CRM Science

Syncing Salesforce Changes to an External System with Future/Schedule Architecture

noreply@blogger.com (Ami Assayag) — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:03:00 +0000

Many integration projects involve syncing Salesforce data to external systems. For example, you may need to sync contacts and leads along with their related events and tasks to a home-grown portal, or sync financial information to an external accounting system, or sync sales data to a system that allows better mobile experience for certain verticals.

The business logic for some of these projects is very complex, but the general design of the solution usually follow known patterns. However, certain requirements present several considerations that make writing the more common integration code a bit trickier. Here are a few such considerations:

Sync events get fired by triggers, but triggers can’t make callouts, so syncing code must run asynchronously (@future).
Trigger execution order is not guaranteed, so it is possible that your sync trigger will be fired by a process that is already running asynchronously (which will create a runtime error).
Depending on the activity and the number of objects that get synced, you can reach callout limits.
Packaged sync applications often clash with other packages that also work asynchronously. Packaged apps also have wide variability of activity, so there is a good chance to hit callouts limits.
Any runtime error results in a sync event that is not transmitted to the external system.
Any delayed process needs to run soon after the triggering event occurred. Also, a record that is triggered again before its delayed processing occurs, should not be transmitted twice (unless needed by the external system).

To avoid some of these issues, or at least make it less likely for a transaction to be lost, I’ve come up with a design pattern that combines both almost-immediate (future) and delayed (scheduled) methods to communicate with external systems that need to be synced. The basic idea for this design pattern is to always try the immediate processing as the first option, but also allow for a scheduled job to be created if immediate processing is not possible at the time.

Here’s how it’s done… Please note, that I omitted (added as a comment) any business logic that is not important for the design pattern.

First of all, create two new objects to handle scheduled syncing:

An object called Synchronize__c to hold Ids of records that need to be synced, as well as any additional information that is needed when processing jobs. For example you may want to save the type of trigger that fired the sync event (insert or update). This object will be queried by a scheduled process, and allow the scheduled processing to reuse the normally triggered sync code.
An object called CronJob__c to hold Cron Job Ids so we can keep track of what jobs were created and be able to remove them after they execute. This is necessary because querying the cron job object does not give you all the info you need to clean up old jobs.

Next, create a schedulable class called SynchronizeSched.cls that will be used to execute scheduled code. Keep it empty until the rest of the code is written:

Next, create a class (Synchronize.cls) to handle all the business logic and special processing. The next four methods will be added to this class, starting with a static class called ProcessFutureCallout that receives a set of Ids. Since the execution is starting from a trigger, specify @future(callout = true) before the method declaration to allow the class to make a callout. This method is what you would normally write to sync records to an external system, and will include any business logic that needs to run before the callout, the actual callout, and the response handling.

Now we can create a method called ScheduleCallout that can handle the delayed sync. This method will be called instead of ProcessFutureCallout when an asynchronous call cannot be made immediately. Within the method, we need to save the Ids of all the records that need to be synced, as well as any other important info, to the newly created object Synchronize__c. Then, create a cron job and save its Id to the new object CronJob__c. Note that in this example, the job is scheduled 1 to 2 minutes into the future. By adding two minutes to now, the scheduled job will run on the second to next whole minute. I think that this is the shortest time period that should be scheduled because if you add just one minute to now(), you run the risk that the code would execute around a whole minute and create a job that cannot be scheduled (You'll get the error "Based on configured schedule, the given trigger will never fire"). Of course, the delayed job can be scheduled for an hourly or daily sync. Not included in the sample, but a good addition, is a quick check that a scheduled job is not already created before creating a new one.

Now create a method ProcessTrigger to be used as the entry point from the trigger. At the beginning of the method, add the normal logic that figures out if you need to process the changed record(s). Once you know which records need to be synced, you can figure out if it is possible to continue processing asynchronously. If it is not possible, you can schedule the changed records for later execution. This method can check for all kind of governor limits and react as needed.
We have to create one more method called ProcessScheduledCallout to handle the scheduled logic. The schedulable class will call this method to run the delayed sync. This method actually does not do much other than get info from the database, call ProcessFutureCallout, and then clean up the database. Since ProcessFutureCallout already has all the logic we need, there is no point rewriting that here.
Lastly, update the schedulable class from the first step to call the ProcessScheduledCallout() method:

Parsing JSON \/Date to Salesforce Datetime

noreply@blogger.com (Ami Assayag) — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:03:00 +0000

If you're working on a lot of custom integrations, you are bound to eventually see dates and datetimes that are represented like this: "\/Date(1198908717056)\/". These dates show up in JSON as strings, and their numeric value represent milliseconds since January 1st 1970 UTC. I believe that this is a Microsoft standard mostly used by .net.

Here's a quick and useful method that parses these ".net type" datetimes into salesforce datetimes. Simply parse out the numeric value using the parenthesis as guides, cast as long, and use the very useful datetime method newInstance() to calculate the actual date.

Reports: Export Details VS Printable View

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:05:00 +0000

Ever generate a report, click on the "Export Details' button only to find out that once opened in Excel, the report looks nothing like what you saw in your browser window. What's going on here?

Here's a very simple Contact report grouped by Contact Owner. You can see there is a distinct grouping by Owner (dark blue bar).

