David's shared items in Google Reader

Instantiating an empty list of SObjects

2009-06-08T12:13:54Z

You’re building a dynamic Apex class so general you’re thinking about promoting it to colonel. You’ve slogged through the Salesforce documentation on the topic, a feat in itself, but are having issues instantiating an empty list of SObjects to be processed in some way. If you attempt to do this in the seemingly Salesforce manner i.e. List<SObject> [...]

Dynamic Custom Labels

2009-06-10T17:11:10Z

I know what you’re thinking, ‘this is cRAzY talk’. But do not doubt my friend, Salesforce has a very powerful translation framework. Besides being able to change the language used by the Salesforce standard areas with the flick of a picklist, you can include translatable Custom Labels in most of your custom application. To do this [...]

Salesforce Savepoints

2009-06-15T07:28:17Z

Transaction control is an important part of any system that interacts with a database and Salesforce has neat ways of implementing said control. Anyone that’s worked with SQL databases will be familiar with savepoints and rolling back, and Salesforce has implemented similar constructs. For those who haven’t heard of these terms wikipedia describes them as A savepoint is [...]

Jing Pro & HD Video on YouTube: Definitive How-To

2009-06-15T20:52:14Z

Want to put some sweet-looking screencasts up on YouTube? It's easier than ever, and Brooks shows you how. (See outline of steps below video.) In Brooks' last post I gave him a hard time about that face close-up. I mean, people are trying to learn stuff here! The good news is that Brooks took efforts to make his intros a little more bearable. Did it work? You be the judge.

I also made a convenient PDF (less than 2 pages) with all the steps too.

Overview:

You need Jing Pro, and a YouTube account.
Create a YouTube button in Jing.
Record a video in 16:9 aspect ratio (Hold Shift while selecting area) at 1280 x 720 dimensions.
Upload to YouTube, and wait while your video is processed!

New in Summer '09: Email Alerts For Case Comment Workflow

2009-06-18T17:05:14Z

Back in Winter '08 we turned on Workflow from Case Comments. That workflow allowed you to perform a field update on the parent Case. Because it is a "chaining" workflow, that means that you could send email alerts or outbound messages by creating another workflow on the parent case which would receive the changes from the Case Comment workflow and react to them. It was a little bit convoluted, but it worked.

Although having a field update capability from Case Comments was useful, many of the use cases for Workflow From Case Comments involved sending emails. As of Summer '09, you can send emails directly from a Workflow From Case Comments. Here's an example of how.

Let's say that I want to create a workflow which, whenever a new comment is submitted to a case, notifies the case team of that new comment.

My first step is to create the workflow rule:

I want any case comment to trigger this workflow, so I'm going to set my criteria to fire whenever a comment is created, and whenever that comment has anything in the body:

In the next step, I can now create an email alert:

Before finishing up this email alert, though, I'll want to make an email template that contains the body of the comment. The {!Case.Last_Case_Comment} merge field is really handy for this:

Finally, I can make my email alert. I want to set it to notify members of the Case Team where their role is Support Staff:

And that's all there is to it! Once I go back to the the workflow rule and click Activate, this workflow rule will fire whenever a case comment is added, notifying the Support Staff members of the case team with an email containing the comment body.

Real World Release Management with Salesforce.com

2009-06-19T22:14:37Z

We’ve been working with Salesforce.com on and off for about a year on their release and change management best practices. We’ve had a number of calls with them discussing the Metadata API’s functionality (or lack of functionality) and best practices for release management for large, complex orgs. It looks like they’ve taken of our suggestions and experiences to heart as they recently released their Development Lifecycle Guide.

First let me state that we have a complex org and development environment. We have a global Saleforce.com project team with multiple projects running concurrently in all continents. We have 15 development sandboxes, 5 test sandboxes, 1 full-copy UAT sandbox and 1 Production box. Our production org consists of 40+ distinct and separately functioning companies with over 500 recordtypes to manage access to data.

