Learn one feature at a time
A random page of the ORGanizer documentation, so you pick up something new without reading all of it at once.
Change Set Helper
Salesforce gives outbound change sets almost no API surface, so the tedious parts — finding components, removing them one by one, rebuilding the same set of components for every release — stay manual. The Change Set Helper automates what can be automated from the page itself.
This plugin drives the Salesforce UI rather than an API, so it comes with limits. Please report anything that misbehaves. Enable or disable it in the Options page.
Working with a change set
Open an outbound change set. The helper attaches itself to the page:
Download components retrieves a ZIP of the components in the package. It works when there is only one outbound component with a given name.
Templates
A template is a reusable model of a change set: something you can import into another change set, browse, refine, or use to remove components from the current one.
Create Template walks the component table page by page, collecting every definition — on a change set with hundreds of components this takes a while. When it is done, name it and hit Save Template.
The Metadata Templates picklist lists everything you saved:
Because it is not obvious whether a component can be added, Compare Template walks the current change set looking for matches with the selected template. If part of the template is already there, you are asked to create a “subset” template holding only what is missing — which is what can be imported safely.
Remove Template deletes one from the list; Extract Template CSV downloads the current template as CSV (useful to attach to a bug report).
Selecting a template shows its components:
From here you can filter, and use Remove from Template to prune it, or Remove from Change Set to take a component out of the change set itself — which is close to instant in the current version.
The plugin works with packages too, but packages often list components that cannot go into a change set at all (typically components from managed packages), so a template built from a package may not import cleanly — and vice versa. At the time of writing, Person Account record types are the one known metadata type that cannot be added through a template.
On the Add page
Add Template inserts the current template. If everything can be inserted, the components are added and you are taken back to the change set. If some cannot (Person Account record types, untested types), a CSV of the leftovers downloads automatically so you know exactly what to add by hand — and you then press Add to Change Set yourself.
Since V2 you can also search across component types without leaving the page:
In Add Mode you can drop selected components on the fly, then push Add to changeset once for the whole batch. Remove Mode removes components quickly, searching by component type.
When the helper is not in open mode, it still adds three things to the standard page — see Hidden features: a quick filter, an expand the list link (up to the maximum Salesforce allows) and an Add to Change Set and add again button.
Remember what this is: not a change set manager — there is no API for that — but a helper that automates the parts you would otherwise do by hand.
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