How does a change set deployment affect existing records with approval process and validation rules

Question

I'm planning a deployment of a new Apex class and 2 triggers (fully tested in sandbox with SeeAllData=false) that processes new fields, some others will change (formula fields, etc). We already have approval processes and validation rules in place for the objects the deployed changes will affect, my question is: what happens to the existing records of the affected objects when the changes are deployed? Are the approval processes and/or validation rules triggered and run again for all the existing records?

We will have new data flows from an object's field to an other object's (new) field and I'm not sure if, after the deployment, basically everything will fail (the existing processes) because there will be missing data in the newly created mandatory fields for the objects.

If the problem is not clear I can try to give a practical example of the data flow.

Answer 1

Good question.

If you have approval processes or validation rules then during deployment, the test classes will run and based on the test methods written they might fire.

Secondly, for existing records they will be no impact until and unless you make changes to the existing records, means either you edit/update the existing records.

If you have a missing data then you can plan for migrating the data, so that process flow will work properly.

I would suggest you to deploy this functionality in fullcopy sandbox which is a replica of production, test well and then plan to deploy this in production.

And when you deploy in your fullcpoy sandbox, make sure you should run the test classes as opposed to default deployment.