General Community deployment checklist

1. Turn off email deliverability in the target instance before deploying or activating the Community.

NOTE: DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP

When an active community is deployed, it may send welcome email to EVERY SINGLE MEMBERS of the community so please prepare accordingly before deployment.

Deactivating the community instead of turning off the email deliverability is another option but Community no longer can be deployed in inactive state and thus this approach may not be possible.

Workflow email alert

If org-wide email address is used, the org-wide email address must be in the production instance prior to deployment (and verified) or else we have to edit the metadata during deployment and change / remove the reference to the org-wide email address.

Components to check and include as part of the Community

1. SiteDotCom / ExperienceBundle (see notes below).
2. Audience.
3. ContentAsset.
4. Custom Site.
5. Email Template. (used for Welcome Email and similar purpose)
6. ManagedTopics
7. NavigationMenu.
8. Network.
9. NetworkBranding.
10. Profile.

In particular, every image in the Community site that is uploaded as ContentAsset (usually as a File) needs to be included in the list of component to be deployed, or the Community would be deployed without background images and other supporting assets.

NOTE:

• ExperienceBundle often caused issues in the previous community deployment necessitating a fallback to SiteDotCom. This may no longer be an issue in future version and ExperienceBundle should be the default choice in such case.

Deploying via GearSet

When deploying Community via GearSet we can check under the ExperienceBundle or Site.com's dependency for components that may need to be included. Please note that not all the components listed under the dependency list may need to be deployed.