Moving to GridMate, the easy way

In 2019, we launched GridMate with a single goal: to become the go-to package for any Salesforce organization when it comes to UI/UX. Our core business is to provide the best user experience for both administrators and end users.

Since the beginning of this journey, we have not stopped innovating and expanding our portfolio of components. Today, GridMate includes more than 30 components, including grids, multi calendar, file management, mapping, and more.

Always driven by our mission to make lives easier for Salesforce users, in mid-2022, we released the User Grid, a component that allows end users to create sophisticated grids through a simple point-click configuration process, without the need for an administrator's intervention.

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To fully leverage the flexibility of the Salesforce platform, such as sharing and Lightning navigation, we opted to store this configuration in a custom object. This decision also has some drawbacks, particularly when it comes to deployment via change sets or metadata (CLI or a CI/CD tool) which is impossible for a custom object.

In early 2023, an enterprise client approached us to replace Conga Grid with GridMate. After a scoping process, it was found that GridMate’s User Grid component covered more than 90% of the gaps, but one major issue remained: how would they migrate the existing configurations? Especially with a legacy of 400 grids! The challenge was significant, and the deadlines were tight.

After a long brainstorming process with the client, we decided to automate the migration using Salesforce CLI plugins. This approach proved to be highly effective, not only for the migration but also for the DevOps teams.

To simplify the migration, we broke down the process into three steps:

• Export the configuration from the source organization in a JSON format,
• Convert the source format to the target format (still in JSON),
• Import the new configuration into the target organization.

Thus, instead of coding the migration end-to-end in a monolithic way, we decomposed it into plugins. The migration process will finally involve composing these plugins using shell scripts for instance.

1. Conga views export

We can export either a specific view or via an SOQL query:

> sf gmpkg congaview export -o gmpkg-demo --api-version=60.0 -d "/data/conga/export" -n "Opportunity_All_View"

> sf gmpkg congaview export -o gmpkg-demo --api-version=60.0 -d "/data/conga/export" -q "SELECT Id, Name FROM CRMC_PP_GridView_c Where CRMC_PP_ObjectName_c='Opportunity'"

The exported views are grouped by object (Account, Opportunity, etc.)

2. Conga views migration

Next, we need to convert the Conga views to User Grids:

> sf gmpkg congaview migrate -o gmpkg-demo --api-version=58.0 -f "/data/conga/export/Opportunity_All_View.json" -d "/data/conga/migrated"

3. User Grid import

And finally, we need to import the User Grids into the target organization:

> sf gmpkg usergrid import -o gmpkg-demo --api-version=58.0 -f "/data/conga/migrated/Opportunity/Opportunity_All_Grid.json"

> sf gmpkg usergrid import -o gmpkg-demo --api-version=58.0 -d "/data/conga/migrated"

Note that we can import either a file or a complete folder.

Deploy to production

Once the UAT is complete, the same plugins will be used for the deployment process, after the User Grids are exported in the pivot format.

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1. User Grid export

We can export either a specific grid or via an SOQL query:

> sf gmpkg usergrid export -o gmpkg-demo --api-version=58.0 -d "/data/Opportunity/export" -n "Opportunity_All_Grid,Opportunity_Pipeline_Grid"

> sf gmpkg usergrid export -o gmpkg-demo --api-version=58.0 -d "/data/Opportunity/export" -q "Select Id, Name From gmpkg_xUser_Grid_c Where gmpkg_Object_Name_c = 'Opportunity'"

Final thoughts

This process covers nearly 95% of the migration process with minimal risk of errors. Of course, there will still be tasks such as tuning complex colorings/filters and reviewing Lightning pages.

To date, we have successfully migrated several clients from Conga Grids to GridMate in under two weeks.

If you’re using Conga Grid, you need to see why teams are switching to GridMate.