Dreamforce is just around the corner and Arrowpointe will be there.  There are a number of ways to learn about Arrowpointe’s apps and also to contact Scott Hemmeter.

• Arrowpointe has a Dreamforce booth in the Expo.  Find it at…

• Scott is presenting in the “Advanced Force.com Code (Apex) Development and Performance Considerations” session. Several opportunities to attend.
  • 1:15pm on Monday, December 6 at Cloudstock (Moscone West)
  • 3:45pm on Tuesday, December 7 at Dreamforce (Moscone West 2003) (follow in DF Chatter App)
  • 11:00am on Thursday, December 9 at Dreamforce (Moscone West 2004) (follow in DF Chatter App)
• Follow Scott Hemmeter in the Dreamforce Chatter App
• Follow Arrowpointe in the Dreamforce Chatter App
• Follow @arrowpointe on Twitter

Dreamforce looks to be very exciting and full of good information.  Whether you are a customer, developer, partner, prospective customer, journalist or just a techie at heart, there is content for you at Dreamforce.

If you are attending the show and have not yet gotten involved in the Dreamforce Chatter app, be sure and participate in that.  It has already changed the pre-conference experience and added to the excitement significantly.

See you there!

Share

Dreamforce is just around the corner.  If you are already registered, be sure to visit the Attendee Portal to create a calendar of the sessions to attend.  Also, if you are so inclined, it’s a great opportunity to get certified.  Salesforce is offering a voucher for a free certification exam sitting ($200 value). Go here for more information.

One session you won’t want to miss is the one I am speaking at!

Enhancing Your Force Platform Apps with Google Geo & Maps APIs
You’ve seen basic Google Maps mashups, but did you know there are new API capabilities that support Flash-based maps, Google Earth, geo-coding, and other advanced visualizations? Join experts from the Google Geo API team as they show you how to implement new types of geo-enabled Force Platform apps.

Wednesday, November 5
11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Presented By
Ron Hess, Salesforce.com
Billy Rutledge, Google Inc.
Ossama Alami, Google Inc.
Scott Hemmeter, Arrowpointe Corp.

It is on the Tour De Force track.  In that session, I will be making an exciting announcement. If you are familiar with Arrowpointe Maps, you can probably guess what that announcement will be.

Arrowpointe does not have a booth this year, but I will all around the convention, primarily attending the developer track sessions.  If you would like to try and meet up, contact me.  If we don’t have each other’s contact information, please submit your’s here.

Share

The ADN Sessions from Dreamforce are online now. The videos show what the session attendees saw on the screen (presentations and demos) rather than just showing a speaker talk. This will make watching them online much more meaningful than how we had to do it after last year’s Dreamforce (where we watched the presenter talk, but couldn’t see the screen).

I presented in the PHP Session which is located here. I presented on Web to Lead Spam Filtering. The table of contents is a little messed up on the video. My part starts toward the end of the PHP Overview section.

Share

I was pretty busy at Dreamforce this year and didn’t take any time to blog or even Twitter. I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the MapQuest booth to market Arrowpointe Maps. Much thanks to MapQuest for giving me that opportunity. Doing this really gave me a chance to see how Dreamforce is for lead generation and sales. It was great for lead generation and now it’s up to me to generate the sales.

For those looking to get the inside scoop on Dreamforce, start with the links below. From these, you will get your info and plenty more links to dig in further:

• Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce Sessions Pages -See the videos! I will be doing this for sure since I missed most of the sessions. Many are already posted.
• Salesforcewatch.com’s Dreamforce 2007 Posts
• CRM FYI’s Dreamforce Posts

In no particular order, here are some of my key takeaways from the show:

• Salesforce is really pushing the envelope on creative ways to better their platform and provide capabilities for development. Once us developers see this new functionality, we want it NOW and we already want it to do more, but it will take some time and we have to be patient. It’s no small task to roll this stuff out. Congrats to all at Salesforce that has developed (is developing) these features!
• Initially, the Visualforce functionality (when coupled with Apex code) will find most of its use in internally developed applications rather than partner apps. This is due to Apex Code’s requirements to work from an Enterprise WSDL rather than the Partner one (for now). Partner apps will need to rely on the SOA components to make callouts for things that require more dynamic logic and we also need to wait for Apex Code to be distributable via the AppExchange to all types of Orgs. I imagine this is only a matter of time.
• Adobe Flex rules. It’s next on my developer agenda.
• I had a dinner with some Salesforcers and fellow bloggers. I was able to let some influential people at Salesforce know my ideas for the platform and I felt they were sincerely listening, which was great.
• MapQuest is working hard on their platform and will be releasing some very impressive new functionality soon and getting developers more on board with their API.
• It was great to be given a “Developer Hero” award during the Platform State of the Union break-out (Steve Andersen and Mike Farrington got one too). Here’s what it looks like:
  
• The Force.com Cookbook is recommended reading for Salesforce developers. It has good code samples. Reading it made me realize how much I don’t know.
• Working a booth all day is very exhausting
• It’s nice to finally get home

Share

Dreamforce is just around the corner. Jeff Grosse create a Jaiku channel for Dreamforce  that sounds like it’ll be the easiest place to stay up to date on happenings. That feed consolidates a bunch of feeds (mine, Salesforcewatch, CRMFYI, Flickr stuff, Twitters, etc.) in one place. I will blog what I can, but will more likely be using Twitter  during the show. After it’s all said and done, I hope to create a summary post like I did last year.

This year, my primary focus at the show is marketing Arrowpointe Maps. Arrowpointe Maps is an on-demand mapping platform that facilitates a conversation between Salesforce.com & MapQuest allowing for easy deployment of mapping capabilities in your organization and providing end-users a simple means for mapping their data. Arrowpointe Maps is configurable and can be tailored to your organization, so that your users can work with their information in a meaningful way.

MapQuest has invited me to participate in their booth and Arrowpointe Maps will be a showcase application for them at Dreamforce. I will be spending the majority of my time in the MapQuest booth. If you’d like to talk about Arrowpointe Maps, my Salesforce.com services, other Arrowpointe products, or just want to say hello, please stop by the MapQuest booth. That will be the easiest place to find me.

I am using OpSource to host Arrowpointe Maps and I will be spending an hour with them in their booth on Tuesday from 2 – 3pm. They are one of the 2 certified hosting partners for AppExchange apps.

I am speaking in the Developing on Salesforce Using PHP session. I will be going over the Web-to-Lead Spam solution I created that integrates with Akismet, a spam detection service. Nick Tran, the creator of the PHP Toolkit, and Mike Simonds, a PHP developer who recently created PHP replication scripts for Salesforce, will be speaking too. That session is on Tuesday at 3:45pm.

Please say hello if you see me walking around or stop by the MapQuest booth to find me more easily at the show. I look forward to meeting lots of you at the show!

Share

I have created a Twitter account for Arrowpointe. Follow it at http://twitter.com/arrowpointe. A direct RSS feed can be found here.

This will be an informal line of communication. I have it hooked up to my IM, so I am more likely to post nuggets of info about Salesforce.com as I am learning it rather than saving things for a longer post or, perhaps, forgetting to post them. It will probably be relatively active during Dreamforce too. Use of it will probably evolve a little as I get used to this mini-blogging thing.

My last 5 “tweets” also appear on the right-hand side of this blog.

Share

I came across this on the forums. I guess this was a video played at the May 21 Developer’s Conference. Pretty funny.

Watch below or go to the YouTube page.

Share

The Dreamforce website is up and running at http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/ or http://www.dreamforce.com/. I would expect it to be as interesting as last year. At that time, we should be getting close to GA for Apex Code, which I hear is scheduled for December 2007.

The ADN session is called “Developers @ Dreamforce” and information on it can be found at http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/developer/.

Register before July 16 and receive $100 off the conference fee. Pre-July 16, the fee is $899. Afterwards, it’s $999.