However, when you click on "Export Details," this is what you get:

The "Export Details" button does exactly that... it exports the details of the report; meaning every line that makes up your report will be rendered as a new line in your .xls or .csv. This is regardless of whether or not you have clicked on the "Show Details" or "Hide Details" button. Of course, you could rework the resulting spreadsheet and do the grouping yourself, but why would you do that?

Rather than eagerly clicking on the "Export Details button," take the "Printable View" button for a test drive. It will render your report again as an .xls file, but retain the grouping as you see it on your report.

Here's the same report, exported with the "Printable View" button:

If you want to see the details, click on the "Show Details" button prior to clicking on the "Printable View" button. This will show each line item as well as the summarized headers. If you don't want details, make sure that you've clicked on the "Hide Details" button.

Note that when you choose "Export Details," you are prompted to chose an export file encoding format (ISO, Unicode, etc) and export file format (.csv or .xls). If using the "Printable View" option, you will always get a .xls file. Within your spreadsheet editor, you can always choose to save with another file extension and encoding format.

In case you were wondering, this also works for Matrix reports!

Download Our Chrome Extension: Admin Assistant

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:23:00 +0000

Our Admin Assistant extension provides Salesforce.com administrators (and developers!) with additional time-saving tools and settings shortcuts to facilitate the day to day functions and responsibilities they may be faced with.

If you attended the PhillyForce meetup during Philly Tech Week, you may have seen my session on my Salesforce Chrome Extensions. If you didn't, check out the recorded demo of that session at the bottom of this post.

As Salesforce.com user, have you ever had the feeling that "there should be an easier way" or have stared at a long list of check boxes and thought, "I have to do this for every one of these?" These are the reasons I created the Admin Assistant extension.

Here's a subset of the features included in Admin Assistant v1.0:

Mass Delete: On List Views, you often have a series of records with checkboxes next to them. Natively, there is no "Delete" option that will wipe out the selected records with one click. This feature will delete any of the selected records.

Maybe you're testing a new piece of Apex code or building out a new workflow that generates a lot of junk records. How many times have you wanted to delete a few of these records and been in this situation?

Deleting each of the four Contact records above would require you to click on the "Del" link on each row, confirm that you want to delete the record, rinse, and then repeat multiple times.

Show Max Results: Show Max - on pages that list schema components like workflow rules, actions, and email templates, there is often a "Show More" link. This feature displays a maximum number of the possible results on one page with one click.

Chatter Chat: If Chatter is enabled in your org, a floating "Chat Window" appears in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. This can be turned on or off.

Various Profile Settings: At the field level, check or uncheck all of the "Visible" or "Read-Only" boxes. At the Object level, check or uncheck all of the CRUD/View All/Modify All boxes. For Tabs, quickly display or hide all Salesforce tabs.

Screenshots:

Here's the demonstration from our Philly Tech Week '13 PhillyForce Meetup:

Download it here:
Admin Assistant in the Chrome Web Store
Admin Assistant on the AppExchange

Download Our Chrome Extension: Code and Query Keeper

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:48:00 +0000

We're very excited to announce the release of our Chrome browser extension, the Code and Query Keeper!

If you're like me, you've copied and pasted snippets of code and various SOQL queries into just about everything for future reference. Notepad, Notepad++, gedit, Evernote, Google Keep... the list goes on.

This happens all the time when writing new code, whether it's something you commonly do (specific coding patterns), frequently do (testing various scenarios), or rarely do and just need a quick reference.

While using Salesforce.com's Workbench (https://workbench.developerforce.com), The CRM Science Code and Query Keeper will allow you to capture the code you have written in the Apex Execute block or the SOQL query you have in the query box. You can give your script or query a name, save it, and later insert or append it into the box on the page.

Within the extension, you can also freely view, edit, and clone your snippets.

Here's the demonstration from our Philly Tech Week '13 PhillyForce Meetup:

Download it here: Code and Query Keeper in the Chrome Web Store

How Many Lines of Code Does It Take To Create a Set of Ids?

noreply@blogger.com (Ami Assayag) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:50:00 +0000

I was recently cleaning up a piece of hideous code (feel free to replace with an expletive - it was that bad) that we took over from a different consultancy. The original object infrastructure involved many custom objects with several of them being relationship objects (i.e. many to many). Even after I fixed occurrences of SOQL and DML inside loops, eliminated unnecessary looping, and other generally bad design patterns, the bigger requests were hitting the 200001 executed statements limit error. I had to dig deeper and eliminate more loops.

Since this class was dealing with so many relationship tables, there were several places were the code was constructing lists of ids based on a lookup field values. For example. Let's say that you have the Id of a record in obj__c, but what you really need is a Set of all the lookup values in the field LookupToDiffObj__c on the obj__c object. Normally you would use a couple of soql queries and some looping to get it done, resulting in a few hundred lines of executed code. What if you had to do that several times for several objects for thousands of records at a time?

That's what I needed to solve, and after putting some thought into it I came up with the following handy pattern that achieves all that in one line of executable code (that counts as 2 SOQL queries).

Fun With SOQL: Cubed Results

noreply@blogger.com (Ami Assayag) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:24:00 +0000

GROUP BY CUBE is an awesome feature of SOQL that nobody talks about. It is a very handy tool when you need to create complex visualforce reports because you can get aggregate results for different grouping of values in a single SOQL call.

