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An introduction to Gearset Live Comparisons
An introduction to Gearset Live Comparisons

A faster way to compare and deploy in Gearset

Valerio Chang avatar
Written by Valerio Chang
Updated over a week ago

A typical comparison usually takes some time to load. Calling the data through the Salesforce API takes time, as it must completely load both old and new versions, before analyzing the changes and finally displaying the results to the user. This is where Live Comparisons come in to make your comparisons β€” and deployments β€” faster. This feature is automatically enabled for all our users.

So how does it work?

When you use Gearset's comparison engine, we'll load the comparison in batches, and fetch the most relevant metadata first β€” your recently changed items. Using cached data and Salesforce's source tracking feature, we're able to very quickly assess what's changed and display those changes first, while the rest of the comparison continues to load.

You don't even need to wait for everything else to load. If the objects you want to deploy are already there, you can simply select them and continue your deployment. However, as you have the option to continue at any step of the process, there's a small in-built delay to make sure that some items do load up beforehand, so it doesn't end up in an empty deployment.

Skipping the Problem Analyzers

Our Problem Analyzers help to make sure your deployments have the greatest chance of success. However, we understand that your time is valuable, so you now have the option to skip the Problem Analyzers altogether, to deploy as fast as possible. This can be especially useful if you're doing a small deployment that you know won't flag anything.

Does it affect the reliability of deployments?

Your deployments will be just as reliable when using Live Comparisons. The only time there might be a problem is if you've chosen to skip the Problem Analysis (PA) step and there's an issue with your deployment that would otherwise have been caught by our Problem Analyzers. You can always run a quick validation after skipping PA, and take advantage of this for faster iteration.

Is it possible to switch Live Comparisons off?

Live Comparisons will make your comparisons and deployments faster overall. However, you can always turn this off by going to My Account, then clicking Deployment Settings and switching Enable live comparisons off.

Still experiencing slower than expected comparisons?

Largely the time it takes to retrieve your metadata is unavoidable, this is simply dictated by the amount of metadata you're wanting to compare and the time it takes the Salesforce Metadata API to handle your request. However, we do have some tips to further increase efficiency. Please see this documentation for more details.

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