See you there!

Share

As of this moment, I will not be able to attend the May 21 developer conference. If you will be attending and are interested in blogging about it on this blog, post a comment below or use the contact form to let me know . I’ll get in touch with you to discuss. If all goes well, I’ll set you up with an account on this blog during the conference.

I am looking for someone that can be objective in their analysis (i.e. not someone trying to promote their own products or overly promote/bash Salesforce). However, if you do it, I’m happy to introduce you on this blog and give you some space to promote what you do.

If you don’t have a Salesforce blog now or are thinking about starting one, this could be a good opportunity to get your feet wet and get yourself known by the community.

Share

The Google Enterprise Blog has a post announcing that they will be presenting on mashing up Google Apps (Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets) with Salesforce.com at the upcoming May 21 Developer Conference.

This should be pretty interesting for those interested in mashups. Google Apps is a very popular service for hosting your domain’s mail & calendar. It also includes a start page (which barely works) and access to Docs & Spreadsheets through your domain account. More services should be added in the future and the APIs will only get more comprehensive.

Google’s post can be found here.

Share

Here is my summary of the more developer-related topics from the AppExchange Developer Network (ADN) @ Dreamforce tracks.

To make sure you get the real scoop, I recommend you watch the session videos as they get posted. All are located in the Dreamforce Guide at Successforce.com. Here are some of the key ones:

• AppExchange State of the Union: An overview of changes in all major components of the platform. If you watch only one, watch this one. You’ll get a sense of everything, but won’t dive in very deep.
• Wielding Workflow: Provides a detailed review of the new workflow features in Winter 07
• Next Generation Web Services: New API features
• Future of Composite Apps: See examples of composite apps (aka mashups)
• Next Generation Native Apps: All the new things a developer can do without writing any code
• APEX: What is it? Why was it made the way it was? Craig Weisman (father of APEX) and Simon Fell (father of the API) are the presenters.
• Packaging It Up: Latest Enhancements for App Distribution: Learn about the enhancements to packaging applications. This focuses on a new concept called “Managed Packages”

Data & Native Framework

All of these are things built right into the Setup area and require no coding to perform.

Workflow

Approvals
A really good approval process is coming out. You can do approvals on any object including custom ones, but excluding Tasks & Events. This will allow a record to be sent into a configured approval process. There are a multitude of configuration options that apply to implementing approvals. Just know it will be quite flexible.

Field Updates
Have you ever wanted to automatically update a field based upon a condition? For example, when an Opportunity is set to “Closed Won”, change the record type to lock down the record. Or automatically change the owner of records that meet certain criteria. You can do this with Field Updates.

Outbound Messages
Send a strong typed XML document to an end point. You specify the fields to include and the criteria by which the message should be sent. You also have the ability to generate a WSDL for use in developing the end point. You can also include the Session ID with the message so that the end point could leverage that session and manipulate other Salesforce.com data.

Data

Validation Rules
You can now setup validation rules that stop a user from saving a record. For example, create one to validate that discount percentages fall within a certain range. Or validate that the Country value entered matches up against a list of valid countries (since the country field is not a picklist).

Sharing on Custom Objects
Woo hoo!! I have been asking for this one. This capability is a big step towards being able to truly build applications on the Salesforce platform that someone might purchase even if they don’t have CRM.

Field History Tracking
Keep an audit trail of field-level changes on a record.

Self-Relationships
I didn’t catch too much about this, but it made it sound like the ability to do hierarchical relationships within an object. Similar to the parent-child account relationship.

Queues on Custom Objects
Just like on Leads and Cases, custom objects will allow a record to be owned by a queue instead of an individual owner. This, along with the Sharing on Custom Objects, add a lot to record-level security in Salesforce.

API

SOQL

Relationships
This is great. You can now pull, with 1 query, what used to require multiple. It is similar to joins in SQL.

