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I see there are limitations with the Package Manager and Deployment Manager while deploying the SFMC code from Dev to QA regions etc.

Can someone please advice if there is an Automated Deployment alternative approach to address the limitations from Package manager. Thank You Sai

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    There seems not many tools for Marketing Cloud, it seems that it is tool that is all in production. The addition to CumulusCI worth looking (I never used any of the two for sfmc): github.com/Accenture/sfmc-devtools
    – Jeferson Chaves
    Commented Jun 10, 2023 at 20:36

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Disclosure: I am a Salesforce employee on the CumulusCI team. I am not a Marketing Cloud expert.

CumulusCI provides support for the Marketing Cloud Package Manager API. To use it, you would need to:

  1. You must first have an Installed Package in Marketing Cloud, which will provide you with a Client Id and Client Secret you can use to authenticate to the API.
  2. Set up a CCI service for an oauth2_client: cci service connect oauth2_client. From your Installed Package, you'll need your Client Id (client_id), Client Secret (client_secret),
  3. Set up a CCI service for marketing_cloud: cci service connect marketing-cloud default --oauth_client <name of oauth client>
  4. Run a deployment: cci task run deploy_marketing_cloud_package --package_zip_file <path>

See the docs in cci task info deploy_marketing_cloud_package for more details.

In my experience, automating the Marketing Cloud Package Manager is challenging. The API is not particularly intended for public consumption. If your use case does not fall into the subset of functionality exposed by CumulusCI, this product may not work for you.

One key shortcoming I am aware of is that I do not know of a solution for executing Marketing Cloud OAuth authentication headlessly to support this solution. It requires user interaction. However, as noted, I am not a Marketing Cloud expert, and it's possible someone else may be able to shed light on a strategy there.

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  • Thank You very much @David,,@Adams really appreciate your response. I will look into the CumulusCI documentation,
    – Venkat
    Commented Jun 12, 2023 at 0:20
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There are no reliable tools for applying CI/CD principals in the platform. This type of tooling will forever be hamstrung by the limitations of the SFMC web services.

I'd be ecstatic if someone could prove me wrong.

There are some excellent tools for moving assets in and out of the platform, but again, they're all hamstrung by limitations of APIs.

Edit:

Some limitations:

  • Web Services are split between REST and SOAP. In many cases, you have to commit to using both.
  • You can't create all that you can retrieve
  • SOAP documentation doesn't align with the WSDL
  • There are hundreds of undocumented REST API endpoints.
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  • Please suggest with your comments on the below approach -- Can we use the below options to retrieve the the metadata and consolidate into a single package and deploy. :•Salesforce CLI, -- To handle Marketing Cloud configurations • Copado- Covers few deployment Components and Triggered Send • Package Manager – Bundles the Journey configurations, email templates and Deployments. • REST or SOAP-based API Connector --- Data extensions, triggered sends, Journey Activities • Content Builder APIs -- Code Snippets deployment
    – Venkat
    Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 4:25
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Not exactly CI/CD but I’ve built a cli tool, bldr.io that pits data out of sfmc, allows you to update and use version control, and make updates to the assets.

For some aspects of the platform (content builder) you can also create full folder structures and assets in a single command.

There it’s a feature in beta that lets you package your content builder files and package them (mapping dependencies) and deploy them anywhere.

Again, not full CI/CD but it’s a step.

There is lot of consideration and moving parts to this topic.

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