X-Squared On-Demand LLC Blog

Zipcar: CaaS (Car as a Service)

David Schach — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:00:53 +0000

A few weeks ago, I went on a Low Car Diet. No, I didn’t come up with the name; it’s the invention of Zipcar, a growing company with a product that, in these times of rising gas prices, is not only filling a growing demand, but is creating a market for its service.
After speaking to some people at Zipcar, and having rented cars a few times, I have come to realize the following:
In this age of Web 2.0 (and, according to some, Web 3.0), when Software as a Service is growing faster than ever, the on-demand model can be applied to other sectors, creating, for instance, Car as a Service.
OWN NOTHING
Ask anyone who drank the Software-as-a-Service Kool-Aid about in-house servers and you’ll be greeted with a face that looks like someone just took a bite out of a lemon, peel and all. In today’s quickly-evolving Information Technology world, ownership is nothing; rental is everything. How much does it cost to own a file server (including hardware, electricity, air conditioning, salaries for the in-house geeks, space that can’t be used for an office refrigerator, and more) per year? Compare that to the cost of storing files on Amazon Web Services! Compare purchasing a VPN appliance to the monthly cost of certificate-based Single Sign-On products like MyOneLogin by TriCipher. Pooling capital costs and being charged only for what we use is the new model. I don’t want to have to buy a 1TB NAS drive, and then to worry about if it is filling up; I’d rather pay per GB for shared storage, where my information is just as private, and arguably more accessible while being more secure (since nobody can walk into my office and steal my drives).
Cloud Computing is where it’s at. This is the solution to problems caused by using in-house systems and desktop applications inaccessible from any computer outside the office. And Cloud Driving seems to be just as viable a solution to the headache of owning a car and paying for gas, insurance, parking, and maintenance.
Let’s compare Salesforce, the top on-demand software application created by salesforce.com to Zipcar, a leading on-demand driving service created by, well, Zipcar.
MULTI-TENANCY
Any time multiple users are sharing the same system without actually interacting with each other, and especially when they all have access to pooled services but can exist without knowing who their neighbors are, that fits the model of multi-tenancy. I liken it to living in an apartment building with a gym. My assessments pay for elevators, lighting, carpeting, and a doorman. People can pay extra for upgrades such as the gym or the pool. I may never meet most of my neighbors, but they’re there. We may never work out at the same time, but we’re all using the gym. We may all know that the doorman’s name is Jim (mornings) or Calvin (afternoons), but we may never pass before him at the same time.
The same concept applies to Zipcar. I can rent a Volvo, Mini, Volkswagen, Mazda, Ford, Subaru, BMW, and more. There’s even a Mustang Convertible 1.5 miles away, easy accessible by bus. I will likely never run into anyone else renting the car next to mine, though I might because they have as many as eight cars in a single lot near me, and one is a BMW that I’m dying to take out. Every car (not model… every CAR) has a name, which makes renting “Shannon” a bit awkward, but that’s just part of the shtick.
So we’re all sharing amenities, each existing in our own world, paying for basic services in our yearly and hourly fees. What I do in the car when I’m driving it is my business, as long as I follow the six rules: Report damage, Clean up after myself, Leave at least 1/4 tank, Don’t smoke, Return the car on time, and Keep pets in a carrier. Sounds pretty easy.
As long as I follow the rules, I can do whatever I want. Salesforce or a company’s System Administrator can set rules as well, including storage limits, IP address restrictions, security permissions, and more.
ON-DEMAND
Zipcar is on-demand. When you want to rent a car, just go to the website and reserve a car. You can also call their hotline to make a reservation in a snap! Sure, it’s possible that every car under a mile away is unavailable, but as the provider makes system upgrades, system capacity will increase. Sounds just like upgrading a server (or allowing more API calls like, ahem, Twitter should).
With reservations available from any web browser or telephone, Zipcar’s availability actually exceeds that of Salesforce (which requires a web browser or a Blackberry, Treo, or iPhone)! As for timing, a car can be rented on the spot – if I want a car immediately at 3:45pm, the system will let me rent from 3:30pm. Sure, I eat the 15 minutes, but that’s a small price to pay for the convenience.
PAYMENT MODEL
With Salesforce, I pay a subscription fee, plus a fee for any add-ons such as Mobile, a Full Sandbox, etc. Zipcar is similar: I pay a recurring membership fee, and then each car rental is booked hourly. I don’t pay for gas! The car comes with a special debit card that I can use at any gas station; Zipcar tells us to leave the tank at least a quarter full.
Zipcar has two pricing models: One for heavy users, and one for occasional users. (Sounds like Salesforce’s portal pricing model, right?) Everyone pays a $50 yearly fee. Heavy users pay $50 to $125 per month up front, but dollars can roll-over. Higher plans include hourly discounts. Occasional drivers just pay the yearly fee and standard hourly rates, which vary per car model, but range from $9.25 to $11 near me.
Heavy users pay $50 per year and commit to $50 per month in driving fees. Basically, it’s a cell phone plan in that on average, I’m paying $55 per month for car usage annually. I can go over my $50 per month, and that (unlike my cell phone plan!) is billed at the standard rate. The overage charges come in if I return a car late; then I get hit with some serious penalties. This plan also gives 10% off standard hourly rates. Heavy user (and I mean in terms of weight, as this turns out to be a great weight-loss tool, as I’ll describe in a bit) plans are also available at higher monthly commitments and come with rollover miles (hello, Cingular) and deeper hourly discounts.
For occasional users, just pay the same yearly fee and standard hourly rates. No commitment at all. It’s not identical to pay-per-login, as the duration of time spent using the system is part of the pricing, but it’s a standard pay-as-you-go setup.
That all sounds like an on-demand product to me so far.
INTEROPERABILITY
Salesforce has a robust API that enables it to interface seamlessly with other systems. Zipcar has a nice Google Maps mashup of available cars on its website, but it also interfaces with gas pump machines: When I fill up, I use the Zipcar-provided debit card, and I input my membership number. The system knows if I am currently renting a car, and allows me to pump my gas. Otherwise, I assume that it will prevent me from doing so.
SECURITY
This is where Zipcar comes through in a major way: There is an RFID reader in each car, and it is keyed to my membership card only for the hours that I’m scheduled to rent the car. I merely wave my card in front of the reader and the car unlocks. You may wonder what I do for car keys: The keys are always locked in the car! Because the reader will unlock only for me, whenever I make a stop, I just lock the keys in the car and swipe my card to lock all the doors. Zipcar says that this also activates an engine kill switch, so even if someone breaks in and tries to start the car, it won’t work. Does this all sound like two-factor authorization?