The guide is fairly thorough and has a lot of best practices and practical info for orgs of all sizes. My one main criticism of the guide is that in a couple of areas they paint a rosy picture of the migration process and the amount of effort required to migrate configuration items and assets. If you’ve ever done a moderately complex migration you know that not everything is possible via the Metadata API. This leaves you with some manual processes that are grueling, time-consuming and tedious. For instance, Salesforce.com just completed a moderately sized project for us and they scheduled 40 hours to migrate the manual changes to Production.

Scheduling Releases

For change and release management we’ve broken our development work into four types with different release timeframes:

1. Project – these are typically large amounts of work for a specific business (or business stream) requiring multiple resources for development, data migration, testing and training. Projects are released on a monthly based once completed.

2. Major Change – these are changes which may include the creation of new objects, tabs, validation rules, workflows, recordtypes or page layouts. They may also require end-user training, integration with other system and data migration. They changes are also released monthly.

3. Minor Change – these changes are released weekly and may include changes to existing page layouts, picklist values, sharing rules or formulas.

4. Incident – these are released immediately into Production as needed. These are typically bug fixes or changes not relating to metadata.

Release management also requires communication and documentation of changes. The best way to accomplish this is to have a dedicated release manager who is responsible for tracking and documenting all proposed and actual changes to Production. This becomes extremely time consuming, but valuable, when tracking down the cause of errors or migrating an entire project. Ideally, this person is also the one that does the migration but that may not be feasible due to the technical nature of Metadata and Apex migrations.

Application Development Strategy

The guide does a good job illustrating the different development scenarios and resources that are available. Our “ideal” methodology is the one illustrated in the “developing enterprise application” section. Coming from the Java and .NET world, this route is the most familiar to our developers.

However, after much debating and testing, we came to the conclusion that this approach is simply not workable with our available resources for large projects. In a perfect world (i.e. where you can push all code and config cleanly from box to box) this approach is great but there are too many manual, time-consuming processes in the real world. Our businesses (and finance) were demanding us to deliver projects and changes faster with less resources. The proposed process above increased our time to production and the number of resources needed. Until the Metadata API is capable of pushing everything to Production cleanly and reliably, we have come up with the following development and deployment methodology:

Essentially, we try to do all of the config in Production and then refresh to a sandbox for code and process development. We’ve run into problems when doing migrations with RecordtypeIds and PricebookEntryId and trying to migrate them. We’ve found that for security, profile and integration purposes, you should create these in Production and refresh to your development sandbox. Therefore, if you do migrate profiles, page layouts, etc using the Metadata API you will have a much greater chance of success if these IDs are identical.

Learned Lessons

During long development cycles it is very likely that your sandbox(es) will become out of synch. You may have objects from other projects that are required for your sandbox that need to be created, security settings that need to be applied manually due to data integration issues or Salesforce.com upgrades that wipeout or implement new functionality. Another common scenario may be that you need to refresh your full-copy sandbox for UAT testing for a specific project but you have another project preventing this as it has not yet been tested and put into Production.

The Metadata API is not quite ready for this type of development process. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Metadata API (it’s getting better each release) but there are still some basic things you cannot migrate such as standard picklist values and role hierarchies. Salesforce.com finally came out with a list of things the API can and cannot do. This was a huge step as we had been hounding them for this information for months.

Migration dependencies are one of the frustrating and aggravating aspects of this process. There are many cases where your migration crashes due to a code, static resource or parent-child dependency. We’ve discovered the hard way that the order of migrations is sometimes the key to success. Unfortunately Salesforce.com does not provide clear examples.

Upcoming Migration Tools

We had a sneak-peak a few weeks ago at a new deployment tool coming this Winter from Salesforce.com which should make everyone much happier. The product manager was quick to point out that this new tool is dependent upon proposed functionality in the Metadata API so hopefully all will be released together.

