Best Practices for Deploying System Admin Profiles in Salesforce

Question:

When working with Salesforce sandboxes and production environments, deploying profiles, particularly the System Admin profile, can be tricky, especially when the profile includes access to a large number of fields across objects. The issue arises when sandboxes have different configurations and objects, as well as varying field-level access, and you want to ensure that deploying the profile from one sandbox doesn’t unintentionally overwrite or remove permissions in production. This problem becomes more complex when multiple sandboxes, like Dev1 and Dev2, are in play, with different customizations deployed to production before other sandboxes.

For example, let’s say you have a sandbox Dev1 where you’re working on Application 1. After refreshing from production, Dev2 is working on Application 2. Dev2’s changes are deployed to production before Dev1. During this process, field access is added to the System Admin profile in Dev2 for fields needed for Application 2. Now, when you deploy from Dev1, which includes about 1000 fields added to objects for Application 1, it could overwrite the field access in production that was previously set by Dev2, affecting the permissions for Application 2.

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Answer:

One approach to handle this is to carefully manage profile deployments using a combination of manual merging and automation.

1. Avoid Direct Profile Overwrites: It is generally not recommended to directly deploy profiles with a high number of fields, especially when multiple developers or sandboxes are involved. Overwriting the System Admin profile will lead to the loss of field access permissions already granted by other sandboxes or production deployments.
   
2. Use Permission Sets for Field Access: One effective way to solve this is by using Permission Sets to manage field-level access for fields that are specific to certain applications or sandboxes. You can assign permission sets to the System Admin profile rather than modifying the profile directly. This way, you avoid overwriting permissions that were added in another sandbox or environment.
   
3. Merge Profile Metadata: If you need to deploy the System Admin profile itself, the process involves comparing the profile metadata from the source and target environments (e.g., comparing profiles between Dev1 and production). This can be done by retrieving the .profile files from both environments and using a text-based diff tool or custom merging logic. One approach to simplifying the comparison and merging of profile files is to normalize the .profile XML files using XSLT. Here’s an example of an XSLT that can help with sorting and comparing the classAccesses, fieldPermissions, and other sections of the profile:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata"
    version="1.0">
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" encoding="utf-8" omit-xml-declaration="yes" />
    
    <xsl:template match="/Profile">
        <Profile>
            <xsl:for-each select="classAccesses">
                <xsl:sort select="apexClass"/>
                <classAccesses>
                    <xsl:copy-of select="apexClass"/>
                    <xsl:copy-of select="enabled"/>
                </classAccesses>
            </xsl:for-each>

            <!-- Additional sorting for fieldPermissions, objectPermissions, etc. -->
            <xsl:for-each select="fieldPermissions">
                <xsl:sort select="field"/>
                <fieldPermissions>
                    <xsl:copy-of select="field"/>
                    <xsl:copy-of select="readable"/>
                    <xsl:copy-of select="editable"/>
                </fieldPermissions>
            </xsl:for-each>
        </Profile>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Explanation of the Code:

1. XSLT Declaration and Namespaces:
   The code begins with the standard XML declaration and imports the XSLT namespace (http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform). The Salesforce metadata namespace (http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata) is also imported to ensure the elements from the Salesforce metadata schema are properly understood.
   
2. Output Format:
   The <xsl:output> tag specifies how the transformed XML will be formatted. It will output the transformed XML with proper indentation, UTF-8 encoding, and without an XML declaration at the top (omit-xml-declaration="yes").
   
3. Main Template (<xsl:template match="/Profile">):
   This template matches the <Profile> element in the Salesforce profile XML file. The profile file includes several sections such as field permissions, class access, object permissions, etc., that we want to normalize for comparison.
   
4. Sorting Class Accesses:
   The <xsl:for-each select="classAccesses"> loop iterates over each <classAccess> element, which specifies the Apex class permissions (whether a user can access a particular Apex class). The <xsl:sort select="apexClass"/> sorts these class access permissions alphabetically based on the name of the class (apexClass). The <classAccesses> section is then copied with the class and its enabled status.

<xsl:for-each select="classAccesses">
    <xsl:sort select="apexClass"/>
    <classAccesses>
        <xsl:copy-of select="apexClass"/>
        <xsl:copy-of select="enabled"/>
    </classAccesses>
</xsl:for-each>

5.Sorting Field Permissions:
Similarly, the <xsl:for-each select="fieldPermissions"> loop iterates over the fieldPermissions section, which contains access rights for various fields. It sorts the fieldPermissions by the field name. Then, the permissions for the field (readable and editable) are copied along with the field name.

<xsl:for-each select="fieldPermissions">
    <xsl:sort select="field"/>
    <fieldPermissions>
        <xsl:copy-of select="field"/>
        <xsl:copy-of select="readable"/>
        <xsl:copy-of select="editable"/>
    </fieldPermissions>
</xsl:for-each>

6.Additional Sections:
The template can be expanded to handle other sections of the profile, such as objectPermissions, pageAccesses, tabVisibilities, and userLicense, which are part of the profile metadata. Each of these sections can be sorted or processed similarly to classAccesses and fieldPermissions.

7.Output Profile:
The result of the transformation will be a normalized profile XML where the sections are sorted in a consistent order. This makes it easier to compare profile files from different environments (e.g., sandbox and production) and identify differences or conflicts.

<xsl:template match="/Profile">
    <Profile>
        <!-- Sorted class accesses, field permissions, etc. -->
    </Profile>
</xsl:template>

Purpose of the Code:

The main goal of this XSLT transformation is to normalize and sort the profile metadata to make it easier to compare profile files from different environments. When working with multiple sandboxes and production, the profiles may have differences in field access, object permissions, and other settings. This normalization step ensures that when you compare profiles (using text-based diff tools, for example), the differences are clear and can be merged efficiently without losing important settings.

In practice, the XSLT file is used to process .profile metadata XML files, normalize them by sorting the various elements, and then manually or automatically compare them. After comparison, a manual merge can be performed to ensure that no necessary field or object access is inadvertently overwritten during deployments.

4. Merge and Deploy: After using a tool or script to compare and merge the profile files, the final step is to deploy the merged profile to production. By carefully merging the differences, you can ensure that the field access granted in both sandboxes is preserved without losing any settings in production. You can use tools like Salesforce DX or ANT migration tools to deploy the updated profile.
5. Regular Monitoring and Updates: Since field-level access can change frequently, it’s a good practice to regularly update and monitor the profiles and permission sets to ensure they align with the evolving needs of the business and development teams.

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Summing Up

Deploying System Admin profiles in Salesforce requires careful consideration to avoid overwriting critical permissions and ensuring seamless integration across environments. Best practices involve using metadata comparison tools like XSLT to normalize and sort profile files, enabling easier identification of differences between sandboxes and production. Instead of directly deploying profiles, it’s recommended to use Permission Sets for managing field-level access and object permissions, ensuring that new fields or permissions from different sandboxes don’t conflict. Moreover, maintaining separate projects for production and sandbox environments with a comprehensive metadata set, alongside thoughtful use of profile normalization techniques, can prevent loss of configurations and streamline the deployment process, minimizing the risk of unintentional access restrictions.