Select the promotion type, which changes to apply, and which Apex tests to run when you promote a stage or selected work items.
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. |
The Promotion Options window appears after you click Promote Stage, promote selected work items, or complete a promotion after an external merge.
Promotion Type
- Promote now: Promote and deploy the changes to the next pipeline stage. Lifecycle Center merges the current stage’s branch into the next stage’s branch, then deploys to the next stage’s org.
- Validate only: Check your changes without saving them to the org or merging branches. To complete the promotion later without rerunning tests, select a non-default test option and make sure your tests pass and meet code coverage requirements. See Validate-Only Deployment.
If the deployment fails during Promote now, Lifecycle Center doesn’t finalize the merge to the next stage’s branch. All branches remain in the state that they were in before you attempted the promotion.
If you select Validate only, Lifecycle Center doesn’t save components or finalize the merge until you complete the promotion from that validation, or until you run a later standard promotion.
Changes to Promote
- Only missing changes (recommended): Deploy only the files that aren’t yet in the target stage org. This default option is more efficient becauseit deploys fewer files.
- All changes: Deploy all changes from the target stage branch to the target org. Select this option if deployments fail due to missing metadata, or when teammates merge changes outside Lifecycle Center that aren't tracked in the defined change set.
Test Options
When you promote work items, select which Apex tests to run based on the pipeline stage and the environment you’re deploying to.
- Default (no tests): No Apex tests are run for the deployment.
- Run local tests: All local tests are run, excluding tests included in installed packages.
- Run all tests: All tests in your org are run, including tests from installed packages.
- Run specified tests: Only the tests that you specify are run. Provide the names of test
classes in a comma-separated list with no spaces between entries. Example:
TestDeleteData,TestDataFactory.createTestRecords
These Apex test options are separate from Lifecycle Center Testing test suites assigned to a pipeline stage. Assigned test suites run automatically as a pre-promotion quality gate. See Testing Before Promotion to the Next Stage.
Lifecycle Center Testing Options
If you’re a Lifecycle Center Testing user, and have configured test suites and quality gates for the promotion event, the corresponding test suites, and quality gates are listed. Review the test suites for the selected work item assigned to the promotion. Lifecycle Center Testing evaluates these tests before completing the promotion.
- Test Suite: The specific collection of tests assigned to run, such as Regression Tests or Performance Tests.
- Test Provider: The testing engine running the tests, such as Apex Unit Testing or Salesforce Code Analyzer.
- Quality Gate: The specific automated rule that the code must pass to continue the promotion, such as a minimum tests pass percentage or severity threshold.