Salesforce has a password-protected system, accessible only from a https page. Using the system from an unrecognized computer results in a prompt to send an activation URL to the user’s email address. Additionally, Salesforce uses an API token system, appended after the user’s password, to allow direct API access to data. No token, no access. A nice kill switch!
Clearly, any security system must also be interoperable. Salesforce has SAML single sign-on, and though I don’t think it would be prudent for Zipcar to allow its cars to be opened with anything other than Zipcards, their system clearly must interface with the car’s security, gas pumps/payment computers, a membership list, and probably GPS trackers that I’m sure they have installed in the cars in case anyone tries some funny business.
And that’s just the security we can see. When one of my consulting clients fired a Salesforce user and forgot to deactivate his login, he got into the system (indicated by the Last Login Date on his user record) but they didn’t know what he had done. Salesforce.com could reconstruct his login, including the string he typed into the search box and which record he viewed before logging off. Some of the best security tracking features are ones we don’t know exist until we have a problem and need historical information. Something tells me that Zipcar can tell me where I drove my last few rentals, along with the exact times I locked and unlocked the cars. And that’s fine with me. The as a Service model requires us to trust our providers. I know that salesforce.com is tracking what I do in each org and I know they won’t use that information for malicious purposes. Similarly, when I signed on to the Zipcar program, I knew that they would have some information about me, but I trade that lack of anonymity for the convenience that the Zipcar program gives me. If I were that paranoid, I’d never go to London for fear of being caught on their myriad video cameras. But that’s another article for another day.
ANYONE CAN INNOVATE
Salesforce has the AppExchange, where I can go to download plug-ins that other people have created. But I can also create custom modules of my own within my org. Zipcar doesn’t tell me where to drive or where to park when the car is on my time, so I am free to innovate (hello Web 3.0) as I wish.
No, I’m not going to innovate to the point of installing any upgrades on the Zipcar just down my street, so the metaphor does fall apart at some point.
CHANNEL SELLING
Salesforce provides its referral partners with code to place logos on our websites. If someone uses our logo to create a trial, and eventually signs up as a customer, we get a share of salesforce.com’s revenue. Similarly, Zipcar provides $50 for every person I refer. I can allocate that money between the two of us in any way I want; I can keep it all, can give it away, or we can split it. Not bad!
USER LIMITS FOR THE GREATER GOOD
Nobody likes limitations, but sometimes they have to exist. Salesforce has a governor on Apex calls, on API calls per 24 hours, and sometimes on logins per month. Salesforce also has strict specifications on how Apex code is written and executed. It would be terrible if one person wrote bad code that crashed the system or corrupted someone else’s data.
Zipcar will charge me for any damage I may cause to the vehicle. For that reason, I do a walkaround before every rental, and if there is any damage, all I have to do is report it to a slick automated hotline and I won’t be liable if anything happens.
MAINTENANCE IS INCLUDED
The best part about Salesforce has got to be the included upgrades. And I mean hardware and software. I never pay extra to upgrade anything—when a new version comes out (about three times a year), I get plenty of emails with cool descriptions, and even get tutorials. But I never pay for that. (Compare that to Microsoft Office, which was expensive in 2003 and even more expensive in 2007.) And have I ever had to wonder about the servers? Nope. I don’t care if a given drive or rack needs to be replaced because salesforce.com has a team of people dedicated to hardware maintenance AND another team responsible for maintaining mirrored servers so that if something should happen at one site, everything is still accessible seamlessly to the user.
Zipcar handles all the oil changes and maintenance on its cars. They even have a fleet of bike messengers and trained auto mechanics (super combination) who can zip across town to any car quickly (bringing their own tools) and make on the spot repairs. I guess the included fuel falls into this category as well. Zipcar also bought all the cars itself. If a car needs to be retired, they will buy a replacement, ensuring that the customer has at least a constant (and lately increasing) list of cars from which to choose.
CONVENIENT ACCESSIBILITY
Okay, so it’s hard to compete with Salesforce in the convenience department: I can get into my system from any web-enabled computer using Internet Explorer, Firefox, or (in beta) Safari. Both services make me buy my own internet access, but that goes without saying. Here’s where Zipcar has made some super strides in the convenience arena:
If I’m running late and want to extend my rental, I just call an automated line and it will allow me to do so. Of course, that assumes that the car is available for that time. If not, they’ll tell me how much longer I can keep it. When I reported damage to a car (at my initial walkaround), I got a confirmation email. This is similar to the confirmation emails I get from Salesforce whenever I change my password.
Also along the lines of convenience, it bears reiterating that I can drive anywhere. Some have tried to make the case that a commuter rail system is Transportation as a Service, and that may be true to some, but for me the key is independence. The train goes along its track, on its timetable. My Zipcar goes where I want. Sure, I have to park in front of my building, run upstairs to put away the groceries, and go back to the lot, then walk home, but it’s worth it.
LOCATIONS
Go ahead and remind me that Salesforce is a non-tangible product, so it is accessible from anywhere in its entirety. I fully agree. Zipcars are in specific parking spaces, and in specific cities. They don’t have a strong presence in Los Angeles, but are in Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Claremont, Irvine, and more. There are also Zipcars in San Francisco, Nashville (my hometown), Boston, Columbus, Toronto, and more. They even have cars in London! If someone lives near a Zipcar, then it’s perfect. If not, then not so much. They don’t put cars at airports, as that’s the standard rental companies’ bread and butter, but they put cars all over town.
BRANDING
Marketing is huge. Salesforce has its logo in its applications, which makes perfect sense. Zipcar brands its cars as well. I’m using their cars, so they should get some advertising out of the deal.
The last car I rented, a Mini Cooper, had a Zipcar logo on the passenger door and www.zipcar.com on the back. That was it. Not terribly obtrusive, but nobody’s going to believe that I own a BMW when I pull up in a Zipcar. Keep in mind, though, that I’m not in this to impress anyone—I’m in it for the Car as a Service.
As with most things these days, some benefits were likely not predicted: A guy on the street saw me swiping my Zipcard and asked me what I was doing. We talked about it and he said he’d sign up. Not bad! (Then there was the guy who saw me doing it and proclaimed to his friend (with a brown-bagged bottle in his hand) that this was something new and he was getting it on his car, which was in the shop that day. Yeah.)

