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.

External IDs falling out of sync isn't unheard of, it can happen for a few reasons although most common is the same record being created in more than one environment, or being moved using a non Gearset tool. Gearset derives the External ID from the Salesforce Record ID, the same record created in two different orgs (by hand or by a non-Gearset deployment) will have a different Salesforce Record ID, and therefore different Gearset IDs.

If your comparison looks like this, you may have out of sync External IDs.

This is straightforward to fix (and indeed Gearset is developing a wizard to re-sync external IDs automatically) using Gearset.

Before you begin, start by deciding which of your orgs is the "source of truth" for your IDs. Syncing the IDs requires one orgs IDs to be overwritten by the other, so choose one of your orgs as the source. This would typically be the org in which you create your Revenue Cloud configuration.

Navigate to the data deployment page in Gearset, and select one of our pre-made templates. Select your chosen source, and the org that you need to sync with it.

The template will load, allowing you to deactivate any flows that may be affected by your External ID updates. It will then bring you to a screen where Gearset will show you the deployment steps it is about to take (updating the External IDs in the target based on the values from the source).

Clicking 'deploy data' will kick off the deployment process, and you can watch the steps complete on screen.

When you re-run your comparison between the same source and target you should see your records that exist in both source and target as 'no-difference' or 'changed'.

We want to hear your experience with Revenue Cloud deployments and External IDs, so please get in touch over the in-app chat with any feedback or questions!