ForceTree.com: 2015

Severe Floods in Chennai, India... Please lend a helping hand!!

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custom metadata

Difference beween Custom Metadata Types and Custom Settings

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Understanding Approval Email Notifications in Salesforce.com

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Mass Transfer Approval Requests to a Queue or User

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book

Salesforce for All - Chapter One : Introduction

12:13 PM

In a bid to combine all posts of this blog into one single space, I am starting to put these together in a e-book format. You can enroll and see the complete course here https://www.openlearning.com/courses/salesforceforall as it progresses. It's FREE.

Feel free to leave feedback, and any topics you think should be included. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

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Salesforce for All - Chapter One : Introduction

What is Salesforce.com?

Salesforce.com is a Software Tool which helps companies better manage their CRM. There have been many such popular tools including Siebel CRM, but Salesforce.com entered the industry in 1999 and gained popularity around 2004 to 2007 and has remained at the top ever since. Salesforce was able to achieve this level of success in a short span of time because it is a CLOUD BASED application. To understand what a CLOUD BASED application really means, we would have to look at some history.

Fig 1.1 Traditional Applications

As seen in the diagram, the hardware infrastructure (database and Application Layer) which typically included server machines were being maintained individually by every company. Developing and maintaining such architecture does involve manpower, space and a considerable maintenance cost.

Cloud Based Application Architecture:

As seen in the diagram, in the cloud based approach an Infrastructure Provider Company maintains the infrastructure and multiple organizations share the same resources. Organizations can now forget about allocating space, manpower and budget for the infrastructure. They can readily purchase the required resources from the Infrastructure Provider Company and be up and running in a short span of time. As the organization grows in the future (more data /more users), they could purchase additional resources and expand.

The table below summarizes the basic difference between the two.

Traditional Architecture	Cloud Based Architecture
Involves infrastructure setup and maintenance cost	Does not involve infrastructure setup and maintenance cost
Involves considerable manpower for setup and maintenance	Manpower is less compared to traditional architecture
Upgrades are time consuming and requires manpower and resources	Upgrades are instantaneous and easier to setup than the traditional approach

Salesforce is a web-based application, just like any other website (ex: twitter.com or facebook.com). A Company willing to use Salesforce.com CRM contacts Salesforce and purchases user licenses (user accounts). When the company has purchased the licenses, they are ready to setup users and start using Salesforce.com CRM right away. I hope this history and background would have given you a dim idea of what Salesforce is. If not, never mind, you will get to know as we proceed along the next chapters.

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The NEW Salesforce is here!!! FIRST LOOK

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Beware!! The conflicting reviews of Dreamz Infra Pvt Ltd

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ant

Setting Up The ANT Migration Tool for Salesforce Deployments

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Here is the official documentation from Salesforce - Click here.

In this article, I will try to provide steps to quickly setup the deployment process. For a detailed description of every file and various options please go through the link above. This article is only for a quick setup process and doesn't intend to cover details.

STEP 1:

Visit http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp and install Java JDK, Version 6.1 or greater on the deployment machine.

STEP 2:

Install the JDK. I have installed my JDK in the path below. Note that the folder name will begin with jdk, you might also see a folder which begins with jre

STEP 3:

Visit http://ant.apache.org/ and install Apache Ant, Version 1.6 or greater on the deployment machine.

STEP 4:

Unzip the Apache ANT file downloaded in STEP 2 into any desired folder. Let's assume we unzip the folder into the location as shown below.

I download and UnZipped Apache ANT into my C:/ . You can use any directory you wish.

STEP 5:

We will now setup the environment variables.

My Computer -> Right Click -> Select Properties

Open 'Environment Variables' as shown below.

STEP 6:

Add the following two variables to the 'User Variables' and 'System Variables' .

ANT_HOME : C:\apache-ant-1.9.4-bin\apache-ant-1.9.4

JAVA_HOME : C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_05

Append the two BIN paths to the 'Path' variables under both 'User Variables' and 'System Variables'. My Path variable looks like this.

Path: c:\Program Files\Intel\WiFi\bin\;c:\Program Files\Common Files\Intel\WirelessCommon\;C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_05\bin;C:\apache-ant-1.9.4-bin\apache-ant-1.9.4\bin;C:\Users\Edwin.Raymond\AppData\Roaming\npm

Note: These locations are based on the directories in which i installed JAVA and APACHE ANT. Your location might be different if you installed in a different directory. The Path variable should point to the BIN directory.

STEP 7:

Verify that the installations were successful by going to the command prompt and executing the following commands.

STEP 8:

Log in to Salesforce on your deployment machine. From Setup, click Develop | Tools, then click Force.com Migration Tool.

Unzip the file to a directory of your choice. I unzipped it to my desktop.

STEP 9:

Download the following folder from the location https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5FQvDdE4z0PYmhIZGVMaXFVSVk/view?usp=sharing

Unzip the file to a directory of your choice. I unzipped it to my desktop.

STEP 10:

Replace the ant-salesforce.jar file from location in STEP 8 to the location in STEP 9 as shown below.