THE DIET PARTICULARS
Zipcar had a great idea with the low car diet: I committed not to use my car for a month, and in return they gave me a year’s subscription, $150 in rental credit, a 7-day bus/el pass, and a tour of Wrigley Field. (That last bit was clutch—there’s little cooler than going into the Cubs’ clubhouse, which is also one of two batting cages at the Friendly Confines, and pretending to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” from Harry Caray’s broadcast booth.
Six weeks ago, I decided to try the Wii Fit weight-loss plan. I don’t need to lose a ton of weight, but I wouldn’t mind trimming a bit off the bottom. Part of the Wii Fit product lets me record my other exercising as well, including walking. And that has dovetailed perfectly with the Zipcar program:
Not being able to use my car, and having to schedule car usage in advance (though sometimes only 45 minutes in advance) forces me to consolidate my errands. I used to drive to Best Buy, though it’s (gasp) 0.6 miles away by car. They have a parking lot! There have been times that the weather’s been so hot that I’ve wanted to drive to the local Argo Tea to do configurations outside my home office, but I’ve had to walk. I saved money on gas and parking, AND got good exercise. It’s also nice to keep track of that and to enter it in my Wii Fit log so I can unlock cooler exercises on that as well.
My car is in a valet garage, so whenever I want to use it, I have to call down and ask the guys to bring it around for me. I’ve always felt guilty about that, so it’s always been important to consolidate my errands and to get as much done as possible. How much more so with Zipcar! I’ve become great at writing down a list of things to do, and then assembling everything I’ll need at my front door. If it’s too much to carry, I’ll go get the car (there are 15 within 0.56 miles of my apartment) and bring it back, take my stuff downstairs, and run my many errands. If I need a bigger car, I know I can rent a Honda Element or a Subaru Outback. If I want a smaller one, there’s the Mini Cooper, and many others in between.
I no longer take my car just to pick up the dry cleaning or to buy groceries. No way. Now it’s a huge process of deciding what to do first, second, third, etc. My car doesn’t get the best mileage, so it’s also nice to shift the burden onto someone else’s car for all those other expenses.
Am I getting rid of my car? Probably not. Will I drive it? Probably about once a month, if that. Zipcar is simply too good to give up. But I’m lucky to have low insurance rates, cheap parking (for Chicago), and a car that needs little maintenance. I do, however, have clients in other cities and in neighboring states, and sometimes I go onsite for longer than the three-day maximum allowed by Zipcar. Believe me: If I could get a super deal on a four- or five-day rental, I might change my mind (and at $68 to $80 per day, gas included, my mind might change sooner than I expect). National Car Rental is $41 for a midsize, so I’d have to look at gas prices. Maybe I’d use Zipcar for intracity driving, and National for intercity. We’ll see.

