When you run a comparison, Gearset will show you the metadata differences between your source and target. See what changes have been made, when and by whom at a glance, without the need for manual XML diff or change tracking documents.

A typical comparison will look similar to the screenshot below. Individual metadata items are shown in the table with the following columns:

* For details on why this may show as blank/Unknown, see this support doc, and for why the information may occasionally be incorrect, see this article. In all cases, Gearset displays the information returned to it by the Salesforce metadata API.

Clicking on any metadata item will select it and show you the line-by-line comparison between your source and target in the XML diff viewer in the bottom half of the screen.

Depending on the metadata type, there may be alternative, simplified views for you to choose from, such as Picklist view if the selected item is a picklist:

If there are multiple changes, you can quickly move between them using the Prev / Next buttons on the top right of the diff viewer.

Gearset groups changes to your metadata by their type:

Note: During the comparison, no changes are made to your environments. Seeing an item marked as Deleted does not mean Gearset has removed it from your org! This means that the item does not exist in the source, but does exist in the target. If you deploy it with Gearset, that item will be deleted from the target, hence it is classed as a deletion.

Items are grouped by their change type via the tabs in the results table. These tabs line up with the metadata change type listed in the section above.

By default, when you first run a comparison, you'll be taken to the All items tab. To view New or Deleted items, Changed items, simply click the tab in the table.

By default, the metadata items are sorted alphabetically by metadata type.

You can change from A-Z to Z-A by clicking at the top of the Metadata type column.

You can order using a different column by clicking at the top of that column.

If you have a large number of differences, you may wish to filter the comparison results to make it easier to find the changes you're interested in.

There are two main ways to search/filter the comparison results: using the global search box in the top right, and using filtering on individual columns.

You can find this in the top right of your comparison results:

Start typing and Gearset will filter down the results in the table.

This applies across all columns, so you could search for metadata item name, metadata type, or changed by, etc.

This applies a filter to the tab you're currently viewing (such as New items), rather than showing items from all tabs. If you're not sure what the change type may be, search when viewing the All items tab.

Comparison results can also be filtered on a per-column level. Select the menu icon on any column to specify which items you'd like to be displayed in the results.

For the Name column, you can filter results by text, or you can use a regular expression - for more information on filtering comparison results by regex, see this support doc.

For the Metadata type, Difference type and Changed by columns, you can filter results by text, or use the tick boxes to select the results you want to see. (Tip: untick the Select all box to unselect all; you can then tick the box(es) you want to include.)

For the Changed on column, in addition to filtering by text and using tick boxes, a third option is to select one of the predefined time options, such as Today or Last 7 days.

Want to know how to deploy these metadata items? Read our guide on creating your first deployment.