• M:1: Include information from a related record. For example, you can now query the Contact object and reference fields that Contact’s related Account record.
• 1:M: Embed sub-queries in your SOQL statement to return the records that would normally appear in the related lists. For example, in a single query you could return an Account record, all its Contacts, all its Opportunities, all its Cases, etc.

It will be interesting to see how this affects the API as a % of all Salesforce.com traffic. Today it’s touted as 40% of all traffic. This change, especially, will eliminate a lot of calls to the service.

ORDER BY
You can now (finally!) order your resultset. I believe you can only order by 1 column, but don’t quote me on that.

IN
Use IN to simplify your WHERE clause, like in SQL.

COUNT()
Simply return a record count from a query. I believe this will only be available in the main query, not in the sub-queries.

LIMIT
Use this statement to limit the number of records to be returned. This can be used in the sub-queries too.

TOLABEL
This will utilize the Translation Workbench to translate the values that get returned so that you can create Internationalized interfaces.

forceAMP will have a new tool out called QueryAmp that will allow for advanced SOQL modelling with the resultsets being put into Excel. Kind of a combo of the Excel Toolkit and the .NET Explorer. Be on the lookout, this will be handy. Will probably be for a fee.

UPSERT with Relationships

Data Loader will support this. When loading a record into the database, you can reference the External ID value rather than the ID fields. For example, if your Account uses a custom DUNS_Number__c field as an External ID, you can load Contacts that reference that DUNS Number in order to link the record to the appropriate Account. Today, you would need to do a lookup in the Account object, return the ID and use that.

Merge API

There is a new merge call in the API. It is only supported on Accounts, Contacts and Leads. A new field is included in this API called masterrecord.

Other

• QueryAll: Use this method to query and also include records from the Recycle Bin.
• Undelete: You can undelete records from the Recycle Bin through the API.
• describeLayout performance enhancements
• New Objects Exposed
• Email Header: In places where the system would be sending people emails (user creation), you can invoke this in the API

Composite Framework

Inline S-Control
Lots of buzz around this. You can now embed your s-Controls into a Page Layout. There will be LOTS of development going on in this area.

Buttons
Before you could add custom links to the application to go to a URL or run an s-Control. Now you can do this with custom buttons. In addition to going to a link or running an s-Control, this can also be used to run APEX code.

You can also override the standard buttons. For example, change the new opportunity button to run custom code of yours. This will impact any time an Opportunity is created in the UI.

Packaging & Distribution

There’s a lot to talk about here that I don’t have the energy to write about. Check out the Packaging It Up: Latest Enhancements for App Distribution session video when its released. In short, there is a new concept called “Managed Packages”. This works in conjunction with an app called the License Manager. Managed Packages allow you to seamlessly upgrade your apps for your customers. The License Manager allows you to see who downloaded your app and what version they are on.

Also, you will have the ability to package up new objects like Custom Buttons and Custom Fields on Standard Objects.

APEX

I suggest you visit http://www.salesforce.com/landing/apex.jsp for the real information. Here’s a summary of what I learned about it.

• APEX will be launched in beta in Q1 2007
• You will have the ability to create “a discrete piece of code written in the APEX language and executed by the APEX platform”
• Runs natively on the server and is much faster than AJAX
• Interacts with the UI via buttons & events (triggers).
• Interacts with data via the API.
• Java-like syntax for creating logic and manipulating data
• Language scope similar to stored procedures
• “Compiled” and strongly typed. Basically, your code is validated before it is allowed to be executed.
• The “compile” process will keep metadata about your code so that it can warns/stops you from deleting a field referenced by APEX code.
• Transactional. Supports COMMIT and ROLLBACK calls. Does not support nested transactions.
• You will have the ability to “add verbs” to the API. Basically, you can write code in APEX and expose it as a Web Service. Maybe you want to have a verb called “NewWithDeDupe” that checks for duplicates before insert. Go for it.

Other Stuff

• A new PHP toolkit will be available when Winter ’07 is released
• A new Eclipse plug-in using Eclipse 3.2 will be available
• New Data Loader to support Upsert changes

Share