Salesforce - How to Deploy between Environments (Sandboxes, Live etc)

Question

We're looking into setting up a proper deployment process.

From what I've read there seems to be 4 methods of doing this.

1. Copy & Paste -- We don't want to do this
2. Using the "Package" mechanism built into the Salesforce Web Interface
3. Eclipse Force IDE "Deploy to Server" option
4. Ant Script (haven't tried this one yet)

Does anyone have advice on the limitation of the various methods .

Can you include everything in a Web Interface package?

We're looking to deploy the following items:

• Apex Classes

• Apex Triggers

• WorkFlows

• Email Templates

• MailMerge Templates -- Can't seem to find these in Eclipse

• Custom Fields

• Page Layout

• RecordTypes (can't seem to find these in Website or Eclipse)

• PickList items?

• SControls

Answer 1

You can achieve this by using by Change Sets.

Are you in learning Salesforce from basics! Have a look a this interesting video on SQL:

Change set is a deployment tool using which a Salesforce Developer uploads or deploys the changes to Sandbox to Production. You can deploy changes between Sandbox as well.