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Tag: Force.com

[Salesforce / Trailhead] The beginning of your Force.com journey

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On March 20, 2015

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Few days ago the Salesforce team released 4 new Trailhead modules, and I decided finally to have a look at it…with my style.

What is my style?

I may say “all in” or “all or nothing” style.

I decided to do all the modules and see which topics were covered (and how deeply).

With year of Force.com development it’s been quite easy for me to complete in few hours all the modules, but I haven’t earned all the points available (I did some mistakes when answering to questions) and I must admint I also learned something (expecially in modules I don’t play a lot in my job).

After 16 modules I have to say this is a really good starting point to start learning the basics of the Force.com platform, and sometimes the documentation goes deeper than you could expect, covering important aspects that sometimes you find out only after months of “real world” practice.

The Trailhead modules page lists all the modules in alphabetical order, but you can follow the 3 steps on the Trailhead main page to have a better study order.

Recently some cool modules have been added:

  • Process Automation: you learn the basics of process automation and the new Process Builder and Visual Workflows tools, cool ways to get your complex processes up and running in few clicks!
  • Chatter Basics: this useful module teaches the basics of setting up Chatter on your org to improve social collaboration
  • Lightning Components: this is my favorite modulo above all, I love Lightning Components and can’t wait to see them out of the Beta stage. Learn base and advanced aspects of this new powerful framework
  • Visualforce Mobile: learn how to create slick and smooth visualforce pages on the Salesforce1 mobile platform

This is the complete list of available modules:

And (awesomely) these are “can’t wait” upcoming modules:

  • Reports & Dashboards: Build real-time reports and charts to visualize key business metrics
  • Apex Integration Services: Integrate with external apps using Apex REST and SOAP services
  • Asynchronous Apex: Write more efficient Apex code with asynchronous processing
  • Visualforce & JavaScript: Use JavaScript to enhance and customize your Visualforce pages
  • App Deployment: Learn best practices for team app development and lifecycle management

Stay tuned for more modules!

I’m gonna definitely suggest all my Company’s interns to start learning Force.com using Trailhead, a funny and awesome way to learn the Force!

And once for all:

[Salesforce] My favorite Spring ’15 features

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On January 22, 2015

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This is my top 10 list of the Spring ’15 Force.com platform update’s features.

Make Long-Running Callouts from a Visualforce Page

This is a really important feature. Imagine you have big VisualForce pages in which Apex methods, triggered by buttons / links / rerenders, do one or more callouts to external services.

Imagine hundreds of users use that page and the external services go down, thus causing timeouts on the callouts.

This could lead to heavy problems, because there can be no more than 10 long running Apex processes at the same time: this leads to unexpected and horrible output errors.

Using this new feature we can now “asynchronize” synchronous Apex callouts, using the new Connection Apex class, that is used like a callback when the callout has ended.
Basically you create a method split in 2 parts: the first (invoked by a button / link) has the starting callout code and the last receives the results from the callout.
Even if the callout/callouts (you can trigger up to 3 callout a time) fails / go timed out this call won’t count towards the logn running processes.

I’m gonna write down a post to show how this works using HttpRequests and also SOAP requests.

Set Up Test Data for an Entire Test Class

This is an extremely useful feature for large ORGs with hundreds of test classes.

This allow us to write “test setup” methods (new annotation @testSetup) that are called once per test class: when a test method is executed the context has all the objects created in those setup methods (you can have more than one method of this kind, but the execution order is not guaranteed). Each test method execution rollbacks its data at the end, so that the following class’s test method will see the values as if they were just been created.

Deploy Your Components in Less Time

Imagine you have the GO for a deploy in your production ORG but you have to do it at saturday midnight (and test methods requires more than an hour to run!!!!)…this is absolutely not cool!

This feature allow you to send a deploy to production before your deadline, test classes are run during this “freezed” deploy and it stays freezed for 4 days: when you are ready you simply click the “Quick Deploy” button and the components are deployed instantly! Whoooaa this is magic!

Create Named Credentials to Define Callout Endpoints and Their Authentication Settings

You can finally leave all the authentication mess to the Force.com platform and just sit on your screen and simply code you business requirement, magically storing sessions, tokens and whatever it is needed on Salesforce.

You can also use a named credential in a simplyfied way to store callout endpoints.

Business Continuity – Promote Business Continuity with Organization Sync

With Organization Sync you can setup a secondary ORG that you can use when your primary ORG needs some maintenance (e.g. a big release of your developments), giving a 24/7 service availability.

Orgs are synched automatically through a data replication mapping.

I haven’t already tested this feature, but being available on developer Orgs I’ll certainly try it soon.

