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Developer Preview Releases for the Google Visualization API
Dreamforce 2008 brought many exciting new features from salesforce.com, both on the CRM/front-end side and the Force.com platform/back-end side. One of the favorites was the announcement that salesforce.com had released a Google Visualization code share project. Google has invited developers to participate in Developer Preview Releases for the Visualization API.
It looks like a pretty cool way to work on RESTful integrations while making some pretty pictures for your users.
For those unfamiliar with the Salesforce/Google Visualization toolkit, developer.force.com has a great introduction.
Google Docs Now Has Templates for Google Apps
I use templates for most of my documentation–it’s just easier to write a ROF or a configuration plan when all the standard information is already there. Up to this point, short of using Salesforce Content or DreamTeam, I haven’t seen many options for version control through Salesforce. Until now.
Google Docs has templates, and those of us using Google Apps with our Salesforce org (which should be almost everyone, since it’s free and easy to use) can design company-wide templates. This, combined with Google Docs’ super collaborative features, should make things much easier for consultants.
Here’s my wishlist for this feature: Use the Google-Salesforce Toolkit to create a spreadsheet with each worksheet representing an object and each row a field. (It would probably use a Describe function, etc.) Include columns for things like label, name, length, type, picklist values, etc. I don’t know how to code it myself, but it would be awesome to use. If we had one for a fresh, pristine org as a template, then we could use that for requirements-gathering with clients, creating the template in Google Docs and then doing the configuration based upon that spreadsheet.
Google Releases Data APIs Java Client Eclipse Plug-in
Google just released its Google Data APIs Java Client Eclipse Plug-in, which seems to have great possibilities for developing in Google. Combined with the Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs, it could go even further.
We’d like to see triggered, bidirectional updates between SFDC Calendar and GCal, and between SFDC Contacts and GContacts. Perhaps this will make it a reality, removing the need to use a third-party hybrid application to keep data synchronized.
On a related note, thank you to Salesforcewatch.com‘s Mark Mangano for his mention of my scoop when tweeting about the Force.com Toolkit for Data APIs the day before it was made official.