This has turned out to be a combination of a Saas vs CaaS comparison and my personal Zipcar impressions, but I hope that through reading it you not only become as excited about Zipcar as I am, but that you start to see other as-a-Service providers around you.

Technorati Tags: X-Squared On-Demand

Activities Tabs - Enhanced View and One Set of Tabs

David Schach — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:51:35 +0000

What was I thinking? Using something as complicated as a hijacked (from the Console) Task view was bound to have problems when creating an Activities tab.

Let’s restate our goals:

Create a tab that will show Activities, using the Enhanced Lists view.
Don’t have two rows of tabs at the top of the page.

Question: Is there any way to make a view and to specify that we don’t want to see the Sidebar AND the Tabs?

Answer: YES. The answer is Visualforce!

We will use Visualforce’s iframe tag to fool the UI into thinking that it’s displaying a URL other than the one it thinks it’s displaying.

Step 1: Enable Developer mode. Then create a Visualforce page. I called mine Activities, so the URL is [instance]/apex/Activities

Exit this view

Notes on the code:

If you remove the height tag, it defaults to 100%, but that’s in relation to the number of rows in your list. So the Sidebar may be cut off if you have too few rows. Stick with a standard height. I chose 900 because I assume that most screens are 1280×1024 resolution, minimum.
I used 007 (the object ID for Activities), but I could have used 00T (Tasks).
If you click on anything in the page, the URL will remain /apex/Activities. This is because you are technically working within an IFrame. This is the reason for the Exit link.
The code calls the standard stylesheet so that it comes up in Salesforce’s preferred Arial font instead of Times New Roman.
I created a table with one column for the Exit link so that I could color the background of the link the same as the top of a Salesforce page; this is purely for cosmetic reasons.

Now we’ll create a Visualforce Tab:

Setup -> Create -> Tab
Scroll to the bottom of the page
New Visualforce Tab
Select the Activities page from the picklist
Name: Activities
Label: Activities
Choose an icon (I liked the whistle) but keep in mind that it doesn’t matter because we’re using the Events controller, so the page will have the Events green color.
Finish the wizard, and you’re done!

Here are my favorite parts of the setup:

It uses Visualforce.
A standard controller means no Apex classes are required.
The code can be used in any org as-is.
We use a full-sized IFrame to fool the Visualforce page into thinking that it’s displaying something other than a fully customized VF view!

Technorati Tags: Force.com Platform, Visualforce

Convert between Business and Person Accounts (B2B B2C)

David Schach — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:26:10 +0000

I’m a huge fan of Person Accounts (Salesforce’s phenomenal combination of Account and Contact that allows selling B2C–the best example I use is Land’s End, which sells to people). Orgs can use a hybrid model, allowing a company to track its, e.g. partner companies (B2B) and individual customers (B2C).

There is an interesting limitation to Person Accounts: They cannot be converted to B2B via the Salesforce front-end. The record type can only be changed via the API, using a tool like Data Loader or the Excel Connector. Additionally, a B2B can only be converted to a B2C if it has:

One Contact
No Parent Account
Nothing in Reports To on the Contact record

I set out to create a tool that would use the API to convert the record type of a B2B to B2C and back.

And there was a hitch. (There always is.) I wrote javascript buttons to be included on B2B or B2C page layouts, and it worked perfectly in my org. However, I could not upload it to the AppExchange because one cannot create a package that references B2C:

Note: You cannot upload packages that contain any of the following:
• References to person accounts, such as an s-control or custom field referencing person accounts.
• Workflow rules or workflow actions (such as field updates or outbound messages) that reference record types.

(Side note: Why not just require an org to have Person Accounts enabled, and then allow references to B2C?)

Anyway, I can’t upload the package, but I can show the code here.

Create a custom button or link on the Account object. Set it to execute javascript.
Paste the following code into the body and copy the appropriate RecordTypeId where indicated.
Place the button or link on page layouts, and go for it! Remember to put the button to convert to B2C only on B2B page layouts, and vice versa.

{!REQUIRESCRIPT("/soap/ajax/13.0/connection.js")} var AccountObj = new sforce.SObject("Account"); AccountObj.Id = '{!Account.Id}'; AccountObj.RecordTypeId = '0120000000000000'; // Paste B2B/C RecordTypeID sforce.connection.update([AccountObj]); location.reload(true);

Screenshot of code in org.

Technorati Tags: Force.com Builder, Force.com Platform

How to Deploy QUICKLY Between Orgs

David Schach — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:51:06 +0000

I just came across one of the most useful posts on developer.force.com that I have ever seen:

Jesse Lorenz provides full instructions (along with a best-practice) on deploying quickly from one org to another using the Eclipse IDE.

