Users of Heroku’s popular cloud-based development platform logged into their accounts today to discover a revamped interface with an array of new capabilities that iron out many of the remaining kinks in building and deploying web apps on the service. The refresh represents one of the biggest updates to have come out of the Salesforce.com Inc. subsidiary in recent memory.

Heroku DX, as the new suite of features is called, brings with it a completely redesigned dashboard that is described as better aligned with the workflow of developers and engineering teams. Implemented in Ember.js, the design incorporates a “Heroku Button” that quite literally makes it possible to turn raw code into a functioning application, complete with configuration parameters and add-ons, at the click of a button. It can be made to work on any GitHub project with the addition of a simple metadata file.

The increased automation underscores an increased focus on DevOps at Heroku, which is also reflected in the new collaboration panel that has been added to the service dashboard. The so-called “Activity” section enables developers working in a team to see what their peers are doing at any given time and lend a hand to a colleague who may need help with a particular aspect of their assignment.

Complementing the enhanced visibility into team members’ work is a new Metrics panel that Heroku says provides a detailed view of the various factors involved in application performance, including response time, the number of requests a given app receives per second and resource utilization. In addition to just visualizing that data for developers, the service also feeds it into an analytical engine that churns out recommendations on how to improve service levels and overall efficiency.

The upgrade extends that new transparency to the Heroku Postgres with a corresponding performance monitoring panel that provides developers with insight into how their deployments of the database-as-a-service are handling application load. To help with that, the Salesforce.com subsidiary is also rolling out subscription plans that it says offer two to three times more computational horsepower than the previous packages for the same price, a massive boost that should go down well in the developer community.

Rounding out the landmark upgrade is a collection of user experience tweaks designed to shave precious time off frequent tasks and, much more notably, tighter integration with the Salesforce.com mothership. The new Journey Builder for Apps links the ExactTarget component of the customer relationship management (CRM) giant’s marketing cloud to Heroku, making it possible to directly incorporate user data and key features from the service into applications.

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