Programming Techniques

2009-06-22T16:53:39Z

Using a Map as an In-Memory Join Table

←Older revision		Revision as of 16:53, 22 June 2009
Line 113:		Line 113:
	<code>Opportunity[] opps = new List< Opportunity>();<br />		<code>Opportunity[] opps = new List< Opportunity>();<br />
	for (Account eachAcct: accts) {<br />		for (Account eachAcct: accts) {<br />
-	opps = [select Id, Amount, CloseDate from Opps where Id = :eachAcct.Id];<br />	+	opps = acctOpps.get(eachAcct.Id);<br />
	//...<br />		//...<br />
	//code here whatever data manipulation you are attempting.<br />		//code here whatever data manipulation you are attempting.<br />
Line 125:		Line 125:
	}</code>		}</code>
	<br/>		<br/>
		+
	==Creating a “Reverse” Map==		==Creating a “Reverse” Map==
	A map typically consists of an ID as the key and a string value as the value. However, there may be times when you want to reverse the roles and look up an ID based on a string.		A map typically consists of an ID as the key and a string value as the value. However, there may be times when you want to reverse the roles and look up an ID based on a string.

Using Formulas and Google Charts to Visualize Data

2009-06-24T16:51:54Z

Learn how to embed visualizations by simply using formulas.

Automated Multi-Wave Campaigns In Salesforce Marketing (Summer ’09 part 2)

2009-06-17T02:45:20Z

Have you ever wanted to automatically email prospects or customers based on rules you set up? Ever wanted to email both leads and contacts without two separate templates and processes? In Summer ’09, it’s as easy as creating a few campaign member workflow rules!

In part 1, we walked through how triggers can be used to summarize campaign information. In this example, we’ll show you how two workflow rules and a trigger can be used to auto-email a second reminder to non-respondents. If any pieces seem tricky, your SFDC Administrator can help you set up these steps.

Continuing our example, Whitney has already created a parent campaign “2009-Q3-Webinar” and a child campaign “2009-Q3-Webinar-Email Reminder”. Both of these campaigns include the Status "No Response-2nd Email".

Whitney can work with her SFDC admin to create a workflow email alert to auto-email anyone that is added to the campaign. However, we only want those that haven’t registered for the webinar to receive this second email. With Summer ’09, it’s now easy to auto-email campaign members with a workflow email alert, regardless of whether they are a lead or contact!

We’ll walk through the key steps to set up this multi-campaign automation:

1) Create the time–dependent workflow rule, which delays the action by seven days
2) Create an after update trigger, which clones this campaign member to the “Reminder Email” campaign when the workflow fires
3) Create a workflow email alert, which auto-emails campaign members added to the “Reminder Email” campaign

Step 1: Workflow rule fires seven days after first email sent

Track Campaign RSVP's with Campaign Member Triggers (Summer '09 part 1)

2009-05-28T18:19:38Z

With the Summer ’09 release, there are some major improvements to Campaign Members! Over the next month we’ll do our best to give a few examples of how to take advantage of these improvements.

To help make it more real, we’ll follow Whitney, a marketing manager who is responsible for putting together a webinar for her company TechCo. We’ll break this down into several parts:

1) Creating a basic trigger to keep a quick count of the # RSVP’s

2) Using workflow & triggers to auto-email non-respondents 7 days later (automated multi wave drip campaigns)

3) Using Salesforce Sites for event registration landing pages

4) Using campaign member custom fields to prioritize responses from the webinar

5) Using campaign member custom fields & reports for offer management across campaigns

Create Campaign Custom Field

We join Whitney after she’s sent out a blast to invite, and wants to create an RSVP counter on the Webinar campaign. First, she creates a number custom field on Campaign with a label of “# RSVP Yes” and a field name of “RSVP_Yes”.

Content Best Practices

2009-06-29T22:23:41Z

New page

With Salesforce CRM Content you can organize, share, search, and manage content within your organization and across key areas of the Salesforce application. Content can include all file types, from traditional business documents such as Microsoft® PowerPoint presentations to audio files, video files, Web pages, and Google® docs.

<youtube>w0ev0u46Q0k</youtube>

=Overview=

Salesforce CRM Content simplifies content management by incorporating user-friendly features into the following tasks:

==Organizing==

Rather than keep files in folders that make content difficult to find, Salesforce CRM Content stores files in fully searchable file repositories known as workspaces. Administrators can create multiple workspaces based on any classification, such as department name, job function, or team, then configure user permissions within the workspace to balance content access with security. Authors assign descriptive labels called tags to help classify and organize content across workspaces. You can view a list of all content that belongs to a particular tag or filter search results based on a tag or tags. Salesforce CRM Content also provides personal workspaces, which allow users to reduce the clutter on their desktops while using content-management benefits such as document search and version control.