Let's say that you want to create a graphical summary of the Opportunity object, and need to get the count and total of the Opportunity amounts of every combination of Stage, Type, and Lead Source. Well, you're in luck, because with Just one "cubed" SOQL call you can get enough data to fill a visualforce page with interesting charts:

The above statement returns:

The count and subtotal for every combination of Stage, Type, and Lead Source (That's as many rows as the number of Stage picklist values times the number of Type picklist values times the number of Lead Source picklist values).
The count and subtotal for each two field combination where the values of the third field does not come into consideration (all two field combinations).
The count and subtotal for each field value regardless of the value in the other two fields (for each of the three fields).
The count and total for all the values.

Here is how this works:

The GROUP BY CUBE section determines which field values get aggregated.
The GROUPING() in the SELECT section provides a way for you to evaluate what subtotal each row corresponds to - a zero in that function means that the row is grouped by the specified field, and a one means that it doesn't (seems counter intuitive, but that's how it works). See example of that below.
The aggregate results in the SELECT provide the data. A nice addition here could be using Account for one of the grouped results and use COUNT_DISTINCT(Account) to get count of unique accounts as opposed to unique opportunities.
The ORDER BY section is very important because it helps you process the data. By sorting the GROUPING() functions first, the results come up in a predictable order that you can take advantage of in an Apex loop.

Here is an example of how you can harvest the cubed results:

You can find GROUP BY CUBE in the documentation here.

Change Sets 101

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 15:16:00 +0000

Say you're a new Salesforce Admin and you need to make changes to your org. You're already following best practices by making changes to your sandbox and not production (right?) and everything is working the way it should. Now it's time to push those changes to production, but how?

Change Sets

The process is simple enough:

Create an Outbound Change Set
Add Components to that Change Set
Upload the Change Set to another sandbox (you can do that) or production
Validate and Deploy the Inbound Change Set in the org the Change Set was uploaded to

Before any of that can be done, you need to establish a Deployment Connection between your sandbox and your production instance which will allow you to upload Outbound Change Sets to Production for deployment.

NOTE: You can establish Deployment Connections between two sandboxes as well for those times you need to push changes from one sandbox to another. The rest of this post assumes you're pushing from a sandbox org to a production org.

Create Deployment Connection

First, within your production instance, click on your name at the top of the page, and then click on "Setup"
On the left-hand side, under "App Setup," expand "Deploy" and click on "Deployment Connections"
Find the name of your sandbox and click on the "Edit" link next to it
Check off the box that says "Allow Inbound Changes" and then click on the "Save" button
The next thing to do is to create an Outbound Change Set within your sandbox. For this scenario, the change set will include a page layout that I want to deploy within my production instance as well as a new field that I added to the object within the sandbox. One change set, two components, one deployment. Nice!

Create Outbound Change Set

Within your sandbox, click on your name at the top of the page again and then click on the "Setup" link
On the left-hand side, navigate to "App Setup" --> "Deploy" and then click on "Outbound Change Sets"
Click on the "New" button to create a new Outbound Change Set
Provide a "Name" and "Description" for your change set.
Click on the "Save" button.
Within the "Change Set Components" section, click on the "Add" button.
First, let's add the new field. Change the "Component Type" dropdown to "Custom Field"
Next, find and select any fields that you also need to deploy that are not currently found in production.
Click on the "Add to Change Set" button at the top of the page. Here's a quick tip -- make sure that you use the "Add To Change Set" button after you select something. Changing the component letter, page, or "Component Type" will clear any previous selections.
Now it is time to do the same for the page layout. Change the "Component Type" to "Page Layout, find and select your new layout, and then click on "Add To Change Set" again.

Your change set should have two components in it now.

Upload a Change Set

1. To push your Outbound Change Set to the Production instance for deployment, click on the "Upload" button.

2. Choose your Production instance and then click on "Upload"

3. Within a few minutes you should receive an email, letting you know that your Change Set was uploaded to the production instance. Keep in mind that you don't always have to push from a sandbox to production. You can go from sandbox to sandbox or even production to sandbox.

Validation and Deployment

Once you do receive that email, it is time to deploy it.

Within the org you've uploaded your Change Set to, click on your name at the top of the page again and then click on the "Setup" link
On the left-hand side, navigate to "App Setup" --> "Deploy" and then this time click on "Inbound Change Sets"
Click on your change set. Here you will be able to see information about the change set, including its components, any details, and its deployment history. You also have two options; "Validate" and "Deploy."
Clicking on "Validate" goes through all of the actions required to deploy the change set without actually deploying it. This is always a safer bet as you can learn which components will be new, overwritten, or deleted. Sometimes you learn things from a validation that you didn't expect and can save yourself from making mistakes.
"Deploy" first validates and if all is well will deploy your change set. Keep in mind that if you've added new layouts, they won't be assigned to a Record Type yet, so you'll have to do that manually. If you added fields, permissions won't be set up on that field as they would be if you were to manually create the field. The same goes for picklists options and their Record Type preferences.

EmailMessage Status Values

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:28:00 +0000

I was working with the EmailMessage Object last night and ran into a question I've spent time answering before. I was writing a SOQL query string to return EmailMessage records based on their Status.

