Workbench is a powerful, web-based suite of tools designed for adminstrators and developers to interact with Salesforce.com organizations via the Force.com APIs. Workbench includes robust support for the Force.com Partner, Bulk, Metadata, and Apex APIs that allows users to describe, query, manipulate, and migrate both data and metadata in Salesforce.com organizations directly in their web browser with a simple and intuitive user interface. Workbench also provides many advanced features for testing and troubleshooting the Force.com APIs, such as customizable SOAP headers, debug logs for API traffic, backward compatibility testing with previous API versions, and single sign-on integration within the Salesforce application.

I would highly recommend it.  You can download it from its Google Code site.  If you want to see it in action now, I always keep the latest version running on the arrowpointe.com domain at http://force.arrowpointe.com.  You are welcome to use it there if you’d like to.

Geopointe has a number of under-the-cover features (and more to come) that allow you to integrate with the application.  One such feature is the ability to use the map as a means of populating a Lookup field.

Below is a video showing this feature in action.

Enabling the Feature

The feature is enabled through the use of a Custom Button that simply passes additional parameters across in the URL.  The URL in the video example is:

/apex/geopointe__Map?

Id={!Account.Id}

&wbRecordId={!Account.Id}

&wbField=Related_Account__c

&wbLookupObject=Account

&wbButtonText={!URLENCODE("Relate This Account to " & Account.Name)}

Let’s break it down

/apex/geopointe__Map?

Id={!Account.Id}

The above is the URL from the button included with the application. It is required to sent the user to the proper page in the proper context.

&wbRecordId={!Account.Id}

wbRecordId is the ID of the record we will be writing back to.

&wbField=Related_Account__c

wbField is the field on that record we will be populating.

&wbLookupObject=Account

wbLookupObject is the object type that we will be searching for and populating the lookup field for.

&wbButtonText={!URLENCODE("Relate This Account to " & Account.Name)}

wbButtonText is optional, but can be included if you want to customize the button’s text. It is recommended to use the URLENCODE function when specifying your text, especially if you are merging in data from the system.

We are pleased to announce the release of our newest application, Geopointe. Geopointe integrates Force.com with Google Maps and MapQuest and is the premier Force.com geo/mapping solution providing numerous ways for end-users, administrators and developers to take advantage of geo data and maps.

Highlights of Geopointe include (but is not limited to):

• Map any Salesforce object
• Perform proximity searching (show me what’s nearby me)
• Create custom data sets (queries), both personal and public ones
• Export your results to CSV (Excel) or KML (Google Earth)
• Obtain multi-point driving directions
• The Visualizer helps create dashboard-like summaries of your data
• Automated, Scheduled Geocoding processes your data at 1000+ records per minute
• Get cleansed address data
• Contains an “API” with global Apex methods, Visualforce Components and the ability to extend the application using custom buttons.
• All existing Arrowpointe Maps customers get a free license transfer to Geopointe for the same user count and expiration date as their current license with a goal to get users off of Arrowpointe Maps and onto Geopointe.

To learn more, you can:

• Visit the AppExchange Listing
• Visit the product page on our website
• Visit the YouTube Channel
• Follow us on Twitter
• “Like” Arrowpointe on Facebook

Website Redesign
The Arrowpointe website was recently redesigned (new logo too).  There, you will find links to all that I am explaining in this post.  (you can also get a bit of preview information about the new application that will be launched)

Blogs
I have decided to separate content into 2 separate blogs.

• Developer Blog - This blog (subscribe) will be focused on broader force.com topics such as news, developer tips, etc., as opposed to Arrowpointe-specific product information.
• Company/Product Blog – A new blog was created on the company site that will focus on company news and announcements regarding Arrowpointe’s applications. While I transition, I will cross-post across the blogs, but over time product information will be put onto the company/product blog. You can subscribe to that blog via rss or email.

Social Media

• Our You Tube channel will be the best location to get video about our applications.
• Our Facebook page is a great place to find a collection of all our content from the web.
• Our Twitter feed will collect notifications about all our postings around the web as well as informal commentary about force.com, life on the web and other information that may be of interest. Our Facebook feed will post to Twitter, but not the other way around.

Arrowpointe has an application on AppExchange called Spam Check.  The application has tools to fight spam from getting into your Salesforce system.