Read it at http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Deploy_Force.com_Applications_Faster. You’ll be glad you did.

[Update: Jesper Joergensen just wrote a super follow-up on deployments in the upcoming Winter 09 release at http://blog.sforce.com/sforce/2008/09/set-up-orgs-4-t.html

Technorati Tags: Eclipse IDE, Force.com Platform

Salesforce Application Name Change to Salesforce CRM

David Schach — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:31:14 +0000

As you can see from these logos, with the Winter 09 release the application Salesforce is now called Salesforce CRM.

To clarify any confusion:

The company is called salesforce.com (no capitalization).

The application is called Salesforce CRM.

The platform is still force.com.

Force.com Logo - Winter 09

SFA Logo 156

Marketing Logo - Winter 09

Ideas Logo - Winter 09

Support Logo - Winter 09

Technorati Tags: Force.com Platform, New Developments, New Features, Salesforce.com

Winter 09 (156) - New And Updated Documentation

David Schach — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:57:36 +0000

More Winter 09 documentation has been released. Scott Hemmeter wrote a post listing some of the pages containing new content, but I wanted to go a bit in-depth on those and some other parts of developer.force.com.

Documentation
This should be your first stop whenever you have any questions about ANYTHING on the Platform. It has sections on Web Services API (formerly just called API, to distinguish it from Metadata API), Metadata API, Apex, Visualforce, AJAX, Office Toolkit, Force.com Migration Tool, IDE, and the Library.

Core Resources
In addition to a super Documentation page, force.com has a new section which contains, well, resources sectioned by the Platform’s service categories: Logic (Apex), User Interface (Visualforce), Database (Objects, formulas, triggers, etc.), Integration (API, REST), Services –What? We now have Services as a Service?–(Workflow), Packaging and Distribution (AppExchange), Development (Metadata), and Tools (IDE, Force.com Builder, Data Loader).

Now that we’ve seen my two favorite pages, let’s look at the content on the Documentation page:

Web Services API - No longer in Prerelease, the 14.0 documentation is finalized for 156. Version 13.0 is still online.
Metadata API - Also no longer in Prerelease, version 14.0 is available. Don’t worry; version 13.0 is still available!
Visualforce - Also no longer in Prerelease. View Online or PDF.

Question: Why “release” the prerelease version when it has things we can’t use in Summer 08 orgs? Seems premature.

Apex - Same story: Version 14.0 is ready, but I can’t find 13.0 online. I guess it doesn’t matter much, except to those of us coding in 154 orgs who might use 156 features.
AJAX - This one is available in 14.0 and 13.0 flavors.

Note: For those of you wondering about all the 13.0/14.0 and 154/156 references, here’s a guide:
With each release, Salesforce CRM (the new name for the application) increments two numbers.
Releases are generally three times a year, and increment the release number by TWO. Yes, we have only even numbers. So Winter 09 is 156, Winter 08 was 150, Summer 06 was 142, etc. Releases are in Winter, Spring, and Summer of each year, named according to the season in San Francisco, the site of salesforce.com’s corporate headquarters. Counting backwards, some say that the original release was 62. I have no idea why that number was chosen. Of note, salesforce.com refers to its org as 62; maybe that has something to do with it. My bet is that salesforce.com has Unlimited Edition, by the way. Just a hunch.
API versions are incremented by 1 each release. There have been some smaller releases, which is why you might find references to #.1 here and there. As you can see, Summer 08 was version 13, and Winter 09 is version 14.
This is my question: Why do we call the release Winter 09 when it is clearly coming out in 2008? I don’t have an answer to that; does anyone?
Winter 09 Main Page
This is my starting point for all things 156, though I wish the links worked. For more information on specific features, download the PDF files in the sidebar of this page.

Technorati Tags: Force.com Platform, New Developments, New Features

Absentee Voting Forms (Necessary for Dreamforce Attendees)

David Schach — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:55:58 +0000

I realized a while ago that Dreamforce would be on Election Day. Somehow it took a while to register (no pun intended) that I needed to fill in an absentee ballot. But where to get one?

Thankfully, there is a website devoted to absentee ballots, http://www.longdistancevoter.org/. Please go to this site and do what is necessary to fulfill your civic duty.

If you want to vote early, which is slightly different, Reed College has a super website on early voting (updated regularly) with information on each state’s policies.

And if I may, I’ll get on my soapbox now: I was born in South Africa, a country where specific groups of people were not only denied the right to vote, but were denied the right to live in certain areas and pretty much every other right that we have in this country. I became a citizen at age 12 and promised my family that I would always do whatever it took to cast a vote in every election I could. Sadly, I broke my promise when I didn’t vote in the 2004 Presidential election. Yes, Kerry carried Illinois, so in retrospect my vote didn’t “matter,” but I still feel bad about it.

Of note, in Australia, not only is it one’s civic duty to vote, but all citizens are REQUIRED to vote. Yes, that’s right. If they don’t vote, they have penalties!

And this year, absentee ballots are predicted by some to be more important than ever.