This didn't work:

I knew the data type for the Status field was a picklist/string, so I looked at the results of this:

The results yielded numbers 0 through 4:

Here are the values and the Statuses they represent:
'0' = New
'1' = Read
'2' = Replied
'3' = Sent
'4' = Forwarded

The Spring '13 Release notes describe the ability to enable "Email Drafts and Approvals" (Page 63 of the PDF). Later, on page 189, there is a code sample that creates an outbound Draft; note the Status value of '5'.

Potential Org Issues With Future Releases

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:42:00 +0000

With Spring '13 currently deployed to Sandbox orgs and soon to Developer and Production orgs, there are tons of new features to utilize within your future projects. I was recently excited about a new Cases Class called ".getCaseIdFromEmailThreadId."

Remember that "Ref" tag formula from this post? You know, the unique ID that is attached to emails when using the Email-to-Case functionality? I was working on another project in which an email web service was required and I needed to take the "ref" tag and identify the Case ID of the associated Case.

Then I read the Spring '13 Release Notes and was delighted to find the Cases.getCaseIdFromEmailThreadID method. I wrote a quick code block to test it out:

Unfortunately, I received this dreaded message.
Error: Compile Error: Method does not exist or incorrect signature: Cases.getCaseIdFromEmailThreadId(String)

I opened a Case with Salesforce in hopes of a quick remedy to save me from coding it myself. The answer to my problem was that this org already had a custom "Cases" class. This custom class was being referenced as opposed to the new Salesforce provided feature.

The moral of the story is, Salesforce introduced this new feature into my org in which their class conflicted with my class and I only discovered the issue when I tried using the new method. Lots of developers may use a common class naming convention in which the class name mirrors the Objects in which they work with. Lots of developers may try to use future new Salesforce Classes/Methods only to be stopped in their tracks while scratching their heads. Hopefully, this possible conflict is the first thing they think of.

Salesforce Mobile SDK - Eclipse Setup and Android App

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:30:00 +0000

This is the fourth and final post of the Salesforce Mobile SDK Series. Here's what you've missed if you're new to the series:

In the last post, we set up Xcode for iOS development using the Visualforce Page we created in part 2. In this post, we'll do the same for Android within Eclipse.

1) If not already installed on your machine, download Eclipse (I'm using Classic 4.2.1) here: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

2) Locate and download installer_r21-windows.exe under the "Download for Other Platforms" sections here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

3) After you've downloaded the Android SDK installer, execute it to begin the installation wizard steps. A check will be performed to ensure you have a JDK installed (I had v1.7 installed).

4) When the installation has completed, make sure a check is in the box to "Start SDK Manager..." and then click on the "Finish" button.

5) When the SDK Manager window opens, select the "Tools" folder, the latest version of Android (4.2 below), along with any others you want to install at this point and click on the "Install Packages" button. Click on the "Accept All" radio to accept the terms of all packages and wait for the install to complete.

6) After installation is completed, set up a new Virtual Device by clicking on "Tools" and then "Managed AVDs..."

7) Click on the "New...' button, provide the following details, and click on the "OK" button

8) Download and install Git from: https://help.github.com/articles/set-up-git

9) Clone the Salesforce Mobile SDK by opening a command prompt window and entering: git clone git://github.com/forcedotcom/SalesforceMobileSDK-Android.git

10) Open Eclipse

11) Choose a new location for your workspace and click on the "OK" button

12) If prompted, although you already downloaded them, choose "Install new SDK" and check "Install the latest available version of the Android API's." Choose an option in regards to sending your user usage to Google, and then choose "Accept All" and then click on the "Install" button

13) Click on File --> Import...

14) General --> Existing Projects into Workspace

15) First import the SalesforceSDK from ../Downloads/SalesforceMobileSDK-Android/native/SalesforceSDK (your location may vary, depending on your Git configuration)

16) Then import the VFConnector sample app from ../Downloads/SalesforceMobileSDK-Android/hybrid/SampleApps/VFConnector (your location may vary, depending on your Git configuration)

17) Navigate to your Project --> Assets --> WWW folder and edit the bootconfig.js file as we did in part 3/4 to point the project to our Visualforce page:

18) Click on the "Run" button and choose the AVD we created in Step 7. The emulator should start up within a few moments if not already running.

19) Unlock the device and depending on the state of the installation, you'll either find your app under the App drawer menu or it will pop open automatically.

There you have it! Quick and easy mobile applications, based off of a single Visualforce page, for two platforms with minimal coding. The most difficult part of the process for those without mobile app development experience is the configuration of the environment. Something always goes wrong and a little Googling will help in most cases. Hopefully you've found these four blog entries helpful as a quick introduction to the Salesforce Mobile SDK. Good luck!

Salesforce to Fix Issue With Oauth 2.0 User-Pass Flow

noreply@blogger.com (Ami Assayag) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:58:00 +0000

We recently hit an issue with one of our clients where an external service was trying to authenticate against Salesforce with oauth 2.0 user-pass flow but kept receiving "unknown_error.retry your request" from Salesforce. We searched online and used #askforce but the only fix we found was to loging using the Salesforce instance, which does not work for us as we are trying to access Apex REST in a managed package that will be available on the AppExchange sometime soon.