==Searching==

The powerful Salesforce CRM Content search engine scans the entire body of the document as well as content properties such as the title, description, tags, categorization data, and author name. You can filter searches by featured content, file format, author, tags, workspaces, or custom fields and then view the results with various levels of detail, providing an easy way to find relevant content quickly. The "smart bar" graphic for downloads, comments, ratings, and subscribers allows you to compare documents within a search result set.

==Subscribing==

Once a file is located, subscribing to it ensures that you receive an email notification when new versions are published or changes are made to the file's properties. You can also subscribe to authors, tags, and workspaces, thus reducing the time spent searching for new or updated content. Notification emails will arrive real-time or once daily, depending on your preferences.

==Previewing==

In Salesforce CRM Content you do not need to download a large document to determine if its content is relevant to you. The content details page provides document details at a glance, including document title, author, description, tags, workspaces, comments, votes, versions, subscribers, and downloads. If the document is a Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, Excel, or Adobe® PDF file, you can preview the entire file in your browser without downloading it. Microsoft Office 2007 files cannot be previewed.

==Contributing==

Uploading new or revised files in Salesforce CRM Content is fast and easy. During the upload process you choose a workspace and content type for your file or Web link, write a description, assign one or more tags, and fill out any customized fields that help categorize and define your content. Version management does not require checking files in and out, rather, you simply upload a new version of the file and Salesforce CRM Content maintains a version list accessible from the content details page. You can download past versions of a file and read all reason-for-change comments that an author may have included with a new version.

==Reviewing Usage and Providing Feedback==

Salesforce CRM Content provides several methods for determining whether content is valuable to readers. Featuring a piece of content increases its visibility in search results. Voting thumbs up or thumbs down on a file, Web link, or Google doc and adding comments allow you to participate directly in content improvement. You can also see who has subscribed to a file, link, or doc and how many times files have been downloaded. The Reports tab allows you to create standard or custom reports on Salesforce CRM Content data. If the content delivery feature is enabled, you can send content to colleagues, leads, and contacts and then track how often the content has been previewed or downloaded.

==Sharing Content in Salesforce==

Salesforce CRM Content is also integrated with leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases, products, and custom objects. If Salesforce CRM Content functionality is enabled on the Opportunity tab, for example, Salesforce CRM Content uses the fields on the opportunity detail page to search for files that may be relevant to that opportunity. You can drill down in the search results as needed or run your own search and then attach one or more files to the opportunity. The most current version of the file will be available on the detail page for the life of the opportunity.

=Implementation Tips=
*To implement Salesforce CRM Content for your organization, see [https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/content_initialsetup.htm Setting Up Salesforce CRM Content].
*Before creating workspaces, review the files you plan to store in Salesforce CRM Content to determine how many workspaces you need and what content belongs in each workspace. Users are given access to content based on workspace.
*If you have a large number of Salesforce CRM Content users, create a public group and add the group to a workspace rather than adding users to the workspace individually.
*To enable Salesforce CRM Content functionality for leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases, products, or custom objects, add the Related Content related list to the appropriate page layout.
*To send web-formatted content to colleagues, leads, or contacts and associate it with Salesforce records, add the Content Deliveries related list to the page layout for leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases, campaigns, or custom objects. For more information about content deliveries and a full list of implementation tips and best practices, see [https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/content_delivery_about.htm Setting up Content Deliveries.]
*To allow users to publish, edit, and search in any of the Salesforce-supported languages, go to Setup | Customize | Salesforce CRM Content | Settings and click Enable multi-language search and contribute.
*To associate Google docs with a workspace, the Add Google Doc to Salesforce service must be activated for your organization. For more information, see [https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/google_docs_activate.htm Activating Google Docs in Salesforce].
*If you want PDFs to open inline rather than in a separate window, go to Setup | Customize | Salesforce CRM Content | Settings and click Do not open PDFs in a separate window.
*Salesforce CRM Content is available via the Customer Portal and Partner Portal. For more information, see [https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/customer_portal_content.htm Enabling Salesforce CRM Content in the Customer Portal] and [https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/partner_portal_content.htm Enabling Salesforce CRM Content in the Partner Portal].
*For information about using Google Docs with Salesforce CRM Content, see [https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/content_googledoc_contribute.htm Contributing Google Docs to Salesforce CRM Content].
*Microsoft Office 2007 files cannot be previewed on the content details page or in the content-delivery preview player. Also, the Salesforce CRM Content search engine does not support full-text search for Microsoft Office 2007 files.