So please do two things:

Vote. If you’ll be at Dreamforce, vote absentee. Even if you live in San Francisco, if you don’t want to miss a minute of Dreamforce, you can still vote absentee. You can send in your application pretty much anytime in the month of October, and ballots are due, in general, on Election Day.
Join me at one of the Ballots and Beer (my label, not theirs) parties Tuesday night in San Francisco. I’m planning to find the one with the most non-profit customers and consultants, as I bet we’ll all be cheering for the same candidate.

See you at Dreamforce, as none of us will see each other at the polls.

Technorati Tags: Dreamforce

Winter 09 Full Training Orgs

David Schach — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:16:33 +0000

Sure, prerelease orgs are nice, but something’s always lacking. We have to go in and enable all the cool features, which is nice in that we learn them better, but it’s also nice to get to play in a full-featured org. Salesforce CRM (the new name) has had Exercises to teach us what to do, and I’m sure they will again this time…

Meanwhile, I stumbled upon an even better treat: Winter 09 TRAINING orgs. Yes, orgs with tons of data and all the add-ons you could ever want:
Salesforce Content
Customer Portal
Partner Portal
Advanced Currency Management
Custom Fiscal Year
Translation Workbench (and international Apex features)
Outlook Connect 3.2.501 (new version)
Cool orange highlighting of fields I’m editing in the setup area
Recruiting App
QuotePDF App
Bug Tracking
Time Card (??)
A/R Invoice
…AND all the new stuff from Winter09

Where is this? I’ll tell you:
Standard Prerelease org: https://prerelwww.pre.salesforce.com/form/trial/prerelease_winter09.jsp
Premium Training org: https://prerelwww.pre.salesforce.com/form/trial/training_winter09.jsp

Technorati Tags: New Features

Apex - The Basics

David Schach — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:45:02 +0000

Jon Mountjoy has written another super post over at developer.force.com. This one is titled An Introduction to Apex. It goes through some of the basics of the language and provides some examples.

Everyone should read this; beginners will get a better orientation than otherwise available, and experienced Apex developers will probably also learn a thing or two.

Technorati Tags: Apex, Force.com Platform, Salesforce.com

A Super Apex/Visualforce Blog

David Schach — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:00:24 +0000

I recently discovered a blog so chock-full of Apex and Visualforce goodies that I had to mention it.

Sam Arjmandi is a CRM System Analyst/Designer at Open Text in Toronto, and he writes incredible posts sharing some innovative Apex, Visualforce, and AJAX code ideas. He has posts on proper test coverage for Apex (always a difficult topic, and one that salesforce.com has not addressed adequately in its documentation–hint, hint), on actionStatus tags, extensions, controllers, and more.

Check out this blog and subscribe to its feed; anyone even remotely interested in developing on the Force.com platform will find it a huge resource.

Thanks, Sam!

Technorati Tags: Apex, Blogs, Force.com Platform, Visualforce

Salesforce CRM “Locale” Field

David Schach — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:50:36 +0000

Most of the people reading this are probably in the United States, so on our User record, we have Locale set to “English (US).” This has a few effects on how we see Salesforce data, including the Calendar.

I wanted to change the first day of my week to Monday, and to see my weekends on the right-side of the 7-day view. I’ve started doing this on my Google and Outlook calendars, so why not be consistent? To do this, I changed my Locale to “English (United Kingdom).”

There’s a catch (there always is!): My dates are now reversed. D’Oh!

Time will tell if I have any other major changes to the org. I don’t mind British spellings (colour vs. color) — though I’ve found the word “color” three times since I switched. The org currency will remain US Dollars, as that is set elsewhere, in the Company Profile.

So what will I do, on the whole? I need to decide if the date format is more or less important than the week format. I’ll try out this UK thing… and will decide later.

Technorati Tags: Force.com Builder, Salesforce.com

X-Squared at Dreamforce 2008

David Schach — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:38:10 +0000

Please be sure to register for sessions at Dreamforce.

And DEFINITELY don’t miss my session!

Wrangle Data & Pump up the Configuration
“I’m administering Salesforce. I’ve learned the ropes. Now I want to get great!” In this session, we’ll review the latest insights and subtlties that top Salesforce consultants have learned on the front lines. We’ll focus on data and configuration to help cut the time you spend massaging data. You’ll also learn how to implement tricky config quirks you never thought possible.
Speaker: Ezra Kenigsberg, SALESFORCE.COM
Speaker: David Schach, X-Squared On Demand LLC
Date: Monday, November 3
Time: 11:45 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.

I’m on the Administrator track - we’ll be providing tips for configuring your org implementation and optimizations, and for ensuring that things remain smooth as you move forward as a Super Administrator.

Technorati Tags: Dreamforce, New Developments

Upcoming Plans

David Schach — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 08:03:50 +0000

This is my first blog post since Dreamforce 2008, and I had an amazing time. Hello to everyone I met, and hello to all the people that I said I’d meet - but couldn’t. I left Dreamforce and came to Sydney to visit my family, and am writing this blog post sitting on a deck chair under a setting sun, listening to my niece and nephew play nicely.

