Salesforce1 Development [using Google Chrome]-Part 1

Visualforce / / by

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In Dreamforce’13 Salesforce1 was announced , a new mobile app for Salesforce platform,that makes the platform easier to use.

Available for :

1.iOS 6+

2.Android 4.2+

We can do development with Salesforce1 right from the Google Chrome browser on our Desktop.

First of all we need to make sure that the user have rights to access the salesforce1 .

In-order to make the user capable to access salesforce1 we need to grant access to that user , that we can do by Manage Users>Users>Edit [in front of that user]>check the check box “Salesforce1 User”.

UntitledSecond thing to do is to allow the salesforce1 to run as the mobile browser app right from our desktop web browser , to do this go to  Mobile Administration>Salesforce1

UntitledThen check the check box “Enable the Saleforce1 mobile browser app”

UntitledNow by doing so we can simply access the mobile app right from our desktop [by using google chrome only]

To do that simply prefix /one/one.app after your salesforce instance in the address bar of  our google chrome browser.

For example my instance is https://ap1.salesforce.com

So the URL to access the salesforce platform becomes like this :

https://ap1.salesforce.com/one/one.app

When we go on this URL we get following screen with a cool salesforce logo

Untitled

Home page is like this :

UntitledNow if we need to test this app according to the end user device and configuration we can do it by pressing F12 or right-click to Inspect Element.

UntitledNow we can see the inspect element section [Developer Tools]

UntitledNow click on the Elemens Tab and then the Gear Icon [as highlighted in the above image by red squares].

Now settings will open up where we need to select Overrides , here we can change the user agent and simulate the behavior  of this app on the respective device.

Untitled

Visualforce Developer’s Guide: A book review.

Visualforce / / by

If you are looking for a guide to learn visualforce then a new guide has arrived, that is well organized for both newbies and advance developers. Thanks to @chamilmadusanka for putting all his hardwork in this book.

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I got a chance to review this book(Thanks to Packt Publishing and Sagar Malage ) and here are my thoughts :

1.This book is having 8 chapters with step by step things to follow ,it covers basics in the first chapter to advance level in the final chapter.

2.Key point of this book is best practices  and security tips for the visualforce are also included.

3.Steps are detailed and easy to follow, you hardly miss anything that visualforce have.

Following are the chapter wise things i liked and which i think that makes this book different

1.Chapter One: Advantages of visualforce.

2.Chapter Two:  Working with large sets of data on visualforce page.

                          Using Transient Keyword

                         Considerations for creating custom controllers and controller extensions ( That is         again as i said is part of best practices).

3.Chapter Three: I liked the way javascript and jQuery  explained in this chapter.

4.Chapter Four: Good  brief description about custom components

5.Chapter Five: Detailed discussion about dynamic binding .

6.Chapter Six: Visualforce Charting: This a must read chapter if you have never touched the charting part of visualforce best effort are made by author to explain . I also got good knowledge from this chapter.

7.Chapter Seven : Going Mobile with visualforce? Take look at this chapter, nicely written and explained .I recommend developers who are looking to learn the mobile part of visualforce to start with this book .

8.Chapter Eight: It includes best practices part, that most books miss.

I loved the way this book ends with Security tips.

Why to go for this book?

1.Easy and quick to understand.

2.Hands-on Approach

3.Basic development to Mobile Development Included.

4.Security and Best Practices Included.

You can buy this book from here : http://bit.ly/Ii5X6p

Chatter Actions

Visualforce / / by

Recently i had a requirement with salesforce’s new feature Chatter Publisher Actions. I struggled to understand what it is and how it works and finally learned it ! So making it easier for all others like me here comes my post to understand this new feature. And as Mark Benioff already announced that chatter will become primary interface for salesforce. I believe its necessary to post about it.

So it was a big paragraph? Let come directly on the point !

Chatter Actions

A new feature which allows us to create actions and they can be added on:

1.Chatter Publisher on Home Page.

2.The Chatter Tab.

3.Record Detail Pages.

Type of Actions

1.Create Actions  : you can create a record on target object.