=Best Practices=
*If you are using the Related Content related list on Salesforce objects, align your custom content fields with the standard and custom fields on the object to increase the accuracy of a "Find Content" search. Clicking the Find Content button on the related list matches content to the fields on the record and displays search results containing the related content.
*To ensure that content is classified consistently, define consistent tag names with your contributors. For example, by establishing tag names at the outset, you can avoid having tags such as "channel" and "channels" in the same workspace.
*Avoid using too many tags. The search engine helps users find specific content, whereas tags enable users to browse and subscribe. Therefore, excessive tagging creates unnecessary clutter.
*To highlight valuable content and make it easier to find, mark it as "featured" on the content details page. Featured content receives a higher priority than similar content in search results, and appears on the Workspaces tab for easy access. To feature content, users must have the Feature Content option checked in their workspace permission.
*If your organization uses Google Docs, encourage workspace members to add their Google docs to a workspace. Including Google docs in Salesforce CRM Content allows users to access all types of content from a single location and apply Salesforce CRM Content functionality, such as votes, comments, and subscriptions, to Google docs.

PRM Best Practices

2009-06-29T22:30:44Z

Salesforce Partners Overview -

←Older revision		Revision as of 22:30, 29 June 2009
Line 8:		Line 8:

	This page contains resources for consultants implementing Salesforce Partners (PRM). It is not an exhaustive listing, but rather a collection of relevant content and best practices to be aware of when designing and delivering a solution based on this product to a customer.		This page contains resources for consultants implementing Salesforce Partners (PRM). It is not an exhaustive listing, but rather a collection of relevant content and best practices to be aware of when designing and delivering a solution based on this product to a customer.
		+
		+	=Implementation Tips=
		+
		+	*Salesforce provides two different portals to help you better manage your partners—the Partner Portal and the PRM Portal.
		+	**If you purchased or enabled PRM after February 2008, you are using the Partner Portal.
		+	**If you purchased or enabled PRM before February 2008, you are using the PRM Portal, unless you explicitly migrated to the Partner Portal.
		+	*Portal users can only log into Partner Portals assigned to their profile. To assign a profile to a Partner Portal, select the name of a portal from the Partner Portal Setup page, click Edit Profiles in the Assigned Profiles section, and select the Active checkbox next to the profile you want to assign to the portal.
		+
		+	A portal user can access all the Partner Portals assigned to his or her profile with one username and password.
		+
		+	You can view the number of users associated with each profile assigned to a Partner Portal on the Users field on the Assigned Profiles section.
		+
		+	*The login URL of each Partner Portal you create contains a unique identifier, such as portalId=060D00000000Q1F. The unique identifier determines the specific portal a user can access. If a user accesses a login URL that does not contain a unique identifier, they are automatically directed to the login URL of the first Partner Portal you created. Note that portal users can only log into a Partner Portal using the portal's login page and not through the Salesforce login page.
		+	*The settings on the following items apply to both your organization and your Partner Portals:
		+	**List views
		+	**Search layouts
		+	**Workflow alerts
		+
		+	=Best Practices=
		+	*Because you can uniquely customize the fonts, colors, email templates, and login message of each Partner Portal you create, you can build a Partner Portal for each partner organization supported by your organization, or for different partner tiers or communities.
		+
		+	Note - JavaScript and CSS code are automatically removed from HTML files used as the portal login message.
		+
		+	*You cannot delete a Partner Portal, but you can prevent users from logging into a portal by deselecting the Login Enabled checkbox.
		+	*You can create multiple Partner Portals that display different tabs for users with the same profile, as long as the profile has access to each object displayed on a tab.
		+	*You can merge accounts that have contacts associated with the same type of portal. For example, you can merge accounts that have contacts associated with a Partner Portal or Customer Portal, but you cannot merge an account that has contacts associated with a Partner Portal with an account that has contacts associated with a Customer Portal.
		+
		+	You must have the "Manage Users" profile permission to merge accounts associated with portals.
		+
		+	*When you enable the Partner Portal, the default portal will be set as Login Enabled. Disable that setting, and re-enable it when the default portal is ready for partner users to login.
		+	*Let your partner users know they can make their channel manager the owner of an object.
		+	*Create a home page layout for your partner users with custom links to frequently used features.
		+	*Customize the Custom Links home page component to include links that your partner users can use, or remove it from the home page layout.
		+	*Partner users cannot set reminders on tasks. Create a process to help them manage their tasks without reminders.
		+	*If you are migrating partner users from the PRM Portal to the Partner Portal, they can log into both portals for testing purposes. To enable partner users to log into both portals:
		+	**Edit the partner user profile and verify that the API Only User permission is not selected.
		+	**Assign that profile to the first Partner Portal on the Partners Settings page.