All of Arrowpointe’s web-to-lead and web-to-case forms use it.  Below are the overall statistics since getting it setup.

95 spams caught, 64 legitimate submissions, and an overall accuracy rate of 93.711%.

You can run a free 30 day trial of Spam Check simply by installing the application from the AppExchange. Once installed, you will receive emails on how to get it setup.

Salesforce just announced an update to AppExchange where they designate apps as “Aloha Apps”.  Aloha Apps are a new “all-you-can-app” category of apps that don’t count against customer org limits (apps/tabs/objects), no matter which salesforce.com edition you’re using.

A number of Arrowpointe applications are in the Aloha category.

• Arrowpointe Maps – map your Salesforce data!
• Auto vCard – Import a record (e.g. lead or contact) into your local address book with 1 click.
• Spam Check – Stop Spam from entering your Salesforce system and wasting your users’ time.

If you install any of the above apps, they will not count towards your app/object/tab limits:

To help me debug, I keep a test endpoint in my DE orgs that I make callouts to in order to get a good look at what I am sending. It’s a simple Visualforce page that I expose over Sites to act as a fake endpoint while I do development. When developing a callout, I will often use this endpoint in the beginning to organize the parameters and then periodically throughout development to debug.

The page is simple.

<apex:page controller="Endpoint_Controller" cache="false" showHeader="false" sidebar="false" action="{!init}">
<pre>
<apex:outputText escape="false" value="{!debugInfo}"></apex:outputText>
</pre>
</apex:page>

Depending upon my need, I will add/remove the action=”{!init}” parameter from the page because I have it in there to write the {!debugInfo} variable to a Task for later review (kind of like using a task as a mini-debug log). I don’t always need it turned on, so that parameter comes and goes.

My controller, with test method, is:

public without sharing class Endpoint_Controller {

public String debugInfo {get; set;}{

debugInfo = '';

if (ApexPages.currentPage() != null){
// Incoming Headers
debugInfo += '\n***ALL INCOMING HEADERS ***\n';
for (string key: ApexPages.currentPage().getHeaders().keySet()){
if (ApexPages.currentPage().getHeaders().get(key) != null){
debugInfo += key + ' = ' + ApexPages.currentPage().getHeaders().get(key) + '\n';
}
}

// Incoming Parameters
debugInfo += '\n***ALL INCOMING PARAMETERS ***\n';
for (string key: ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().keySet()){
if (ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get(key) != null){
debugInfo += key + ' = ' + ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get(key) + '\n';
}
}

// Other Page Reference Stuff
debugInfo += '\n***OTHER PAGE REFERENCE INFO ***\n';
debugInfo += 'Anchor: ' + ApexPages.currentPage().getAnchor() + '\n';
debugInfo += 'URL: ' + ApexPages.currentPage().getUrl() + '\n';
}

}

public Endpoint_Controller(){}

public PageReference init() {

Task t = new Task();
t.Subject = 'Endpoint Invoked';
t.Description = debugInfo;
t.ActivityDate = Date.Today();
insert t;

return null;

}

static testMethod void Endpoint_Controller_test() {

// Set the page reference and pass through some parameters
PageReference thePage = Page.Endpoint;
thePage.getParameters().put('param1','1');
thePage.getParameters().put('param2','2');
Test.setCurrentPage(thePage);

// Run the init function to have it handle the web to lead submission
Endpoint_Controller ep = new Endpoint_Controller();
ep.init();
}
}

What does it do? Well, it simply gathers up all the headers, page parameters and other useful info and outputs it in a readable way. I sent a test request to one of my pages and this is what the page produced (and logged to a task in that org):

***ALL INCOMING HEADERS ***
Accept = application/xml;charset=UTF-8
Cache-Control = no-cache, max-age=0
CipherSuite = RC4-MD5 TLSv1 128-bits
Content-Type = application/xml;charset=UTF-8
Host = testorg.secure.force.com
Pragma = no-cache
SFDC_STACK_DEPTH = 1
User-Agent = SFDC-Callout/18.0
X-Forwarded-For = 10.226.8.134
X-Salesforce-Forwarded-To = na7.salesforce.com
X-Salesforce-SIP = 204.14.234.8

***ALL INCOMING PARAMETERS ***
param1 = value1
param2 = value2
param3 = value3

***OTHER PAGE REFERENCE INFO ***
Anchor: null
URL: /apex/Endpoint?param1=value1&param2=value2&param3=value3

I also construct debugInfo variables in my Production system to capture the receipt of incoming calls to Sites pages I have exposed (e.g. Google Checkout talks to my Salesforce org via a Sites page). I will usually have a custom setting that I can turn on/off so I have an easy way to turn off the creation of those activities.