Visually Automate Your Business Processes

This is the Lightning Process Builder, a cool visual tool that help you automates your business processes, from simple actions to complex combinations.

It seems really awesome but unfortunately it is not available on the pre-release program.
You better see in the next days tens of posts about this new feature!

Lightning Components (BETA)

Lightning components are still in beta and the builder in pilot.
But we have new additions:

  • New Components: brand new base components (such as select input, textarea, …)
  • Namespace Requirement Removed: finally no need to setup a namespace, easing the creation of packages and the deploy across orgs
  • Support Added for Default Namespace: follows the previous point
  • Extend Lightning Components and Apps: like classes, you can extend components and apps
  • Referential Integrity Validation Added: integrity validation has been boosted

New increased limits

There are some new increased limits:

  • Deploy and Retrieve More Components: limit increased from 5000 to 10000 components
  • Chain More Jobs with Queueable Apex: from 2 chained jobs to infinity (except for Developer and Trial orgs where the limit is 5)
  • Make Apex Callouts with More Data: size per callout (HTTP or SOAP) increased from 3 MB to 6 MB for synchronous APEX and 12 MB for asynchronous

Create or Edit Records Owned by Inactive Users

All users can now edit objects owned by inactive Users, before Spring ’15 only administrator could do it!
Believe me, this is really usefull.

Legitimize User Activity using Login Forensics (PILOT)

These are forensics metrics to identify suspicious behavior of users (such as logins from unusual IPs or excessive number of login among the average number).
This is a PILOT program, so you have to explicitly ask Salesforce to be enabled.

As usual, may the FOrce.com be with you guys!

[Salesforce] Practical guide to setup a LiveAgent

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On June 19, 2014

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I’ve created a simple guide to set up a Live Agent on an ORG with a custom console app.
This is the link: Live_Agent_base_configuration.pdf .
This is a really simple guide believe me and no further explaination is given, beucase the only aim is to make Live Agent working.

Let me know what you think!

May The Force.com be with you!

[NodeJS + Salesforce SOAP WS] How to consume a Salesforce SOAP WSDL

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On November 25, 2013

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I was wondering how to consume Salesforce WSDLs with nodejs.
I found Node Soap package (see npm) and I tried to consume a Partner WSDL.
Then I saved the WSDL in the “sf-partner.wsdl” file and played with the methods to get nodeJS speak SOAP with Salesforce.

var soap = require('soap');
var url = './sf-partner.wsdl';
soap.createClient(url, function(err, client) {
   console.log('Client created');
   console.log(client.SforceService.Soap); //all methods usable in the stub
});

If you try to console.log(client) you will see too much data

This is the output: 

{ login: [Function],
  describeSObject: [Function],
  describeSObjects: [Function],
  describeGlobal: [Function],
  describeDataCategoryGroups: [Function],
  describeDataCategoryGroupStructures: [Function],
  describeFlexiPages: [Function],
  describeAppMenu: [Function],
  describeGlobalTheme: [Function],
  describeTheme: [Function],
  describeLayout: [Function],
  describeSoftphoneLayout: [Function],
  describeSearchLayouts: [Function],
  describeSearchScopeOrder: [Function],
  describeCompactLayouts: [Function],
  describeTabs: [Function],
  create: [Function],
  update: [Function],
  upsert: [Function],
  merge: [Function],
  delete: [Function],
  undelete: [Function],
  emptyRecycleBin: [Function],
  retrieve: [Function],
  process: [Function],
  convertLead: [Function],
  logout: [Function],
  invalidateSessions: [Function],
  getDeleted: [Function],
  getUpdated: [Function],
  query: [Function],
  queryAll: [Function],
  queryMore: [Function],
  search: [Function],
  getServerTimestamp: [Function],
  setPassword: [Function],
  resetPassword: [Function],
  getUserInfo: [Function],
  sendEmailMessage: [Function],
  sendEmail: [Function],
  performQuickActions: [Function],
  describeQuickActions: [Function],
  describeAvailableQuickActions: [Function] }

There is a quicker way to obtain this using the console.log(client.describe()) function, but this seems not to work with big WSDL like Salesforce ones (Maximum stack error)
The first move was to login to obtain a valid session id (using SOAP login action):

soap.createClient(url, function(err, client) {
    client.login({username: '[email protected]',password: 'FreakPasswordWithTkenIfNeeded'},function(err,result,raw){
      if(err)console.log(err);
      if(result){
          console.log(result.result);
    });
});