	=Consultant Resources=		=Consultant Resources=

Salesforce Sites Event Registration Pages (Summer 09 part 3)

2009-06-30T20:37:42Z

Salesforce just launched Force.com Sites and it's free for all Enterprise and Unlimited Edition subscribers! Here's a great intro to Force.com Sites, including some possibilities for driving value to your organization leveraging it's power:

My favorite application of Sites is creating landing pages that directly update responses in Salesforce campaigns. Some advantages of using Sites for response capture on landing pages:

- Fewer duplicate leads

- Cleaner response data

- Secure, hosted, and scalable

Sites minimizes dupe leads by updating the campaign member record directly instead of creating a duplicate lead that has to be merged back to the original lead or contact. Sites is a clean, hassle-free way to create webforms because any picklist option you add in Salesforce is immediately available on the web form. This means if you add an option to a "Product Interest" custom field on campaign member in Salesforce, this product can immediately appear on the Sites pages your prospects and customers see, minimizing maintenance and creating a simple way to keep data clean. Finally, Sites is battle tested against security threats and huge traffic spikes so you can rest easy your customers will have a consistent experience.

Now we'll get into the meat: how to leverage Sites for event registration pages and set up your first page. Using examples from the last post, you can set up workflow rules to email anyone added to a campaign. By the end of this post, you'll know how to include smart links in those emails to drive prospects to your campaign member Sites Event pages, and automatically update responses from those pages such as this example:

http://jdk470.force.com/?id=00v3000000JIrl6AAD

To get there, we'll explore the 3 key pieces to your first site page:

1) Set up your email links to include campaign member Id's in the URL
2) Set up Force.com Sites security permissions to allow access to relevant campaign members
3) Set up your Visualforce page to tie to campaign members

Let's talk about Governors

2009-07-01T22:26:22Z

Are you a new Force.com developer? About to write your first Apex trigger or class? Or already developed some Apex just to run into a governor limit? Want to learn more about governors in Apex?

If so, check out this new technical article that explains what governors are, why they exist, and how they are calculated. The article is intended for architects and developers writing Apex code on the Force.com platform. Here is a brief snippet from the Abstract:

Apex Code is the Force.com programming language used to write custom, robust business logic. Apex is compiled and executed on the Force.com multitenant infrastructure, which is a shared resource across all customers, partners, and developers. Consequently it is important that Apex code uses infrastructure resources efficiently.

This is where Apex governor limits come in. Governor limits are runtime limits enforced by the Apex runtime engine to ensure that code does not misbehave. This article presents an overview of Apex Code governor limits, why they are important, and how to design scalable, efficient Apex code.

If interested in reading the entire article, it can be found here.

Let's talk about Governors

2009-07-02T16:53:25Z

Shared by David
Not the kind of governors you're likely thinking about!