2.Custom Actions : let you define your own custom action. (Note that these are visualforce pages).

We can create actions that let user create these types of records:

Account, Campaign, Case, Contract, Contact, Custom Objects, Event (without invitees), Lead, Opportunity and Task.

These Actions can be specifically categorized as

1.Object Specific. (Supported Objects: Account, Campaign, Case, Contract, Custom Objects, Lead and Opportunity.) Remember the visualforce page you are going to bind it with Object specific action must have its standard controller of that object.

2.Global Actions: lets you create actions that are available globally .

Enable Chatter Actions:

Under Chatter>Settings>Publisher Actions>Enable Publisher Actions.

1 step

Now lets take an example:

Suppose you want to add a contact record to an account record by using object specific actions

In this case your object specific action will be defined on Account.

So go under Customize>Accounts>Buttons, Links and Actions

2 step

on the next screen click on New Action

You have to define action like this :

step3

Click Save

Now comes the last part Adding this Action to Page Layout

Customize>Accounts>Page Layouts 

edit Account Layout

Now you can see a additional Option as Actions

4 step

Now before dragging Add Contact Action to layout don’t forget to click on “override the global layout“.

The reason behind this is you are setting a customized list of actions for this layout and no more need the default functionality anymore.

5 step

Now drag your action

55step

Now save this layout.

Now if there is feed enabled for accounts you will be able to see your created action like this

axtion

NOTE :If you want to  use a custom action make sure you have a visualforce page that is having a standard controller for that object.At the time of defining the custom action you will see only those visualforce pages who have  standard controller for that object for which you are defining the custom action.

Thank you for reading this post.

Workshop in my college.

Meetup / / by

As part of amazing journey with salesforce,this was another great experience that i had this month. I  got some job offers ( I was on the first rank in each recruitment)  and college faculty was asking to teach some things that i had learned of my own  and share them with my juniors. Plus i got some requests from colleges from Jaipur to organize workshop in their college on salesforce. As college annual function and technical event was approaching

I was asked to co-ordinate workshops.

So i decided to organise following workshops in my college:

1. Salesforce Platform Workshop (With force.com workbook exercises). 

2.A cyber security workshop( to share some tips and tricks they call it “Hacking” and i won’t).

3.A website designing workshop for the juniors to make some cool websites  on php.

From the above the three highest strength was in first one and about 150 students were there. Believe it or not, labs were going to be full , so decision was take to broke down it into 3 days workshop. Finally as i was sure those 3 days were exciting. Beginning from 2nd March to 4th March ,everyone there experienced those things they never thought off ! .Gave them about 2 hours of declarative side hands on time and distributed the workbooks and cheatsheets for the home-work task 😉 Followed up by a Q/A session on 7 and 8th March based on workbook exercises.

Starting up from the intro to the platform to the deep diving i included everything that i can explain them .Thanks to Mr.Rakesh Kumar as he was there to take the remote session via google hangout.

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The following was the outcome of the workshop :
1.A group of students (70) agreed to join the user group, they will attend meetings.
2.My story set an inspiration to all and was highly appreciated.
3.I found 60% students actually want to work on this platform.
I hope now they will do their summer training on this platform 🙂 and that will add into their career.
I would like to thank:

Kavindra Patel (@kavindrapatel)

April Kyle Nassi (@thisisnotapril)

Rakesh Kumar (@rakeshistom)

 

Salesforce.com Certified Force.com Developer Exam DEV 401

Certification / / by

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January 11 2013 ,this day i will never forget in my life.This day was really special as i became Salesforce.com Certified Force.com Developer .Sat with my laptop fully prepared took a risk to give this exam using  my mobile internet data card as my city doesn’t support any high speed internet connection for home use.

I experienced this exam bit easier then i thought of,But at some points it was hard specially those scenario based questions,but i was confident enough to go for those too. It took about 51 minutes out of 90 minutes to answer all questions. I marked 3 questions to review later and then changed answer of one question.

On the 51th minute as i clicked submit. Next screen came up with good news with result pass !. I was in clouds ! It was one of the happiest moment of my life !.