So we opened a case through the partner portal which was quickly confirmed and escalated. Within a week, we receive a response that Tier 3 have identified the issue and that R&D is working on a patch that will likely to be released today (19th Dec 2012). They did not elaborate much further even though we prodded for some more geeky details, except to say that "the issue was due to internal issue" and that "the patch will be released on all instances".

Kudos to Salesforce for a quick turnaround!

Formula: Ref Tag for Email-to-Case

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000

If you're using Salesforce for customer service, chances are that you are using email from the Case object. When you leverage the "Email-to-Case" feature, Salesforce will add to Case related emails a "ref:" tag.

Let's assume help@yourCompany.com is configured as your company's email-to-case Routing Address. A customer needs assistance with one of your products and sends off an email requesting assistance.

This tag is what allows Salesforce to automatically connect this email to the appropriate existing case. If not found, a new Case is created and set up in accordance with the configuration of that Routing Address.

So when the customer sends the email above, requesting assistance from help@yourCompany.com, you're email server or email client will be configured to forward messages sent to help@yourCompany.com to the Salesforce assigned email address, which looks like this:

When the email address is forwarded to the Salesforce address highlighted above, the Salesforce email services look at the subject and body of the message for an existing "ref:" tag. If one is found, the email is created as Activity History for the associated case. If one isn't found, it looks at the configuration of the help@yourCompany.com Routing Address and creates a case. This is why it is important to not remove the tag from your emails; doing so could result in duplicate or unnecessary cases.

There may be scenarios where you need to know what the "ref:" tag for a Case is. You might need to include this on e-mail templates for internally created cases for customers.

How is this value constructed and what is the Salesforce Email-to-Case email service expecting?

If you take a look at a "ref:" tag, you'll see it follows this pattern:

To replicate this in a formula field, you can use this:

I've seen a similar formula on the forums, but I've added a LEFT($Organization.Id,15). Without this, I was generating the first portion of the "Ref:" tag using the 18 character ID of my org. The resulting "Ref:" tag did not match the "Ref:" tag from the email I received in prior testing.

Now you can use the new formula field on your Salesforce templates. Alternately, you can follow this patter when developing your own Salesforce email handling services.

Formula Example - What Day of the Week is/was it?

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:30:00 +0000

I found a post over at the Apex Code board at DeveloperForce.com from someone who needed assistance creating a formula to determine how many Fridays occurred between two given dates.

Easy enough, I thought. I'll just use a date method w/in a loop and count how many times Friday occurs. I didn't find any date methods or dateTime methods that return the day of the week. It seems like such a basic need; perhaps I glazed over it.

A quick Googlin' led me to one example, nearly 100 lines long. It shouldn't be that difficult; I'd rather spend 100 lines showing you how to do the math and then 1 line of code using that math.

A little more poking around and this is what I found:

a = (x - y) (mod 7)

a = Day of the week index

x = a date in which you know the day of the week

y = the date in which you want to know which day of the week it was or will be

In a nutshell, figure out the number of days between your two dates (x and y), divide that number by 7, and the remainder (mod 7) will tell you the day of the week, based off of the known day of x.

We still need "x" - the copious amounts of calendar generators on the web all agree that 1/1/1900 was a Monday.

Let's see it in practice, using 12/11/2012 as an example or proof (just pretend you don't know it's Tuesday). 12/11/2012 will serve as our "y" variable.

a = (12/11/2012 - 1/1/1900) (mod 7)

a = 41,252 (mod 7)

a = 41,252 divided by 7 leaves a remainder of 1

a = 1

Since we know 1/1/1900 was a Monday, we know that 1/2/1900 was a Tuesday, 1/3/1900 a Wednesday and so on all the way up to 1/8 when everyone has a case of the Monday's again. There are 7 days between 1/8 and 1/1 and dividing 7 by 7 leaves you with a remainder of 0. 0 will represent Monday. 1/9/12 is a Tuesday and there are 8 days between 1/9 and 1/1. Dividing 8 by 7 leaves you with a remainder of 1. 1 represents Tuesday. The same logic tells you 2 is Wednesday, 3 is Thursday, 4 is Friday, 5 is Saturday, and 6 is Sunday. In the example above, a = 1, therefore 12/11/2012 must fall on a Tuesday.

So all we need to do now is plug in our dates and use a few methods that do exist.

We'll use:
math.mod()
date.daysBetween()

Go ahead, try executing that code and seeing what the debug output tells you.

So now we have an easy mechanism for determining the day of the week for a given date. Let's go the extra mile and see how we can easily create a bit of code now that determines how many how many of a certain day occurred between two dates.

Salesforce Mobile SDK - Xcode Setup and iOS App

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000

This is part three of the Salesforce Mobile SDK Series. Have you read parts one and two yet?

So far we've learned the differences between native, hybird, and HTML5 apps, how to create a mobile Visualforce page, and how to create a Connected App to get our crucial Consumer Key and Secret. The next step takes what you've done and turns it into a mobile app. By the end of this post, you'll have an iOS app that handles authentication and delivers a multipage experience.

Before you get started working with the Salesforce Mobile SDK, you'll need to set up your Mac environment.

1) Boot up your Mac and install Xcode from the App Store.