This blog post is partly an announcement of X-Squared’s upcoming plans and projects, and partly a way to hold myself to my word. It is said that while managing the Yankees, Joe Torre tried to quit many times, until someone bet him $1000 that he couldn’t quit… and told everyone he knew about the bet. Clearly, $1000 is small change to Torre, but the pressure of the whole world knowing his plan to quit helped him quite a bit. So here is X-Squared On Demand’s list of projects and plans (outside of the standard billing work for our amazing clients):

Jon Mountjoy suggested that I pick one Salesforce development feature and learn it completely instead of making the mistake of trying to learn everything and doing it all poorly. I chose Visualforce. All my side projects from now on will involve Visualforce to some degree.

Lookup to Picklist: I’ve always been interested in lookup fields and have written some interesting implementations that use error messages and custom buttons to simplify and focus allowed values for lookups. Here, I plan to present the user with a list of all the target records available and to present them in a picklist. (Of course, if there are more than 50 records, I will leave the field as a lookup.)
Filtered Lookup: I have the code for a filtered lookup that utilizes a three-page wizard to choose the proper record for a lookup, but I want to simplify this to allow an administrator to limit a lookup to one Record Type or any other hard-coded filter. Then I’ll use a simplified wizard to enhance that feature, which would basically be like using the lookup filters in Enhanced Lookups currently available in the standard UI.
NonProfit EventForce using Google Sites: We started this project at Dreamforce 2008, and I have a non-profit client who would like a tool to allow registration for various kinds of events. This is a super opportunity to expand upon this hackathon project. Colin Loretz has agreed to help on this, and Steve Wright of Salesforce.com Foundation has offered to provide a salesforce.com technical resource if we make the code open-source. I told Steve that in my mind I was writing the code for the Foundation, and that the Foundation could do whatever it wanted with the code. So keep an eye out for this in the next month or two.
Airport Codes to Full Name of the airport when entered into a field, using Visualforce.
SIC to NAICS: I have NO idea why Salesforce CRM is so attached to SIC codes–after all, the government has completed its changeover to NAICS codes. I plan to use the existing conversion charts provided by the government to allow orgs to convert their data from SIC to NAICS.
Google Maps as a Data Enrichment Tool: Input the ZIP Code, and Google Maps will return a city/state. Or input the Street and City/State, and Google Maps will return the ZIP Code. Sorry, DemandTools and Postcode Anywhere, this might cut into your profit margin.
Drop.io for AppExchange: I love drop.io as a file sharing and storage tool, and with the release of their API–and Ron Hess’s explanation of his XMLDom Apex Class, it may be time to create a nice app allowing 100MB of storage per record in Salesforce CRM. It might require a couple of hacks before it can be used for more than standard objects, but this will likely be my ongoing work in progress.
Use Amazon EC2 Windows to put the Workbench in the Cloud.
And finally, I will spend the next year making a list of everyone I want to meet at Dreamforce 2009, and will find a way to see everyone there!

There are probably many more ideas sketched on napkins and pads of paper around my office, but this is a beginning list of projects I’m most passionate about. If anyone would like to help with any, please let me know!

Technorati Tags: Force.com Platform, New Developments, Visualforce, X-Squared On-Demand

Salesforce Order of Execution

David Schach — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 09:25:43 +0000

I came across this page in the Apex documentation and wanted to share it with everyone. So many people have asked about this in the past, so it seems a good idea to publicize it:

http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_triggers_order_of_execution.htm

Triggers and Order of Execution

When a record is saved with an insert, update, or upsert statement, the following events occur in order:

1. The original record is loaded from the database (or initialized for an insert statement)
2. The new record field values are loaded from the request and overwrite the old values
3. All before triggers execute
4. System validation occurs, such as verifying that all required fields have a non-null value, and running any user-defined validation rules
5. The record is saved to the database, but not yet committed
6. All after triggers execute
7. Assignment rules execute
8. Auto-response rules execute
9. Workflow rules execute
10. If there are workflow field updates, the record is updated again
11. If the record was updated with workflow field updates, before and after triggers fire one more time (and only one more time)
12. Escalation rules execute
13. All DML operations are committed to the database
14. Post-commit logic executes, such as sending email

Additional Considerations

Please note the following when working with triggers:

* When Enable Validation and Triggers from Lead Convert is selected, if the lead conversion creates an opportunity and the opportunity has Apex before triggers associated with it, the triggers run immediately after the opportunity is created, before the opportunity contact role is created. For more information, see “Customizing Lead Settings” in the Salesforce online help.
* If you are using before triggers to set Stage and Forecast Category for an opportunity record, the behavior is as follows:
o If you set Stage and Forecast Category, the opportunity record contains those exact values.
o If you set Stage but not Forecast Category, the Forecast Category value on the opportunity record defaults to the one associated with trigger Stage.
o If you reset Stage to a value specified in an API call or incoming from the user interface, the Forecast Category value should also come from the API call or user interface. If no value for Forecast Category is specified and the incoming Stage is different than the trigger Stage, the Forecast Category defaults to the one associated with trigger Stage. If the trigger Stage and incoming Stage are the same, the Forecast Category is not defaulted.

