💡 We use the term Revenue Cloud in the following article to refer to both Salesforce CPQ and Agentforce Revenue Management (formerly Revenue Cloud Advanced or RCA) configuration data.
Why do I need External IDs?
Gearset is able to treat the configuration data in your orgs in the same way as metadata, so that you can compare and deploy your Revenue Cloud records in the same way as your metadata configuration. This has many advantages, like allowing Gearset to map dependencies between records as well as the metadata that the records depend on, so that when you deploy your configuration data Gearset can combine that with a metadata deployment, ensuring that the the user experiences an easy single click deployment and the shape of the orgs is kept in sync.
In the example below you can see a comparison where Gearset has mapped the relationship between Product records, and the custom object changes that affect them. All of these changes will be deployed together, and Gearset will sequence the deployment to ensure success.
The presence of unique External IDs on all of your Revenue Cloud records is what allows Gearset to do this. In the same way that the unique API names of your metadata components allow Gearset to recognise them as the same components across different org, the unique External ID that Gearset adds to all of your Revenue Cloud data (and keeps unique, using de-duplication flows) let's us recognise the same record as it moves between your orgs, and the Salesforce Record ID changes.
Step 1
Initiate the setup wizard from the Salesforce org connections page by clicking the Run external ID setup button on any of your Revenue Cloud orgs.
Gearset will check whether the wizard has been run on your org previously (if it has you will have the option to remove the existing External IDs or update them).
Step 2
As the user running the setup process you will be able to choose from a few options to make sure that you have control over where and how the external IDs are created.
You will be able to choose which modules of Salesforce CPQ or Revenue Cloud Advanced you would like the external IDs to be added to, so that you have a clear understanding of which objects Gearset will create external IDs for. Generally teams will add IDs to all available modules.
You will also be able to choose which de-duplication flows (more on these here) Gearset creates, to prevent external IDs from being duplicated when records are cloned by users.
You will also be able to give the deployment a unique name, and add any relevant notes, to help you and your team if you decide to review the external ID run later.
Step 3
Before you confirm that you want to run the External ID setup wizard, Gearset will show you a preview of the current state of your org, and what will happen as a result of running the wizard.
The object name and object type tell you the name of the object that Gearset will add the External ID to, and the Revenue Cloud module they originate from (per Salesforce documentation).
The External ID actions tell you whether Gearset will be creating a new External ID field and populating it for the object, or populating IDs on new records where the field exists but is not yet populated (typically the External ID field is populated at the point the record is deployed.
The Flow actions tell you whether Gearset is creating a de-duplication flow for that object.
Step 4
After clicking "Continue" the deployment runs, automatically triggering these steps.
A metadata deployment is performed to add the Gearset External ID field to your Revenue Cloud objects, and to create any de-duplication flows.
Gearset populates any External ID fields that were added in the previous step.
The deployment success page will confirm the Gearset External ID field has been added and populated successfully, and inform you if any IDs were not successfully created.
You can see the objects where External IDs have been added on the "Populated external IDs" tab.
💡 See our FAQs doc for more information on how Gearset External IDs work.
After running the wizard on both your source and target you will be able to run a comparison and select Revenue Cloud components for deployment. You may need to align your External IDs before your first comparison.
Next, have a look at How to compare and deploy Revenue Cloud configuration data.