2) While that's downloading (it'll take a while), download and install GitHub: http://mac.github.com/

3) Pull in a local copy of the SalesforceMobileSDK-iOS project by using the "Clone in Mac" button here: https://github.com/forcedotcom/SalesforceMobileSDK-iOS

4) While you're waiting, you'll want to clone the MobileComponents as well: https://github.com/forcedotcom/MobileComponents

5) Launch a Terminal window (Finder --> Applications --> Utilities --. Terminal) and navigate to the cloned SalesforceMobileSDK-iOS folder, presumably in your home directory.

cd ~/SalesforceMobileSDK-iOS
sudo ./install.sh
sudo cd ..
sudo chown -R YourUserName SalesforceMobileSDK-iOS

6) By now, Xcode should have downloaded and installed. If not, wait for that to happen, then launch it (Finder --> Applications --> Xcode).

7) If you've never launched Xcode before, you'll land on this screen. Click on "Create a new Xcode project" if prompted and if not, click on File --> New --> Project...

8) From the menu, choose iOS --> Application, highlight the "Hybrid Force.com App" icon, and then click on the "Next" button

9) Provide the following details about your new app and then click on the "Next" button. You can get the "Consumer Key" and the "Redirect URL" from within your Salesforce org by clicking on the "Setup" link and navigating to Create --> Apps --> Your Connected App Name. For more details on creating the "Connected App," see part two of this series.

10) You'll now be prompted to choose a location to save your project file. Navigate to your location of choice and click on the "Create" button.

11) Once your project is created, highlight the "WWW" folder, right-click on it, and choose "Delete."

12) When prompted, click on the "References Only" button.

13) Highlight your root project folder, right-click, and choose "Add Files to "Your Project"..."

14) Navigate to your project directory, highlight the "WWW" folder, and then click on the "Add" button.

15) Expand the "WWW" folder in your project browser and click on bootconfig.js.

16) Find the line that begins with "var startData..." This tells the application which page to load after authentication.

Since we are building a hybrid app, we'll comment out the first line, uncomment the second line, and modify the path portion to reference the Visualforce page we created in part two of this series.

17) Now it's time to make sure the app runs. Make sure all of your changes have been saved, and then click on Product --> Run. This will start up either an iPad or iPhone simulator and with any luck, request your Salesforce credentials:

18) Enter your credentials and click on the "Login" button. The app will then prompt you to provide permissions. Click on the "Allow" button to continue.

After clicking on the "Allow" button, you'll see your mobile VF page. If you tap/click around, you'll notice the interface and page navigation looks and feels like a native app.

In the next and final post of this series, you'll learn how to set up your Eclipse environment and use the the same Visualforce Page and Connected App to create an Android app.

iPad-less Salesforce Touch Testing

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Salesforce Touch became generally available in the Winter '13 release. It is available in the Contact Manager, Group, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions and according to the requirements, currently supports Apple iPads (2nd and 3rd generation) with iOS version 5 and up.

Requirements: http://www.salesforce.com/docs/en/touch_faq_tablet/touch_faq_tablet_reqs.htm

Unfortunately, not everyone has an iPad to access, test out, or even debug the new Touch interface. Fear not, a simple change in your browser settings will allow you nearly the same access.

First, make sure that you have the new "Touch" feature enabled for your org and the users that you want to test with.

1) Log into Salesforce and access the "Setup" menu:

2) Under "Administration Setup," expand "Mobile Administration," "Salesforce Touch" and then click on "Settings:"

3) Ensure that the "Enable the Salesforce Touch mobile browser app" setting is enabled

4) Next, ensure that Touch is enabled for the user account you are testing with by expanding "Manage Users" under "Administration Setup" and clicking on "Users:"

5) Find the relevant user(s) and ensure that "Touch User" is enabled:

Now that "Touch" is enabled in all of the right places, it's time to change your browser's user agent, effectively allowing your browser to mimic Safari. Here's how to do that in Chrome.

1) Log out and change your URL to "login.salesforce.com"

2) Click on Chrome's "Settings" button and navigate to Tools -> Developer Tools (Shift+CTRL+I)

3) Click on the Developer Tools settings button (the gear icon) in the bottom-right hand corner

4) Click on the "Overrides" tab

5) Ensure that "User Agent" is checked and choose one of the "iPad --iOS" profiles

6) Refresh your Salesforce Login window and it should now look like this:

If you're familiar with the Salesforce Mobile SDK, this will look familiar to you.

Take note that if you are logging in with an account with an Administrator profile, you will not experience the Salesforce Touch interface after logging in, but will rather be redirected to the normal "Setup" page.

If anyone has a one of those new, shiny, touchscreen Windows 8 machines, I'd love to hear if the interface is "Touchable."

Not using Chrome? Here's a link that may include information on how to change your user-agent setting w/in your browser of choice.

Formula Example - Days Until Quarter's End

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:44:00 +0000

Today I bring you two ways to accomplish the same thing; display the number of calendar days until the end of the quarter. You probably wouldn't use these formulas to create a field (why show the number of days on every record?), but might use on a Visualforce page or email template. You may even modify them to enhance a validation or workflow rule.

The first way uses a series of nested IF() functions whereas the second way demonstrates how to arrive at that number using a CASE() function. The CASE way has a small work around in it, explained below.

Using nested IF functions:

Typically a CASE function follows this pattern: CASE(expression,value1, result1, value2, result2,..., else_result) which leaves very little room for additional criteria. Expression is usually the field you will look at the value of, valueX will be the value to look for, and resultX will be the text to display if valueX and resultX match.