And this is the result

{ metadataServerUrl: 'https://na15.salesforce.com/services/Soap/m/29.0/00Di0000000Hxxx',
  passwordExpired: false,
  sandbox: false,
  serverUrl: 'https://na15.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/29.0/00Di0000000Hxxx',
  sessionId: 'XXXXXXXXXX',
  userId: '005i0000000MXXXAAC',
  userInfo: 
   { accessibilityMode: false,
     currencySymbol: '€',
     orgAttachmentFileSizeLimit: 5242880,
     orgDefaultCurrencyIsoCode: 'EUR',
     orgDisallowHtmlAttachments: false,
     orgHasPersonAccounts: false,
     organizationId: '00Di0000000HxxxXXX',
     organizationMultiCurrency: false,
     organizationName: 'Challenges Co.',
     profileId: '00ei0000000UM6PAAW',
     roleId: {},
     sessionSecondsValid: 7200,
     userDefaultCurrencyIsoCode: {},
     userEmail: '[email protected]',
     userFullName: 'Admin',
     userId: '005i0000000MxxxXXX',
     userLanguage: 'en_US',
     userLocale: 'en_US',
     userName: '[email protected]',
     userTimeZone: 'Europe/Rome',
     userType: 'Standard',
     userUiSkin: 'Theme3' } }

Now the problem was to put the new endpoint and the session id or the next call, and this is the solution:

  //sets new soap endpoint and session id
  client.setEndpoint(result.result.serverUrl);
  var sheader = {SessionHeader:{sessionId: result.result.sessionId}};
  client.addSoapHeader(sheader,"","tns","");

And after that you can make wathever call you want:

      client.query({queryString:"Select Id,CaseNumber From Case"},function(err,result,raw){
          if(err){
            //console.log(err);
            console.log(err);
          }
          if(!err && result){
            console.log(result);
          }
      });

The result var will have all the data you expect from the SOAP response:

{ result: 
   { done: true,
     queryLocator: {},
     records: 
      [ [Object],
        [Object],
        [Object],
        [Object],
        [Object],
        [Object],
        [Object],
        [Object],
        [Object] ],
     size: 26 } }

The fact that you cannot call the client.describe() force us to read the WSDL to know which parameters send to the call.

[Salesforce / Canvas / NodeJS] Set up a minimum Canvas App (NodeJS style)

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On November 4, 2013

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Following the old post [Salesforce / Canvas] Set up a minimum Canvas App (Java style) I’ve decided to put togheter the code I’ve used to talk to a Force.com Canvas App in NodeJS.

For those who can’t wait the whole article, this is the repo (CanvasApp-NodeJS-Base).

Follow this steps to configure an App (something is changed in the last SF releases):

  • Setup -> Create -> Apps -> (Connected Apps) New
  • Fill Conntected App Name, API Name and Contact Email
  • Check the Enable OAuth Settings in the API (Enable OAuth Settings) section
    • Callback URL: put a valid URL (you don’t need it for the scope of this example)
    • Selected OAuth Scopes: select the scopes you want for the NodeJS app acess token to grant
  • In the section Canvas App Settings type:
  • Canvas App URL: the url of the POST action to be called by Salesforce when injecting the session data (e.g. https://my-canvas-app.herokuapp.com/canvas/callback)
  • Access Method: use Signed Request (POST)
  • Locations: choose Chatter Tab (the app will be shown in the Chatter page)

Than you need to enable this app:

  • Setup -> Manage Apps -> Connected Apps -> Your App Name
  • In the OAuth policies select Admin approved users are pre-authorized for the Permitted Users field
  • In the Profiles related list select your profile (all user of that profile are automatically allowed to consume this app)

There are more ways to configure the Canvas App usage, this is the quicker.
Now clone this github repo CanvasApp-NodeJS-Base and create your own app:

$ cd [your test folder]
$ git clone https://github.com/enreeco/CanvasApp-NodeJS-Base
$ heroku create my-canvas-app
$ git push heroku master

The app will be pushed to Heroku (if you are using Heroku 🙂 ) and you will find it listening @ https://my-canvas-app.herokuapp.com.
Remember to use the “https” protocol in the callback URL setting, otherwise the canvas app won’t work correctly when called from Salesforce (using iframes with different protocols makes the browser go creazy).

To make it work you have to set the secret as an Environmental variable (the secret is the Consumer secret field in the App settings).
On Heroku simply type:

$ heroku config:set SF_CANVASAPP_CLIENT_SECRET=XXXXXXXXX

If you access the app outside the canvas this is what you see:

This is what happens in case of error:

This is what happens if all goes well:

The core of this app is the sf-tools/index.js file which handles the decoding of the POST request that contains all the canvas info (such as token, urls, …): have a look at the verifyAndDecode(input, secret) function.
You can then use this token and urls to make whatever call you want to your instance (as long as your user has access to it), but its outside of this post!

I leave you with a picture of a cute cat, this sould bring here a lot more readers.

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