Deployment validation, monitoring and post-deployment verification
Key Takeaway
A validation that succeeded with passing Apex tests and met code coverage can be quick deployed within 10 days without running the tests again. Any deployment after that validation removes its quick deploy eligibility, so you must validate again.
Deployment validation, monitoring and post-deployment verification are how you check a change in three stages. Validation checks that the change will work before it reaches an org. Monitoring watches the change while it moves. Verification confirms that it worked afterward. A validation is a full rehearsal of the deployment that gets rolled back. You monitor deployments on the Deployment Status page. Verification means testing in the target org and finishing any manual follow-up tasks.
What a validation does
A deployment validation runs the deployment, including Apex tests if you choose, and then rolls everything back. Because of the rollback, a validation saves no components and doesn't change the org. A validation still returns the same success or failure messages that a real deployment would.
A validation also catches a missing component that another component depends on. It catches invalid metadata too.
Validation matters because a change set deploys as a whole in a single transaction, never component by component. If the change set can't finish, the entire transaction rolls back. After it succeeds, every change is committed and the deployment can't be rolled back, so validation is your chance to catch problems first.
You can validate these kinds of work:
- Change sets.
- Metadata API components, for example through Salesforce CLI.
- DevOps Center work, using the "Run a Validate-Only Deployment" promotion option. The option is available only for the bundling stage and versioned stages.