Application Lifecycle Management Journey with Lifecycle Center

Here's a high-level overview of your Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) journey. Start by setting up Lifecycle Center (formerly next-generation DevOps Center), then build your apps in your development environment, and finally, deploy your changes with Lifecycle Center.

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.

User Permissions Needed
To set up Lifecycle Center:	Lifecycle Center Admin
To commit and review changes:	Customize Application in your development org and Lifecycle Center User in Lifecycle Center Hub org
To promote work items through the pipeline:	Lifecycle Center Deployment Manager

Set Up Lifecycle Center

Lifecycle Center is central to your ALM journey. If you're a new user, follow these steps to get started.

Access Lifecycle Center.
See Access Lifecycle Center.
Add team members and assign the required user permissions.
See Add Team Members as Users in the Lifecycle Center Hub Org and Assign Lifecycle Center Permission Sets.
Set up your source control.
See Set Up Your Source Control.
(Optional) Configure .forceignore file to exclude metadata. See Exclude Metadata with the .forceignore File
Create a project.
See Create a Lifecycle Center Project.
Build your pipeline.
See Build Your Pipeline.
Create and assign a work item.
See Create and Assign Work Items.
(Optional) Integrate Salesforce Agentforce Vibes IDE.
See Integrate Agentforce Vibes IDE with Lifecycle Center.
Set up Salesforce DX Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server.
See Access Lifecycle Center MCP Tools.

Interested in Lifecycle Center MCP tools in Salesforce DX MCP Server? You can use Lifecycle Center MCP tools to manage your Lifecycle Center tasks with natural language prompts. For example, state what you want to do, such as "Create a new feature branch for WI-000042." See Lifecycle Center MCP Tools and Skills.

Work in Your Development Environment

Automatically track app building and configuration changes in your development environment using DX Inspector. DX Inspector provides quick access to metadata change tracking and visualization. It's available at the top of a page or builder in your Salesforce sandbox, scratch org, or Developer Edition org.

Note Committing changes and creating change requests are now available directly within your development environment instead of Lifecycle Center. This helps you manage metadata and data changes without leaving your development org.

Build apps or make changes directly in your development environment.
Source tracking automatically tracks your changes and lists them on the Change Management tab in DX Inspector. See Develop and Deploy with DX Inspector.
Commit or deploy changes.
- With Lifecycle Center connection:
1. Commit changes: Associate your changes with a work item and commit them to the source control repository.
  See Commit Changes to Source Repository.
2. Start review: On the Change Management tab in DX Inspector, start a review process.
  See Create a Change Request.
3. Team collaboration: After your team member reviews and approves the work item, the work item moves into Ready to Promote status.
  See Review Changes with Team Members.
- Without a Lifecycle Center connection, solo Salesforce admins or smaller teams can move metadata and data together for direct deployment to a target org. See Deploy Metadata and Data from DX Inspector.

Enforce Quality with Lifecycle Center Testing

Lifecycle Center Testing embeds automated quality enforcement directly into your pipeline — running tests when reviews are created and before every promotion into the next stage.

Set up Lifecycle Center Testing.
See Set Up Lifecycle Center Testing.
Shift-left quality checks when a developer creates a review in DX Inspector.
See Shift-Left Testing for Review Events.
Quality checks before a work item is promoted to the next pipeline stage.
See Testing Before Promotion to the Next Stage.
Run tests manually when automated testing doesn't start or needs a targeted follow-up.
See On-Demand Testing for Review Events and On-Demand Testing for Pre-Promotion Events.

Promote Work Items in Lifecycle Center

After your team member approves the work item, you can move it through your pipeline in Lifecycle Center.

When ready, promote the work items to the next stage in your pipeline.
See Promote Work Items.

Lifecycle Center MCP tools manage the promotion for you. For example, use the prompt, "Promote Lifecycle Center WI-000042 to the UAT stage." Salesforce DX MCP Server runs all the necessary steps for pipeline deployment.
When merge conflicts occur, you can use Lifecycle Center MCP tools to resolve them instead of fixing them manually.
Describe the ‌outcome in natural language prompts, and Salesforce DX MCP Server analyzes and resolves the merge conflicts for you. See Resolve Merge Conflicts.