The API Guide has all the details about how to perform aggregate functions in SOQL, but at a high-level, they (along with the GROUP BY clause) let you do things like:

• Get a count of Accounts grouped by Industry & State
• Get the avg Opportunity amount grouped by Calendar Month
• Get the sum of Custom Object $ field grouped by Account
• etc.

Get the idea?  The functions you have available are COUNT(), COUNT_DISTINCT(), AVG(), SUM(), MIN(), MAX(). Think of these like you would the Columns To Total in a summary report.

You can also use the GROUP BY clause in your query to summarize your data by other fields.  Think of it like a Summary Report grouping.

The best way to learn it is to put it into practice.  To do so, I am going to “upgrade” the code from my Campaign Member Summary using Google Charts post.  The goal is to create a chart that looks like below:

The original controller used the following code to build the count of records per Campaign Member Status:

// List of valid Campaign Member Statuses for the Campaign
List<CampaignMemberStatus> list_cms = [select Id, Label from CampaignMemberStatus where CampaignId = :camp.id];

// Loop through each Campaign Member Status, get a count of Campaign Members and add it to the items list
for (CampaignMemberStatus cms:list_cms) {
integer Count = [select count() from CampaignMember where CampaignId = :camp.id AND Status = :cms.Label];
if (Count > 0) {
items.add(new ChartDataItem(cms.Label, Count.format()));
}
}

The code above works just fine, but has some issues. The main issue is that we are performing a query inside a for() loop. Bad! If a Campaign had more than 20 statuses, the code would fail. Also, this is a performance hit because we have to perform as many queries as there are member statuses. Enter aggregate functions.

The improved controller changes the query to work like this.

// Get all the data in one query
AggregateResult[] groupedResults = [select Status, count(Id) from CampaignMember where CampaignId = :camp.id group by status];

// Loop through the query and add chart items
for (AggregateResult ar : groupedResults) {
     items.add(new ChartDataItem( String.valueOf(ar.get('Status')), String.valueOf(ar.get('expr0'))));
}

Now we are doing everything we need in 1 query. Even if we had 1000 different member statuses, it wouldn’t matter. We should never hit a governor limit with this code and performance has also been improved. Some important things to note in making this change and in understanding aggregate functions:

• Your controller class should be on API version 18.0 or higher. 18.0 is the Spring ‘10 release and that’s when these functions were introduced.
• The results of a query with aggregate functions should result in a AggregateResult[] collection.
• The get() method is used to retrieve data from an AggregateResult object (used inside the loop when looking at a single result)
• To get the value from a field your are grouping by (i.e. doesn’t have a function for it), use .get(‘fieldName’). In the above example, I use this to get the Status value I am grouping by.
• To get the value from a field that has an aggregate function, use .get(‘expr#’), where # is the index number for that field. A query can have multiple functions in it so you need to specify which function you are grabbing and you do so by its index number. For you non-programmers out there, remember that counting starts at 0. In the above example, I use this to get the count(id) value. Since I only have 1 aggregate function in my query, i get it using .get(‘expr0′) where 0 is the index number for my function result.
• The get() method returns an Object type so you will need to use the appropriate valueOf() method to put it into the data type you need.

NOTE: As of writing this post, the IDE was not yet upgraded to 18.0 so I had to do this work inside the browser and I used the new-ish Deploy functionality from inside Salesforce to migrate the change from Sandbox to Production.

Links to the Arrowpointe AppExchange listings are below:

• Arrowpointe Maps
• Auto vCard
• Spam Check
• Info Center
• User Adoption Dashboard

Thank you for your feedback!

There is an option to associate the Task to Opportunities, but instead of creating a Task and associating it to the Lead/Contact AND the Opportunity, 2 tasks are created: one against the Lead/Contact and another against the Opportunity.  I have no idea why it was designed this way, but it was.  Given that, I don’t use the option to associate the Task to Opportunities.