STEP 11:

Now, modify the build.properties file in the 'deploy_sf_ant' folder. This file contains the username/password for the sandbox and production organizations. Open build.properties with WordPad and enter the details.

STEP 12:

Place the package.xml in the 'RetrievePackage' folder. The package.xml file contains the list of components you want to deploy.

STEP 13:

Run the command 'ant retrieve' from the command prompt to retrieve the changes from sandbox. Make sure you run the command from the folder location specified like below. After you run the command, a folder named 'deploy' is created.

STEP 14:

Run the command 'ant deploy' from the command prompt to deploy yo changes to production.

STEP 15:

Use the instructions.txt file for subsequent deployments.

      1. Place package.xml in the folder 'Retrieve Package'
      2. from CMD run 'ant retrieve'
      3. Folder 'deploy' is created.
      4. To validate change edit build.xml and make 'checkonly = true'.
      5. To deploy make checkonly = 'false' and from CMD run 'ant deploy'
      6. Rename the 'deploy' folder and copy to 'completed' folder for history tracking.
      7. Delete the 'deploy' folder

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Quick deploy is here

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Radiobutton in a Datatable in Visualforce Page: Retain Selection

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Prevent Duplicates in Salesforce - The Smart and Easy way using Unique Entry from RingLead

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Note: This is a sponsored article from RingLead

Become RingLead's fan on Facebook
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The Need:

Information is reliable and effective only when it is accurate. Organizations strive to maintain the quality of information as clean and updated as possible. Clean data leads to better insights which means better planning and better business.

RingLead offers a great product Unique Entry, which helps you prevent duplicates in Salesforce. It's easy to install and get started in just a few minutes.

What's great about Unique Entry?

Traditionally duplicates are prevented in Salesforce using Validation rules, Apex Triggers or custom Visualforce Pages. In such cases, the system prevents duplicates only after the user tries to Save the record, which is a lot frustrating after taking the time and effort to enter all the information.

Unique Entry acts smart and detects duplicates as and when you start entering information into a new record. Unique Entry alerts the user of possible duplicates found, and displays the duplicate records it identified. This saves time and effort particularly when your organization deals with huge amounts of data.

How Does it work?

I created a new Account 'A&A Associates'.

Now, i try to create a new Account with the same information as 'A&A Associates'.

As you could see, Unique Entry has detected the original account created earlier after i entered the 'Account Number' and 'Account Site'. It also displays prominent information about the original record, and the user could choose to edit it instead.

How to SetUp Unique Entry:

Unique Entry is easy to setup, with just a few clicks. First, install the package from the app exchange by Clicking here.

Unique Entry is a Force.com native app, installs quickly and easily.

Override the new button of Account, Contact or Leads with the corresponding Visualforce Pages as shown below. The screenshot below shows overriding the 'New' button for Accounts. That's it and you are ready to start preventing duplicates.

The Visualforce pages provided with the package mimic your Custom Page Layouts, and they still honor your record type and profile mappings.

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Dynamically Add/Remove rows from a table in visualforce

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How to stop email notifications while mass submitting/reassigning approval requests?

Salesforce for All - Chapter One : Introduction

This book is intended to provide a basic understanding of Salesforce.com. This book aims to strongly establish the fundamentals of Salesforce.com as a platform/technology. This book is intended for audience who are new to Salesforce.com, or who are new to software development in general.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Managing a Company’s customer operations, which includes Sales, Service, and Support etc. is broadly represented as CRM. Customer base is important for any Company’s success, and a powerful CRM system plays a major role towards achieving this.

Traditionally a software application pretty much followed the same architecture as shown in the below diagram.

Fig 1.1 Traditional Applications

As seen in the diagram, the hardware infrastructure (database and Application Layer) which typically included server machines were being maintained individually by every company. Developing and maintaining such architecture does involve manpower, space and a considerable maintenance cost.

Cloud Based Application Architecture:

The table below summarizes the basic difference between the two.

Traditional Architecture

Cloud Based Architecture

Involves infrastructure setup and maintenance cost

Does not involve infrastructure setup and maintenance cost

Involves considerable manpower for setup and maintenance

Manpower is less compared to traditional architecture

Upgrades are time consuming and requires manpower and resources

Upgrades are instantaneous and easier to setup than the traditional approach

How is Salesforce a Cloud Based Application? Having seen a little bit of history, let’s look at a high level architecture of Salesforce.

Report & Dashboards:

Opportunity:

Account:

The prices of the apartment are unbelievably cheap. Compare with the market rates and you will notice that there is a sharp difference.

There is an unbelievable large number of positive reviews for Dreamz Infra. There are even blogs created by employees of Dreamz Infra like this one.

Now, the contrasting part is that their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/DreamzInfra?fref=ts) is nothing but filled with negative reviews. Note that customer support hasn't responded to any negative review, whereas positive reviews are liked or commented at.

I used https://web.archive.org to see what content they had on their website historically. I was surprised to see that the projects listed in 2012 in Electronics city are neither seen in the completed list nor do they show up in the current projects list.

Dreamz Infra projects today in Electronics city

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