Introduction

This is a step-by-step guide on how to use Salto in a team setting, assuming your team has enough sandbox accounts to account for:

Each admin or developer has a personal sandbox
Shared sandboxes, at least two we will refer to as Integration and Staging

This guide assumes you're familiar with the content on Getting started with Salto.

How to read this guide

The term development refers to changing your business apps' configuration, whether done by an admin or developer
This guide assumes you're using a project management tool (such as Jira). If you're not, feel free to skip those parts
This guide uses the term Jira to refer to any project management tool

Overview

This workflow walks through:

Developing a feature or task in a dedicated sandbox, on a Git feature branch
Deploying to Integration and testing your work alongside other new features
Deploying to Staging to test and approve a new production-ready version, on a Git release branch
Deploying to production, and handleany live issues using the Hotfixing flow

The workflow

Preparing for development

	Action	Notes	Where
1	Create a feature branch	If you're new to the concept of feature branches, learn more on Recommended Git practices. Make sure to branch off of `main` Make sure to give your branch a meaningful name, usually the title of the feature or bug you're working on	Salto - operations panel
2	Change your task's status to `In Progress`		Jira
3	Prepare your sandbox for development	The end state of this step is to: Have a sandbox dedicated to the work on your feature/task Have that sandbox set up in Salto Have that sandbox aligned with your shared envs where it matters To make that happen: Make sure your sandbox is configured under an Env. For more info see Configuring your first environment In your workspace, make sure the current env selector is set to your env Run Fetch Align, by clicking the arrow near the Fetch button Run Deploy on the same env -- this makes sure your env is configured with your team's Common Config Want to read more about Common Config? Check out How Multi-env works.	Salto - operations panel Business app admin UI - Dev env

Action

Notes

Where

Create a feature branch

If you're new to the concept of feature branches, learn more on Recommended Git practices.
Make sure to branch off of main
Make sure to give your branch a meaningful name, usually the title of the feature or bug you're working on

Salto - operations panel

Change your task's status to In Progress

Jira

Prepare your sandbox for development

The end state of this step is to:

Have a sandbox dedicated to the work on your feature/task
Have that sandbox set up in Salto
Have that sandbox aligned with your shared envs where it matters

To make that happen:

Make sure your sandbox is configured under an Env. For more info see Configuring your first environment
In your workspace, make sure the current env selector is set to your env
Run Fetch Align, by clicking the arrow near the Fetch button
Run Deploy on the same env -- this makes sure your env is configured with your team's Common Config

Want to read more about Common Config? Check out How Multi-env works.

Salto - operations panel
Business app admin UI - Dev env

Development

	Action	Notes	Where
1	Develop the feature/task	Do the work the same way you're used to: in your admin UI, or in tools you're familiar with (e.g. VSCode). It's possible to develop changes in Salto, by editing NaCls. To learn more contact us.	Business app admin UI - Dev env
2	Fetch		Salto - operations panel
3	Move elements to Common Config	The goal of this step is to use Multi-env to make sure your changes are set up to be deployed to any subsequent env, such as Integration, Staging, and eventually Production. For more information on how this works check out Fetching a change from Dev and How Multi-env works.	Salto - NaCl editor
4	Test on Dev	This is a great point in the workflow to make sure your changes work as expected. Catching issues this early is ideal - while you have full context.	Business app UI - Dev env
5	Push to Git	For how to perform this action, see Fetching a small change. For best practices, see Recommended Git practices.	Salto - operations panel

You can execute all these development actions in multiple iterations.

Doing so can make each step easier, since you have less context to keep in mind
For instance, when pushing to Git, more iterations result in smaller push scopes, which can be conducive to better commits - see Recommended Git practices for more

Preparing for review

	Action	Notes	Where
1	Verify your Multi-env configuration is ready for subsequent envs	Verifying your config is ready to be deployed and tested on Integration and beyond is best done by previewing Salto's deployment plan to Integration, and making sure it matches your expectations. Change the current env in your workspace to be Integration Click Deploy; it won't deploy anything yet; it will present you with the deployment plan Review the deployment plan; to be precise you can compare it to the Git diff you have on your feature branch so far (see GitHub docs on how to compare) Cancel the Deploy operation	Salto
2	Create a pull request	To learn more about pull requests, see GitHub's docs.	GitHub

Action

Notes

Where

Verify your Multi-env configuration is ready for subsequent envs

Verifying your config is ready to be deployed and tested on Integration and beyond is best done by previewing Salto's deployment plan to Integration, and making sure it matches your expectations.

Change the current env in your workspace to be Integration
Click Deploy; it won't deploy anything yet; it will present you with the deployment plan
Review the deployment plan; to be precise you can compare it to the Git diff you have on your feature branch so far (see GitHub docs on how to compare)
Cancel the Deploy operation

Salto

Create a pull request

To learn more about pull requests, see GitHub's docs.

GitHub

Review and merge

	Action	Notes	Where
1	Ask your peer or manager to review your work	Reviewer The reviewer can use different tools to assess the task owner's work: Test the expected behavior of the feature, usually testing the most likely or important flows Review changes via the business app admin UI Review NaCl changes via Git While feedback can be communicated in multiple ways, Salto's best practice is adding comments in the pull request. Task owner Upon receiving feedback, improvements should be implemented in the Dev env's admin UI, and pushed to the feature branch. Pushing changes to the feature branch updates the pull request content, making it easy to ask the reviewer to take another look. Iterate Continue this flow of feedback and improvements until both parties are satisfied with the result.	GitHub and/or Business app UI - Dev env
2	Merge your pull request into `main`		GitHub
3	Deploy to Integration		Salto - operations panel
4	Test on Integration	Testing in this phase should be rigorous, ideally including: The test plan for the new feature / bug fix Additional tests that have the potential to detect integration bugs, i.e. issues that arise when your feature meets new work by others for the first time Regression tests	Business app UI - Integration env
5	Change your task's status to `Development Done`		Jira

Delivery

	Action	Notes	Where
1	Create a release branch	Release branches are based on `main`.	Salto
2	Deploy to Staging		Salto
3	Test on Staging	Any fixes done in this step are done on the release branch. If the release contains commits of features you would like to exclude, perhaps because they're not stable, you can revert those commits on the release branch (do not revert them on `main`).	Business app UI - Staging env
4	Deploy to Production		Salto
5	Change your task's status to `Delivered`		Jira
6	Sync fixes back to `main` and Integration	To sync changes from the release branch back to `main` you can use either a pull request, or cherry-picking. For more information about cherry-picking, click here If you've added any fixes on this release branch that are missing from `main`, make sure to deploy `main` to Integration once they are synced If you chose to revert any commits while preparing this release, make sure to undo those reverts before syncing back with `main`	GitHub Salto

Hotfixing

	Action	Notes	Where
1	Deploy the latest release branch to Staging	Make sure your current env is set to Staging Find the latest release branch on Salto or GitHub Change your workspace's current Git branch via the operations panel	Salto GitHub
2	Develop the hotfix		Business app admin UI - Staging env
3	Test on Staging		Business app UI - Staging env
4	Fetch		Salto
5	Deploy preview on Production	Similar steps as action #1 under Preparing for review	Salto
6	Push to Git	Make sure you're pushing to the latest release branch.	Salto
7	Deploy to Production		Salto
8	Sync fixes back to `main` and Integration	Similar steps as action #6 under Delivery	GitHub Salto