Why does Apex deployment fail without errors?

Question:

I am trying to deploy a Salesforce package (a zip file) using the Metadata API to a production environment. The same deployment works successfully on my Developer Edition org.

The code being deployed has 100% test coverage, and the deployment user has the AuthorApex permission. However, when I attempt the deployment in production, it fails even though the response shows no errors.

I am using testLevel = RunSpecifiedTests to include only the new tests introduced with this deployment. These tests do cover all of the new code being deployed.

Here is the response from the checkDeployStatus SOAP action:

{
  "state": "Failed",
  "state_detail": null,
  "deployment_detail": {
    "total_count": "13",
    "failed_count": "0",
    "deployed_count": "13",
    "errors": []
  },
  "unit_test_detail": {
    "total_count": "2",
    "failed_count": "0",
    "completed_count": "2",
    "errors": []
  }
}

{
  "state": "Failed",
  "state_detail": null,
  "deployment_detail": {
    "total_count": "13",
    "failed_count": "0",
    "deployed_count": "13",
    "errors": []
  },
  "unit_test_detail": {
    "total_count": "2",
    "failed_count": "0",
    "completed_count": "2",
    "errors": []
  }
}

What am I missing here? Why does my deployment fail in production even though all tests pass and there are no errors reported?

Answer:

This happens because Salesforce has different requirements for production deployments compared to sandboxes or Developer Edition orgs. Even though you are using RunSpecifiedTests, Salesforce still requires that your entire org maintains at least 75% overall test coverage in production. Specified tests will run to validate the new code, but the global coverage check still happens behind the scenes. If your org’s total coverage is below 75%, the deployment will fail with no explicit error message other than state: Failed.

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To confirm this, you can run the following in your production org:

// Execute in Developer Console > Query Editor
SELECT PercentCovered, Name 
FROM ApexOrgWideCoverage

// Execute in Developer Console > Query Editor
SELECT PercentCovered, Name 
FROM ApexOrgWideCoverage

If the percentage is below 75%, the deployment will fail no matter how much coverage your new package has.

Another potential issue could be missing required tests. When deploying to production, you must run either:

• All tests (RunAllTestsInOrg), or
• The specified tests that cover your new code, provided the org is already at or above 75% overall coverage.

Finally, ensure that you are not excluding managed package tests. Salesforce ignores managed package code from coverage requirements, but if your new code references them, missing tests could still block deployment.

Summing Up

Even if your new code has 100% coverage, Salesforce requires that the entire production org maintain at least 75% overall test coverage for deployments to succeed. Using RunSpecifiedTests validates only your new code, but the global coverage check still runs in the background, causing the deployment to fail silently if the org-wide percentage is too low. To resolve this, verify org-wide coverage and rerun with sufficient tests to meet Salesforce’s deployment rules.

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