After months of manually assigning to Opportunities after I send the email, I got fed up and wrote a trigger that senses an email to salesforce record and auto associates it to the nearest Open Opportunity.  I thought I’d share it with y’all.

This code assumes the following:

• You are using Email to Salesforce
• You have the Email to Salesforce option for Leads & Contacts enabled and the one for Opportunities disabled
• You associate Contacts to your Opportunities via the OpportunityContactRole object

Trigger

trigger Tasks on Task (before insert) {

	// BEFORE INSERT
	if(Trigger.isBefore && Trigger.isInsert){
		Tasks t = new Tasks();
        t.AssociateOpportunity(Trigger.new);
    }

}

Class

public class Tasks {

    // Default Constructor
    public Tasks()
    {
    }

    // Associates a new Task generated by Email to Salesforce to an open opportunity, if one exists for the Account
    public void AssociateOpportunity(Task[] tasks)
    {

    	/***************
        * Variables
        ***************/
		list<Task> l_Tasks = new list<Task>(); // Tasks we'll be updating
		set<ID> s_ContactIDs = new set<ID>(); // Set of Contact IDs

		/***************
        * Initial Loop
        ***************/
		for(Task t:tasks) {

			// Add Task to working list and collect the Contact ID
			if (t.WhatId == null && t.Subject.startsWith('Email:') && t.WhoId != null) {
				// only for Contacts
				if (String.valueOf(t.WhoId).startsWith('003')){
					l_Tasks.add(t);
					s_ContactIDs.add(t.WhoId);
				}
			}

		}

		/***************
        * Create Maps
        ***************/
        // Maps Contact ID to an Opportunity ID
		map<ID, ID> map_cID_to_oID = new map<ID, ID>();
			// Query for the Contact's Open Opportunities. Sort by CloseDate DESC so the Task gets assigned to the earliest Opportunity as it loops
			for (OpportunityContactRole ocr:[select Id, OpportunityId, ContactId
											 from OpportunityContactRole
											 where ContactId in :s_ContactIDs
											 AND Opportunity.IsClosed = false
											 order by Opportunity.CloseDate DESC
											 ]) {
				map_cID_to_oID.put(ocr.ContactId, ocr.OpportunityId);
			}

		/***************
        * Process Records
        ***************/
		for (Task t:l_Tasks) {

			// If the Contact has an Opportunity mapped to it, update the Task with that Opportunity
			if (map_cID_to_oID.get(t.WhoId) != null) {
				t.WhatId = map_cID_to_oID.get(t.WhoId);
			}

		}
    }

}

Test Class

@isTest
private class Tasks_Test {

    static testMethod void AssociateOpportunity_Test() {

        // Create a Lead
        Lead l = new Lead();
	        l.FirstName = 'Test';
	        l.LastName = 'Lead';
	        l.Company = 'Test Company';
	        l.Email = 'leademail@example.com';
        insert l;

        // Create an Account
        Account a = new Account();
        	a.Name = 'Test Account';
        insert a;

        // Create a Contact
        Contact c = new Contact();
	        c.FirstName = 'Test';
	        c.LastName = 'Contact';
	        c.AccountId = a.Id;
	        c.Email = 'contactemail@example.com';
        insert c;

        // Create Opportunities
        list<Opportunity> l_Opps = new list<Opportunity>();
        Opportunity o = new Opportunity();
        	o.AccountId = a.id;
        	o.Name = 'Test Opportunity';
        	o.CloseDate = date.today();
        	o.StageName = 'Qualified';
        	o.Description = 'Test Opportunity Description';
        l_Opps.add(o);

        Opportunity o2 = new Opportunity();
        	o2.AccountId = a.id;
        	o2.Name = 'Test Opportunity';
        	o2.CloseDate = date.today().addDays(30);
        	o2.StageName = 'Qualified';
        	o2.Description = 'Test Opportunity Description';
        l_Opps.add(o2);

        Opportunity o3 = new Opportunity();
        	o3.AccountId = a.id;
        	o3.Name = 'Test Opportunity';
        	o3.CloseDate = date.today().addDays(60);
        	o3.StageName = 'Closed Won';
        	o3.Description = 'Test Opportunity Description';
        l_Opps.add(o3);

        insert l_Opps;