Are you a new Force.com developer? About to write your first Apex trigger or class? Or already developed some Apex just to run into a governor limit? Want to learn more about governors in Apex?

If interested in reading the entire article, it can be found here.

Supercharge your Email Template Merge Fields

2009-07-02T19:02:30Z

I was working with some colleagues this morning who had a requirement to send an email using the email template functionality, but wanted to access data from a grandchild object (so Parent Object-->Child Object-->Grandchild Object). At first glance the UI only allows you to select fields from the Parent or Child object, but fear not --- you can supercharge your email template merge fields with just a little extra effort.

Take the example of a school which has an Enrollments object which is related to Classes via a Master Detail relationship. Classes have a similar relationship with Venues (a class has to be held somewhere), but an Enrollment really shouldn't have any sort of relationship with a Venue (thats the classes responsibility). To make things easier we may model this the Class-Venue relationship in another custom object, we could call ClassVenues:

With our newly discovered superpowers in the Email Template, we can easily traverse the new relationship to send our student all the details they need to make it to class right on time. The trick is writing the merge field yourself. You can use the Available Merge Field picklists as a start, but you have to manually add the grandchild relationship. For this example the following code works great:

{!Enrollment__c.Class__c.Venue__c.Building__c}

Now if only I could get fix the 'dog ate my homework' problem :)

Salesforce Debug Log Parser

2009-07-10T09:25:00Z

For those of you who regularly find themselves writing Apex code, you may find the salesforce debug log output cluttered and difficult to read. At the very least it can be time consuming trying to find the output you're after (unless you've been putting keywords before the output in System.debug) but even then it can take a while.

Well, the good news is that there is a handy free app for parsing the output which has been written in .NET by a guy called Kyle Peterson and amazingly enough it's called the Force.com Debug Log Parser - you can download this tool from here.

You can also see a video of it in action here. Thanks Kyle!

A Comprehensive Look at the Force.com Cloud Platform

2009-07-13T19:33:58Z

This whitepaper provides a bird's-eye view of the Force.com platform and features.

Email isn't old school

2009-07-13T20:27:10Z

With all this focus on new media, we mustn't forget the old - and here's a tech talk to help you remember. Email in particular. It rocks. The world pretty much runs on email. Okay, perhaps a few web services too. But email is still up there!

So it makes sense to know how to use it on Force.com. When I wrote the this article on integration I added email as an integration option. Want to integrate with an old mainframe? Chuck in a few email handlers. Want to integrate with a new human on his palmtop? Chuck in a few email handlers.

And it's not that difficult really. Here's the Apex Code that can serve as the basis of an email handler - something that intercepts incoming emails:

global class HandleWhims implements Messaging.InboundEmailHandler { 
  global Messaging.InboundEmailResult handleInboundEmail(Messaging.inboundEmail email, 
  Messaging.InboundEnvelope env) { 
    Messaging.InboundEmailResult result= newMessaging.InboundEmailResult(); 
    System.debug('from email address:' + email.fromAddress);
    System.debug('email body:' + email.plainTextBody);
    System.debug('email subject:' + email.subject);  
    return result;
  }
}

Just a little configuration (setting up an email address and associating it with the handler) is about all else you need. Of course you can also send email, and more.

We just had a nice little webinar on the topic, Tech Talk: Introduction to the Email Services on Force.com - check it out for an introduction.

7 deadly sins of landing page design

2009-07-14T18:59:00Z

Have you committed one of the "7 deadly sins of landing page design?"

Since it's the page visitors see after clicking your ad, your landing page is one of your most valuable tools. A bad landing page will drive visitors away, while a good one will turn AdWords clicks into customers. This is why we held a webinar on July 1st to expose the "7 deadly sins of landing page design", and explained how to fix them.

Tim Ash, one of our Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants, led this webinar and shared many insights and best practices to help advertisers improve their conversion rates. A recording of the webinar is now available for anyone who was not able to attend.

The recording is also available on the Website Optimizer Youtube Channel, where you can learn even more about improving your conversion rate with website testing.

We hope you will find these resources helpful as you improve your website landing pages to turn more clicks into customers.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew