The Release virtual external ID manager is a behind-the-scenes, Prodly-proprietary feature of the cloud-based Prodly service and centrally-controlled deployment architecture. The purpose of the VEID manager is to prevent duplicate record creation as you deploy data between orgs.

Instead of requiring the time-consuming process of adding formal Salesforce external IDs (FEID) to every object you deploy or determining field combinations that create unique Release composite external IDs (Standard Upsert) for every object, simply select Virtual External ID from the Record Matching Method picklist on the data set Element Details tab in the data set editor to use the VEID manager.

The Duplicate Record Prevention Challenge

When deploying records from a source to a destination org, be it with Release, a data loader, or by any other means besides a full or partial sandbox refresh, Salesforce assigns a unique Salesforce record ID to inserted records, effectively breaking the association between the records in the source and destination orgs. Thus, future changes to and redeployment of the same source records result in duplicate record creation in the destination org. Release solves this dilemma without the use of Salesforce external IDs.

How the VEID Manager Works

The VEID manager prevents the creation of duplicate records during upsert operations by associating the source and destination record IDs of the records you deploy from your single control org. The Release VEID manager stores the associated IDs in a database in the Prodly cloud. For each record Prodly Release deploys during a deployment, Release executes the following decision flow:

Prodly Release first checks for a record ID match in the destination org, then perform one of the following choices:

• If a match is found, Release updates the destination record.
• If a match is not found, Release checks the Release VEID manager database for an entry that shows a previously-associated record ID in the destination org, then performs one of the following choices:
  • If an entry is found, Release updates the associated destination record.
  • If an entry is not found, Release inserts a destination record and adds an entry to the Release VEID manager database to associate the source and destination record IDs.

VEID Decision Flow

This approach allows Release to deploy existing data between source and destination orgs for the following scenarios:

• Records that exist in both source and destination with the same record ID
• Records that exist in both source and destination with differing record IDs
• Records that exist in the source org only

VEID Setup

Because Salesforce assigns a unique Salesforce record ID on insert, records you deploy from source to destination have differing record IDs whether using a data loader, manual entry, or any third-party tool. At the outset, there is no way for the Release VEID manager to know which data records match in the source and destination orgs because of the differing record IDs. Therefore, the key to the prevention of duplicate records with VEID is to ensure that your source and destination orgs at the start do not contain matching data records with differing IDs.

For data deployment scenarios that start with an empty destination org, by definition, the existence of matching data records with differing IDs is not an issue. The following deployment scenarios start with an empty destination org:

• Existing full/partial/dev sandbox to empty production org with Release (go-live)
• Existing production org to new/empty full/partial/dev sandbox with Release (sandbox seeding)
• Existing full/partial/dev sandbox to new/empty sandbox with Release