For example, I created a new date field in sales order form in a staging test branch. I need to get this change made in my production branch. A drag/drop merge doesn't work because it says there is nothing to merge.

I think I found instructions in the help documentation, but I do not understand what it is telling me to do. Can anyone expand on these instructions?

If you test configuration changes in staging branches, and want them to be applied in the production, you have to either:

• write the configuration changes in XML data files overriding the default configuration or views in your branches, and then increase the version of your module in its manifest (__manifest__.py) to trigger the update of the module when you merge your staging branch in your production branch. This is the best practice for a better scalability of your developments as you will use the Git versioning features for all your configuration changes, and therefore have a traceability for your changes.
• pass them manually from your staging to your production database, by copy/pasting them.