to the target branch, Lifecycle Center can’t combine the work items. In this case, complete the promotion, resolve the conflict (if necessary), and then deploy the other work items. For information about handling external merges in Lifecycle Center, see [External Merges](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.devops_center_handle_external_merges.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Lifecycle Center detects external changes that you merge directly into a stage’s source control branch. ").