The issue we have is valueX will be any date between a given quarters start and end dates (displayed within the AND()s below). Nothing prevents us from giving an expression of "1" (aka TRUE) and then providing the values as IF statements that return 1 or 0. We just need to ensure that the datatypes compared match and the criteria doesn't overlap as the first to return 1 or TRUE ends our CASE function.

Using the Case function w/ workaround:

Salesforce Mobile SDK - Mobile Visualforce Page and the Connected App

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000

This is part two of the Salesforce Mobile SDK Series. Part one is here: Salesforce Mobile SDK - Introduction

There's one common component between Android and iOS development when creating a hybrid app and that's the Visualforce page. This ability to code it once and use it multiple places was repeatedly touted at Dreamforce '11 and '12. This post will briefly go over the creation of such a page as well as the creation of a Connected App.

"Connected App" is an application that can connect to salesforce.com over Identity and Data APIs. Connected Apps use the standard OAuth 2.0 protocol to authenticate, provide Single Sign-On, and acquire access tokens for use with Salesforce APIs... (read more)

1) Our simple page will take advantage of a few external files, a .CSS file, and two .js found in the CloudTunes sample included within the SalesforcemobileSDK-Samples package. Grab the Static Resource named "cloudtunes_jQuery.resource" and it's accompanying meta.xml from here: https://github.com/forcedotcom/SalesforceMobileSDK-Samples/tree/master/CloudTunes-metadata/CloudTunes-force/staticresources

2) Open Eclipse/Force.com IDE and create a new project for your mobile Visualforce project

3) Copy cloudtunes_jQuery.resource and cloudtunes_jQuery.resource-meta.xml into your project, creating the "staticresources" folder if needed: ../Workspaces/ProjectFolder/Project/src/staticresources/

4) Jump back over to your IDE, right-click on your "src" folder and click on "Refresh" to pick up the new files.

5) Save the Static Resource to the server by right-clicking on your "src" folder within the project explorer, going to "Force.com" and clicking on "Save to Server."

6) Now create a new Visualforce page by right-clicking on your project --> New -- > Visualforce Page. Give it a name and click on the "Finish" button.

7) Below is how I've structured my page. Take note of the different div data-role's. Although I'm only creating one Visualforce page, my final product will have four different "screens" (Main, About CRM Science, Ami, and Kirk).

Now that we have the page, it's time to create a "Connected App" within our Salesforce org. Again, a "Connected App" is defined as an app that leverages the Identity and Data APIs to connect to Salesforce. If you're familiar with "Remote Apps," Connected Apps are meant to be an updated replacement, including additional features giving you the power to limit who can use the app and which security policies are used by the app. After the app is created, we'll also receive our Consumer Key and Secret values that are used when creating the hybrid app in Xcode or Eclipse.

Configuring a custom app is a straightforward process. First you define the OAuth metadata with details like the app name, description, callback URL, operational IP range (optional), as well as info about enforceable mobile policies (also optional).

1) Navigate to Setup --> App Setup --> Create --> Apps and click on the "New" button within the "Connected Apps" section.

2) Provide the "Basic Information" for your app.

3) Next, define the details for the API Integration. For the Callback URL, I've defined "testsfdc:///mobilesdk/detect/oauth/done" and selected the "Access your basic information" OAuth scope.

4) Click on the "Save" button and you'll be taken to your new Connected App's record. Notice the Version, Status, Consumer Key, and Consumer Secret fields.

Now you're ready to begin your hybrid app "development." In the upcoming posts, you'll see how to configure your dev environments (Xcode or Eclipse) and how to use the Salesforce Mobile SDK to take advantage of the power of your Visualforce page.

Salesforce Mobile SDK - Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000

It's hard to avoid the excitement that is being generated as a result of Salesforce.com's mobile SDK. If you made the pilgrimage this September to Dreamforce in San Francisco or braved the rain at this month's Cloudforce in New York, you may have surely been exposed to the mobile SDK in one way or another. This year's Dreamforce App took advantage of the Salesforce Touch Platform. Several of the sessions at both events demonstrated just how easy it was to develop an app for both the Android and iOS platforms while minimizing the amount of code that had to be rewritten.

Using the Salesforce Touch Platform, you can develop apps in three ways - each has their own unique advantages and disadvantages.

Native
Coding is specific to the platform, meaning your using the traditional development tools and languages used in iOS and Android development. This approach requires you to be well versed in Objective-C for iOS, Java for Android, and to be able to navigate their respective environments, Xcode and Eclipse. Once developed, these apps are packaged and made available on the platforms' app market places.

HTML5
Using stadard web technologies, like HTML5, Javascript, and CSS, web pages are created to mimic the look and feel of native apps. However, these are not downloaded from the platforms' app market places, but are accessed via the mobile device's browser. Many of the device's native hardware functions are not accessible using this approach.

Hybrid
Using the hybrid approach, you can take advantage of the write-once-run-anywhere philosophy and wrap an HTML5 page (or Visualforce page) within a native app container while having access to a device's hardware capabilities, without needing to know Objective-C or Java.

Over a series of posts to follow, I will detail the creation of an HTML5 based Visualforce page and how to generate both an Android and iOS app, using the same page. These posts will also detail the steps required to setup both development environments.

