Quick start ​

This guide quickly gets you up and running with OrgFlow.

1. Sign up ​

Visit https://www.orgflow.app to sign up for a user account.

Creating a user account is free

Signing up is completely free and requires only a valid email address, a password, and your name.

Choose I want to register a new account and provide the required information. Your username is your email address.

Use a valid email address

Ensure you use a valid email address to receive important messages from OrgFlow (such as password reset links, workspace invitations and alerts about failed jobs).

You only need a single user account no matter how many different teams and OrgFlow workspaces you work with. A user account is independent and can be a member of multiple workspaces. If you are an independent professional, consider creating your account using personal information so it's not tied to the organization you happen to be working with at the moment.

Once you have created your user account, sign in with your new credentials.

2. Create a workspace ​

After signing in, you are prompted to create a new workspace.

What is a workspace?

A workspace is the top-level container for all your team's data, configuration and members. Learn more in our dedicated section about workspaces.

Creating a workspace is free

Every new workspace comes with a free subscription, and we don't collect any billing information from you. You may choose to upgrade to a paid subscription later if needed.

To create your workspace, fill out the details and continue:

Once your new workspace has been created, navigate to it and you should see a view similar to this:

The only thing you can do at this point is create a stack. At least one stack is needed to do any meaningful work in OrgFlow.

What is a stack?

A stack is a configured connection between your Salesforce production org and a Git repository. It acts as a container for managing a set of related Salesforce environments and for flowing metadata changes between those environments. Learn more in our dedicated section about stacks.

We'll get back to this in a moment, but first we have some preparation to do.

3. Prepare a Git repository ​

To create your first stack you'll need a Git repository.

Why do I need a Git repository?

The Git repository is used by OrgFlow for version control of your Salesforce metadata and for moving metadata changes between environments. The repository remains owned and managed by you at all times, but is utilized by OrgFlow. Learn more in our architecture overview section.

OrgFlow supports any standard Git repository, including those from popular commercial Git providers such as GitHub, Azure Repos, GitLab and Bitbucket and others. It's also possible to use a self-hosted Git server. For more information see our in-depth sections about Git authentication and self-hosting scenarios.

For this guide we'll use a GitHub repository, but it shouldn't be difficult to adapt these steps if you choose to use another provider.

  1. Sign in to GitHub (sign up for a new account if needed)
  2. Create a new repository
    • Make sure to make the repository private to not make your Salesforce metadata visible to anyone on the internet
    • Don't add a .gitignore file as this might interfere with OrgFlow source control operations
  3. Note down the HTTPS URL of the new repository

You'll also need a personal access token that OrgFlow can use to authenticate when interacting with the new repository.

  1. Create a personal access token
  2. Note down the new token

4. Prepare a Salesforce user account ​

OrgFlow needs to connect to your Salesforce environments to do things like manage sandboxes, retrieve and deploy metadata changes, and run Apex tests.

Choose which user account OrgFlow should use when interacting with your Salesforce production org. This user needs sufficient permissions and licenses to retrieve and deploy metadata, manage sandboxes and run Apex tests. If you are a system administrator in your Salesforce production org, you can use your own user account for now (this can be changed later).

Note down the username of the production user account you choose. When creating a stack, you will need to sign into your Salesforce production org using the chosen user account and authorize OrgFlow to connect.

Using stored credentials

It is also possible to have OrgFlow connect to Salesforce using stored credentials (i.e. username, password and security token). This can be a more powerful option because it enables OrgFlow to manage and connect to sandboxes completely without user interaction. See the section about connecting to Salesforce for more information.

Your Salesforce credentials are encrypted with a key unique to your stack and stored securely in the OrgFlow cloud. See the section about encryption for more details.

For teams with very strict security or compliance needs, it is also possible to never make any connections to your Salesforce environments from our infrastructure at all, though this significantly restricts the functionality available through the web app. Refer to the sections about storing credentials and self-hosting for more information.

Also note down the sign-in URL of your production org. This is typically something similar to https://[company].my.salesforce.com. It is also known as your "My Domain".

5. Set up a stack ​

With all those preparations out of the way, you are now ready to set up your first stack.

Create your stack ​

To create your stack, return to your newly created workspace in OrgFlow and select create a new stack. Follow the steps in the wizard - they should be fairly self-explanatory, as we have already discussed most of the information you will need to provide.

  • In the Git connection step, enter the Git repository URL and personal access token you noted down earlier. In the username field you can enter anything you want as GitHub ignores this value (but it must not be empty).
  • In the Salesforce connection step, choose use browser-based authorization, enter the sign-in URL of your production org that you noted down earlier, and follow the instructions to sign into your production org with your chosen user account and authorize OrgFlow to connect.

After creating the stack you will automatically be navigated to its main view, where you will see this message in a banner close to the top:

For this stack to become functional, it must be initialized to add your production environment and perform the initial sync of your Salesforce metadata to your Git repository.

That's what the next step is about.

Initialize your stack ​

Initializing your stack includes the following activities:

  • Choosing a name for your production environment
  • Choosing a name for the Git branch that should correspond to your production environment
  • Choosing which metadata to track and flow in your stack
  • Starting the initialization job

Select initialize now and review the choices in the initialize stack dialog. If you are happy with the default suggestions, you can leave them as they are.

What does the "included metadata" field do?

It's up to you which subset of metadata to include in your stack. Any included metadata will be tracked, version controlled and flowed between environments in your stack. Any other metadata (i.e. non-included metadata) will be ignored by OrgFlow, and not committed to your Git repository.

Inclusion is configured using set of wildcard-based patterns matched against component types and API names, contained in a file named .orgflowinclude which is kept in the root of your Git repository. OrgFlow provides a default selection that includes a common subset of metadata suitable for most scenarios, but you can customize this here if you prefer.

Refer to the topic about managing included metadata to learn more.

Select start to begin the initialization process. The stack initialization process runs as a background job, and will perform the following tasks:

  • Creating a branch in your Git repository
  • Retrieving all included metadata from your production org
  • Committing the metadata as the initial commit in the new Git branch

This job can take some time to complete, depending on the amount and size of metadata in your production org and the performance of Salesforce instance hosting your production org, among other factors.

Using your stack ​

Once initialization has finished you should see a view similar to this:

You now have a fully functional OrgFlow stack with only a single environment (your production environment). This environment consists of your production org and its backing Git branch.

This is already quite useful. For example, you could use this stack to:

  • Keep a backup of your production metadata in Git
  • Keep a detailed history of your production metadata changes in Git by regularly flowing in (retrieving) changes
  • Use a tool such as Visual Studio Code to make changes in the Git branch, and flow out (deploy) those changes

But the real power of OrgFlow lights up when you also have one or more sandbox environments in your stack. That's beyond the scope of this guide, but read on to learn more about next steps!

6. Next steps ​

Congratulations - you are now up and running with OrgFlow! Here's what you've achieved:

  • Signed up for a user account
  • Created a workspace
  • Created a stack
  • Initialized the stack with your production org

Here are some tips for what to explore next:

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