Note: This release is in preview. Features described here don’t become generally available until the latest general availability date that Salesforce announces for this release. Before then, and where features are noted as beta, pilot, or developer preview, we can’t guarantee general availability within any particular time frame or at all. Make your purchase decisions only on the basis of generally available products and features.

Retrieve Changes to Profiles with Source Tracking

Retrieving profiles behaves a little differently with source tracking.

In general, we recommend that you use permission sets instead of profiles. Profiles aren’t consistent across orgs, and the source files that are retrieved and deployed depend on the org type, the tracking state, and other metadata in the operation. If you decide to continue using profiles, we recommend that you exclude them when you deploy or retrieve by adding them to the .forceignore file.

Important

Without source tracking, retrieving profiles only returns some profile information. Retrieving profiles returns information about profiles that pertains to other items specified in the package.xml file.

For example, retrieving profiles with this package.xml file returns profile permissions for the MyCustomField__c custom field on the Account object.

1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
2<Package xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
3 <types>
4  <members>Account.MyCustomField__c</members>
5  <name>CustomField</name>
6 </types>
7 <types>
8  <members>*</members>
9  <name>Profile</name>
10 </types>
11 <version>50.0</version>
12</Package>

With source tracking, retrieving profiles returns profile information pertaining to anything else specified in the package.xml file plus any components getting tracked by source tracking. That includes any entity for which a change exists between your local project and the org.

For example, say you create a custom field on the Opportunity object called OppCustomField__c in your local environment. Source tracking detects the change and reports it. Now you retrieve profiles using the same package.xml file as you did when source tracking was off.

1<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
2<Package xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
3 <types>
4  <members>Account.MyCustomField__c</members>
5  <name>CustomField</name>
6 </types>
7 <types>
8  <members>*</members>
9  <name>Profile</name>
10 </types>
11 <version>50.0</version>
12</Package>

Even though the package.xml file doesn’t reference OppCustomField__c, because source tracking is tracking the new custom field, your retrieve returns profile permissions for both the MyCustomField__c custom field on the Account object and the OppCustomField__c on the Opportunity object.

For more information about retrieving profiles, see the Profile metadata type in the Metadata API Developer Guide.

Although source retrieves don’t include package.xml files, retrieve requests return profile information pertaining to everything reported by source tracking.

Note

Salesforce DX Developer Guide

Retrieve Changes to Profiles with Source Tracking

See Also