Formula Example - Case Days Open

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Today's Formula calculates either the number of days a case was open before being closed or the number of days the case has been open since it was created.

This formula uses 3 different functions:

IF(logical_test, value_if_true, value_if_false) - Determines if expressions are true or false. Returns a given value if true and another value if false.
ROUND(number, num_digits) - Returns the nearest number to a number you specify, constraining the new number by a specified number of digits.
NOW() - Returns a date/time representing the current moment.

Here's a Case view that displays two cases, both open and closed, the fields referenced by the above formula and the formula field itself (# of Days Open).

Using Business Time to Set Workflow Task Due Date

noreply@blogger.com (Ami Assayag) — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:39:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I posted a hack that enables assigning a workflow task to a related user on the triggering object. This works with a class called WorkflowInstructions that parses a task descriptions and looks for a familiar string format (a "workflow instruction"). Once a workflow instruction is found, the class processes the workflow task according to the instructions.

Since the code allows processing of several types of workflow instructions, here is another useful use case... setting activity cto a certain number of business days from the case create date. For some reason, business hours is available in apex, but not when setting workflow tasks.

So here is what you need to add to the previous post code sample:

Add a business hours variable to hold your selected business hours record.
add 'businesstime' when checking for workflow instructions.
add a method that processes the 'businesstime' workflow instruction.

You still need the code for the trigger as in the previous post: And now, all you have to do to make the workflow work is to set up the workflow instruction in the description of the workflow task. The trigger will fire, then change the task activity due date, and then remove the instruction from the description. here is an example:

Using Bucket Fields for Organized Reporting

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk Steffke) — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 02:32:00 +0000

Up until the Spring '12 release, if you wanted to categorize data within your reports, you had to create additional formula fields to do your classifications and then pull these new fields onto your report. With the advent of reporting buckets, you can easily categorize records within your reports on the fly, directly from the report builder screens.

For this example, let's say you have a set of Account records, each having the standard currency field "Annual Revenue" populated. For reporting purposes, you want to categorize your Account records into three different tiers.

Gold: Annual Revenue > 3,000,000
Silver: Annual Revenue between 1,000,000 and 3,000,000
Bronze: Annual Revenue below 1,000,000

Before buckets were introduced, you may have created a formula field that looks like this:

While this works, you've just created a field for this very specific purpose.

Bucketing can help you (and your non-admin employees) more efficiently do the same by following these steps:

1) To create a new Bucket field, within a new/existing report, click on the "Add Bucket" link within the fields section.

2) Next, specify a source field in the "Source Column," give your Bucket field a name, and define your ranges:

3) Click on the "OK" button and you'll see your newly created "Service Level" field within your report grid:

Unfortunately, the current bucketing offering lacks the ability to create and use filters.

What if you had a client that has been with you from day one. Sounds like instant "Gold" level client criterion to me. It would be great to be able to include additional criteria, in this case something like "Initial Contract Date < 1/1/2005" = Gold, to the bucket calculations.

Additional Information:
Bucketing in Reports: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFYEtBtLHG4
Categorizing Data Quickly with Buckets: http://na9.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/reports_bucketing_overview.htm

Assigning Workflow Task Owner to a Related User

noreply@blogger.com (Ami Assayag) — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:03:00 +0000

I recently had to come up with a way to assign a workflow task to a related user on the triggering object. That functionality is not available Since a workflow task can only be assigned to the record owner, a specific user or a role. The object that causes the workflow to fire has several user lookup fields, and based on specific events, one of the users specified by these fields needs to be set as the assigned user for the task that is created by the workflow.

I decided to use a trigger on the task object to get the job done. I also decided to write the code in a pretty generic way because I think that there may be other uses for this piece of code. So what I did is create a class called WorkflowInstructions that parses the task description, looking for a familiar string format (a "workflow instruction") and based on what it finds, do something (in this case, assign the task owner to a related user on the originally fired object). Not sure I am doing a good job explaining this in words, so lets get to the actual code...

So now that we have a nice generic class,here is the code for the trigger:
And now, all you have to do to make the workflow work is to set up the workflow instruction in the description of the workflow task. The trigger will fire, change the owner of the task to the related user, and then remove the instruction from the description. here is an example:

Dreamforce Session Slides: Top Testing Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Ami Assayag) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:27:00 +0000

Here are the final slides from my session with Wes Nolte at Dreamforce last week.

AppExchange Listing DevZone Session at Dreamforce

noreply@blogger.com (Ami Assayag) — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 02:53:00 +0000

I am now going to lead a DevZone session at dreamforce about the AppExchange listing process. I am going to use a blog post I wrote a few months ago as a rough agenda, and hope to share a more personal account of my experience in this area.

Here is the official Dreamforce session info:

Step By Step Guide To Salesforce AppExchange Listing
When: Wednesday, September 19th: 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Where: Moscone Center West, DevZone Unconference A
Description: Developing and packaging Salesforce.com apps is not that complicated, if you already have experience with SFDC or know what to look for. However, starting a provider relationship with Salesforce and navigating through all the orgs, requests, cases, and account execs is a complex and confusing process. This is an account of a recent AppExchange listing.

Click here to see this session in the Dreamforce App, and to join the conversation on Chatter.