Technorati Tags: Apex, Configuration, Force.com Builder

Project: Lookup to Picklist

David Schach — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:56:37 +0000

In the first installment of post-Dreamforce projects, I present a mechanism to present the user with all available Lookup options in a picklist. This should simplify some Visualforce pages. (Credit to the Developers Guide from the new post-Dreamforce Library.)

The key to the code is the ability to customize the SOQL statement to focus as much, or as little, as the developer would like. Though the code I provide makes no limit on the number of records returned, I encourage developers to limit the select statement as seen fit.

VF Page:

Extension:
Note the SOQL query in Line 12 (below) that defines which records are included in the picklist. You can include WHERE and LIMIT statements to get the picklist down to a manageable number of items.

public class ChildExtension {

private final Child__c child;

    public ChildExtension(ApexPages.StandardController controller) {
        this.child = (Child__c)controller.getRecord();
        }

    public List PositionOptions {get
        {
        List parents = new List();
        for (Parent__c prt : [select name from Parent__c pt])
            parents.add(new selectOption(prt.id, prt.name));
            return parents;
        }
    private set;
    }
}

Because the parents List in the extension sends an ID to the application, it can successfully create a record with the parent Name in the picklist, but the ID in the background. You can also substitute a different field for Name: If you prefer, put a contact’s email address or anything else. Try it out!

One more thing: This is an easy segue into another project, which will be a way to use the traditional lookup interface but to pre-filter the records available in the lookup.

And because I put this in every post: There’s a catch. (There always is.) I’m sure that somewhere in there, Salesforce would prefer that we not create a picklist of a few hundred items. So please feel free to test the limits of this visualforce method, but please be prepared to filter your SOQL query.

On a separate note, I just had lunch with John Rotenstein aka The Enforcer, who already put up a photo of our time in his office. (I think the pirate logo was an accident, but it does add to my sinister persona, no?)

Technorati Tags: Configuration, Dreamforce, Projects, Visualforce, X-Squared On-Demand

Project: Change Owner Button in Visualforce

David Schach — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:13:15 +0000

Salesforce Labs has put out a series of Mass Action packages on the AppExchange. There is Mass Transfer Opportunity Owner (uses AJAX), Mass Update Contact Addresses (AJAX), Mass Update Opportunity Owner, Mass Update Opportunity Close Dates, etc. All of these are “thick client” tools, meaning that data must be loaded onto your computer, altered, and then uploaded back to Salesforce.

Ron Hess released a super bit of code, found in the Visualforce documentation and elsewhere, to Mass Update Opportunity Stage and Close Date. It could, theoretically, be expanded to other fields as well. This got me thinking about doing so with other objects.

A while ago, I took the code for the Mass Delete button and altered it to change the owner of the selected records to the User clicking the button. It was like an Accept button, but I could use it for any object. Actually, it wasn’t as easy as that. I had to make one button for each object, and maintenance was a pain–whenever I created a new object, I needed to clone my code.

Drawing upon some code I found in the Developers Guide, I have written a Visualforce page to mass-change the owner of all selected records to any active User in Salesforce. Yes, it only works with Contacts for now, but my next step will be to use Dynamic Apex to pass the sObject name to the page and its extension/controller, allowing me to reuse one bit of code for multiple objects. We’ll see how it goes. But in the meantime, enjoy this page that lets you perform a search, check which records you want to transfer, and then input a User. I’ve tested it with 50 records at once, so that should suffice for most uses.

VF Page:








New Owner






Contact Name

{!j.FirstName} {!j.LastName}


Account Name

{!j.Account.Name}


Current Owner
{!j.Owner.Name}

Button:
Go to Setup -> Contact -> Buttons and Links
Create a new button, set it to execute in the current window with sidebar and header, and set it to call a Visualforce page. Select the page you just created. Then add the button to Contact Search Layout and to any Contact related lists you like.

Voila!

Technorati Tags: Projects, Visualforce

Inline Visualforce Page Layouts!

David Schach — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 23:42:20 +0000

This is huge news!

We’re all used to using inline S-Controls, dragging and dropping them into page layouts. And the entire Salesforce community has been spending tons of time recreating page layouts in Visualforce, just to edit one small piece of a page.

As an example, how would you implement the example at developer.force.com: Visualforce Dynamic Edit Page? You would do it the way it was explained in the blog post!

Well the rules of the game have changed.

As long as you use a Standard Controller, you can now place Visualforce pages IN regular page layouts!

Inline Visualforce Page Layout screenshot

The article was written by Sati Hillyear, who is also an expert on the License Manager Application. Check it out!

Technorati Tags: Force.com Builder, New Developments, New Features, Visualforce

X-Squared Featured in ITA Newsletter

David Schach — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:15:00 +0000

This week, X-Squared On Demand was featured in the Illinois Technology Association’s Industry Weekly newsletter ITA Member Q&A.

Thank you to the ITA for featuring us!

Technorati Tags: X-Squared On-Demand