Now i set myself to share my experience and views and path ways to help others, I hope this post will be helpful for all .

Studying/Before Exam:

1.Follow each point written in study guide.Its the best path maker.

2.Make written notes.

3.Practice Fundamentals of Force.com Book and Force.com Workbook.

4.Watch Training and Certification Videos,basically its the essence to success as it guides to how make your mind and think properly for business logic.(it need patience )

5.Try mock tests and dumps ,asks questions to yourself as what if? what if?

6.Talk with friends and discuss your problems in Developer User Groups (offline or online),there are many helpful people there to guide you. (Yes to mention i was lucky to participate in Sharing model discussion in near city DUG it helped a lot).

7.If anything becomes confusing for you ,try to make diagrams for that…this will really help you remember everything at exam time with simplicity

8.Practice ,practice practice…………………….try every bit of practice,learn from mistakes and keep on doing.

NOTE: You need at least 6 months of hands on experience that will really boost your confidence at exam time.

During Exam.

1.Be prepared with your camera setup.

2.Read the question carefully.  Its really easy to miss the “not”, “doesn’t” or “excluding” and thus end up giving the perfect wrong answer.

3.If you don’t know the correct answer, try to derive it by excluding the wrong answers.Its the best approach!

4.If you don’t know the answer and can’t derive it, mark it for review and move on.  A lot of the time it will come to you when you are thinking about another question.Later a question will be asked in such a way that it will guide you towards the correct answer for an earlier question.

If you need any further help feel free to drop an email on sagar.salesforce@outlook.com

Or Join my DUG on linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4540510

Or follow me : @sagarjaipareek on twitter.

User Group Interaction at Agnito Technical Festival : Engineering Colllege Bikaner

Meetup / / by

After Students User Group Successful  Inaugural Meetup ,Everyone came to know something is going on in the City. It was one of the first technical meetup ever organised for any developer platform or community. It was 7th of October morning i was preparing for the Inaugural meetup and i was informed that i have to speak at “Agnito 2012”  Technical Festival at Government Engineering College Bikaner  on 13 October. It was a great opportunity as this college ranks #3 in Rajasthan State and recognized as center of Bright Minds, yes to mention here my friend ,inspiration and our force.com MVP Mr.Ankit Arora belongs to the same college .When I informed Ankit ,he was extremely happy and excited to come here and wanted to be a part of this but unfortunately he got some work there in Jaipur  but he did his part he motivated me to give my best .

On the day i was there in the festival there were various technical speakers, all with different topics but everything was the same as the previous year festival topics like open source ,c programming,robotics,robo soccer competition ,making use of some ordinary desktop applications .

But there was something new ,that was a “hot topic” and  it was “Cloud Computing” by “India Salesforce Platform Students Developer User Group”  .  We had maximum registrations in the whole event ,but i knew that majority of the students will be from First year and only they know about c programming and some basic knowledge about computers.It was going to be tough this time i knew that .

I started up with the introduction of the Developer User Group as “Why we are here?” and how they can be part of it .   Then i proceeded towards “what are clouds ? then how clouds are different from desktop applications.Giving them basic glimpse of what “social enterprise “is about. For this i took some simple examples of facebook (not twitter as majority of students had facebook account only)and how they share on it with friends ,i linked it  ! and yes the students were getting it.

I discussed about how everything is going to be in clouds in next few years and it was exciting ! they had many questions i answered ! . The major question was about the cloud and the career opportunities  ,for that we had salary comparison and growth factor discussion , i gave them some examples of my friends working on  the platform.

As i was allocated limited time of one hour ,At last i came on to the basic functionality of salesforce and force.com platform ..how it works and gave overview how they can build their own applications on it.

A very special thanks to backbone of this user group:

Kavindra Patel (@kavindrapatel)

and

April Kyle Nassi (@thisisnotapril)

Our Inaugural Meetup

Meetup / / by

First of all thanks to all the developers and students of Bikaner and nearby areas for attending and making this meetup successful .

