Day 3 of Suyati’s in-house Salesforce seminar proved the adage that you’re never too old to learn. Watching the grey haired folk in the audience participate enthusiastically might have initially caused a few butterflies to flutter in the young presenters’ stomachs! But, they were put at ease in no time at all. What followed, was an education for everyone involved, with questions and ideas flowing from both sides.
While you’d need to have been there to really get a feel of the atmosphere, we have below a gist of what each of the three young guns dwelt upon.
Reshma, on Relationships, Page Layouts & Search Layouts
No, it’s not about an arranged marriage site!
Relationships
Just as a personal relationship is a two-way association between two people, in terms of relational data, a relationship is a two-way association between two objects. Without relationships, we could build out as many custom objects as we could think of, but they’d have no way of linking to one another.
There are different types of relationship fields, each with different implications. The simplest and most flexible type is a Lookup relationship field, which creates a simple relationship between two objects.
A second type of relationship field, the Master-Detail relationship, is a bit more complex, yet more powerful. Master-detail relationships create a special parent-child relationship between objects: the object on which you create the master-detail relationship field is the child or “detail,” and the object referenced in the field is the parent or “master.”
If we need to create a ‘many to many’ relationship, we have to use a junction object, which is a custom object with two master-detail relationships, and is the key to making a many-to-many relationship. Without this, multiple columns will contain redundant values which is definitely not ideal.
Page Layouts
A page layout controls the position and organization of the fields and related lists that are visible to users when viewing a record. Page layouts also help us control the visibility and editability of the fields on a record. We can set fields as read-only or hidden, and we can also control which fields require users to enter a value and which don’t.
Search Layouts
Search layouts are ordered groups of fields that are displayed when a record is presented in a particular context, such as in search results, a lookup dialog, or a related list. By adding fields, we can give users more information and help them locate records more quickly.
Maneesh, on automating organizational processes without coding. Includes workflows & approvals.
Does not include coffee on your table as you think of it!
Workflows and approval processes in Salesforce are used to make the Salesforce app more functional. A workflow is a set of logical operations that are performed when some specific conditions are satisfied – for example, when a record is created in the app.
The workflow consists of two parts; the workflow rule and workflow action.
1) Workflow rule
The workflow rule is the criterion that triggers the workflow action.
This can be of two types:
a) Satisfying certain criteria b) Satisfying certain formula
2) Workflow actions
The workflow action is the task(s) performed if the workflow rule is satisfied. As per the standard Salesforce app development, could by any of these:
a) Assign Tasks
b) Field updates
c) Email alerts
d) Outbound messages
These actions can make the app automatic.
2) Approval Process
In most organizations employees need the permission of their superiors to change records in some cases. To do this automatically, Salesforce provides approval processes. The approval process has the following steps: a) Entry criteria b) Approval steps c) Approval actions d) Rejection actions.
Neenu, on Salesforce Editions and Types of Sandwiches.
That’s Sandboxes – we were just checking to see if you were alert!
Development and deployment on Force.com takes place in an environment or org, which is nothing but an instance of the Force.com platform. There are 3 types of environments, namely:
• Production Environments which has active paying users, who access critical business data.
• Development Environments where you extend, integrate and develop on Force.com without affecting your production environment.
• Test Environments which are used for testing application functionality, before deployment, or release to customers.
Editions
Now, each environment is based on editions, which are a set of Salesforce features wrapped bundled together in a package. Naturally, as the functions increase, the prices do too. The different types of editions are:
• Contact Manager
• Group Edition
• Professional Edition
• Enterprise Edition
• Unlimited Edition
• Developer Edition
More Information available on:
1, Salesforce Features and Edition Limits
2, Get the world’s #1 sales application
Sandboxes
Salesforce gives you the ability to create multiple copies of your organization, in separate environments which are nearly identical to your Salesforce production organization. The advantage is that each sandbox is completely isolated from your Salesforce production organization, and that the operations you perform in one does not affect the other.
There are three main types of sandboxes:
Developer sandboxes are special configuration sandboxes intended for coding and testing by a single developer. Multiple users can log into a single Developer sandbox, but their primary purpose is to provide an environment in which changes under active development can be isolated until they’re ready to be shared.
Developer Pro sandboxes copy all of your production organization’s reports, dashboards, price books, products, apps, and customizations under Setup, but exclude all of your organization’s standard and custom object records, documents, and attachments.
Full Sandboxes copy your entire production organization and all its data, including standard and custom object records, documents, and attachments.
Salesforce has increased the storage limits for Developer and Developer Pro – Developer sandboxes have increased from 10 MB to a 200 MB storage limit, while Developer Pro sandboxes have increased from 500 MB to a 1 GB storage limit. Full sandboxes continue to have the same storage limit as your production organization.