        // Create Opportunity Contact Roles
        list<OpportunityContactRole> l_Ocr = new list<OpportunityContactRole>();
    	OpportunityContactRole ocr1 = new OpportunityContactRole();
    		ocr1.ContactId = c.id;
    		ocr1.OpportunityId = o.id;
			ocr1.IsPrimary = true;
			ocr1.Role = 'Decision Maker';
		l_Ocr.add(ocr1);

		OpportunityContactRole ocr2 = new OpportunityContactRole();
    		ocr2.ContactId = c.id;
    		ocr2.OpportunityId = o2.id;
			ocr2.IsPrimary = true;
			ocr2.Role = 'Decision Maker';
		l_Ocr.add(ocr2);

		insert l_Ocr;

        /* Create Tasks for Test Cases */
        list<Task> l_Tasks = new list<Task>();

        // Task associated to Lead, not Contact
        Task t1 = new Task();
        	t1.Subject = 'Email: something';
        	t1.Status = 'Completed';
        	t1.WhoId = l.id;
        	t1.ActivityDate = Date.today();
    	l_Tasks.add(t1);

    	// Task with wrong subject
    	Task t2 = new Task();
        	t2.Subject = 'something';
        	t2.Status = 'Completed';
        	t2.WhoId = c.id;
        	t2.ActivityDate = Date.today();
    	l_Tasks.add(t2);

    	// Task with no WhoId
    	Task t3 = new Task();
        	t3.Subject = 'something';
        	t3.Status = 'Completed';
        	t3.ActivityDate = Date.today();
    	l_Tasks.add(t3);

    	// Task with a What ID already
    	Task t4 = new Task();
        	t4.Subject = 'something';
        	t4.Status = 'Completed';
        	t4.WhoId = c.id;
        	t4.WhatId = o2.id;
        	t4.ActivityDate = Date.today();
    	l_Tasks.add(t4);

    	// Task that should get triggered fully
    	Task t5 = new Task();
        	t5.Subject = 'Email: something';
        	t5.Status = 'Completed';
        	t5.WhoId = c.id;
        	t5.ActivityDate = Date.today();
    	l_Tasks.add(t5);

    	insert l_Tasks;

 		/* Asserts */

 		// Task 1 should not have a What ID populated
 		Task t = [select Id, WhoId, WhatId from Task where Id = :t1.id limit 1];
 		system.assertEquals(t.WhatId, null);

 		// Task 2 should not have a What ID populated
 		t = [select Id, WhoId, WhatId from Task where Id = :t2.id limit 1];
 		system.assertEquals(t.WhatId, null);

 		// Task 3 should not have a What ID populated
 		t = [select Id, WhoId, WhatId from Task where Id = :t3.id limit 1];
 		system.assertEquals(t.WhatId, null);

 		// Task 4 should have the same What ID it had originally populated
 		t = [select Id, WhoId, WhatId from Task where Id = :t4.id limit 1];
 		system.assertEquals(t.WhatId, o2.id);

 		// Task 5 is the one that should've had the Opportunity ID auto populated
 		t = [select Id, WhoId, WhatId from Task where Id = :t5.id limit 1];
 		system.assertEquals(t.WhatId, o.id);

    }
}

Let me know if you have any suggestions.

I am pleased to announce that Spam Check is now live on the AppExchange.

Spam Check lets your Salesforce system evaluate your data to see if it’s Spam. It contains built-in support for incoming Web-to-Lead and Web-to-Case data and also has global Apex methods that allow developers to incorporate Spam checks in their applications (e.g. a custom Salesforce Site).  This application delivers a solution for a popular idea from the community.

Spam Check uses Akismet, the leading spam evaluation service used on tens of thousands of blogs and websites everyday. Akismet gets its intelligence from the vast community that uses it everyday.  Spam Check allows you to contribute to it and make it more intelligent for the whole community and for your Salesforce system specifically.

Install it from the AppExchange to start a free, no obligation 30-day trial.  Once installed, you will get an email pointing you to the Spam Check Setup Guide.

For more information, please visit the Spam Check page on our website or its AppExchange listing.