This all happened in the meetup :

Sagar started up with the intro to the meetups why salesforce is giving chance to the developers to meet and create the growing environment. How it is beneficial for the students as they are the next generation developers and how they can push their expertise or knowledge into the clouds. Sagar explained about the changing scenarios how more then 60% of the organizations are going to be on clouds in next coming 5 to 6 years. He explained by comparing the ordinary apps with salesforce apps .He explained the basic difference between traditional database based applications and applications based on social enterprise database. He gave basic idea of the building blocks of the force.com development environment.

Pankaj started up with benefits of cloud computing then with “why only salesforce ? “. He gave a good example how students can elevate their career in clouds.
And why salesforce is best option for them to learn. He discussed about the how a student can make progress by using the concepts they learn in their student life.
He mentioned various resources from one can easily learn about the platform .He gave demo of an app how things are getting done on the platform. He compared the time taken to perform certain tasks on other platforms and same with force.com platform and students were amazed to see the time they can save.

In the break students enjoyed the refreshment and they were discussing about the new things they learned.

Ankit shared his journey of becoming a force.com MVP . He shared how we can contribute to the community. He discussed about various channels where we can contribute and learn new.He gave an idea of the path one can follow to make a good professional profile. Ankit was present during the whole meetup via Google+ Hangout . He helped a lot in making this meetup successful.

In the end Students/Developers were happy to win cool trivia prizes

You can find slides here:

Sagar – Intro to the platform and about the meetup. inaugural meetup

Pankaj- Elevating your career in clouds.Career in Cloud Computing

 

Inaugural Meetup Announcement

Meetup / / by

I am feeling great to announce the Inaugural meetup of “Salesforce Platform Student’s User Group” . Starting up with my Hometown Bikaner Rajasthan India.

It will be a great chance for the Students and Developers of Bikaner and nearby areas to get known to the platform.

Special thanks to speakers Ankit Arora(@forceguru) and Pankaj Kumar Pandey(@pandeypankaj20). Also the backbone of event Kavindra Patel (@kavindrapatel) and April Kyle Nassi(@thisisnotapril) for their  full support with me.

With learning attendees will be get chance of winning cool prizes in Cloud Trivia Round! .

Schedule:

2 PM : Gates open and registration.
2.30PM: Intro to the salesforce platform. – Sagar Pareek (User Group Leader)
3.00 PM: Elevating your career in clouds and getting started with force.com – Pankaj Kumar Pandey(Certified Salesforce Developer)
4.00 – 4.30 PM – Refreshments
4.30PM: Contribute to Community – Mr.Ankit Arora (Force.com MVP)
5.00PM- Cloud Trivia ,your chance to win ! – Sagar Pareek

Venue: Acme Embedded Technologies 3/503 Mukta Prasad Nagar Bikaner Rajasthan

RSVP at

http://www.meetup.com/India-Students-Salesforce-Platform-Developer-User-Group/events/84532082/

Getting started with force.com.

Getting Started / / by

Everyone around me keeps on asking Sagar you are a cloud computing guy it must me really harder for you to develop apps on it .How you manage to bulid apps? How you put your logic on it . Your applications looks professional and works like charm !

But when i say its an easy task ! everyone says i am joking . Believe it or not its really easy to get started make a killer app that everyone hardly believes that you made it on clouds and to mention “Without code “. I wont say that there is no need of coding . But at some points where you need flexibility in your app you have to code for it .But that too is really simple if you set yourself to learn .

I had some past experience on Java and Php where i used to make some small applications and websites .But the day i started with force.com it was like a magic ! Every thing used to seem easier then it was before.

Today i am writing this post to how get started with force.com development ,I think it will really help newbies to have a quick start.

First of all it is not essential that you have a programming background ! Yes its true.

You can start directly with force.com

developer.force.com is the main site for the resources .

I recommend to get started with the workbook:

http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/workbook/forcecom_workbook.pdf

This will give you a nice overview of the platform .

Secondly you can clear your doubts on discussion boards

http://boards.developerforce.com/sforce/?category.id=developers

It will be really great if you are on linkedin .Be the part of linked in groups and Developer User Groups in your area.

Here you will find all groups

http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Force.com_User_Groups

Get involved and learn new everyday!