Salesforce: Some Insights

Hi all, as evident from the topic, I'm hereby sharing a small list of configuration options available within Salesforce using which a non-programmer can also develop functionalities within salesforce. The best part of using these features is that you save time, save development/ testing effort, deploy and manage it easily. Standard/ Custom Objects Objects a.k.a. table (for database junkies) a.k.a. entity are used to store data within Salesforce. We can use out of the box objects for e.g. Account, Contact, opportunity, lead etc. (along with their powerful features) or create our own custom objects to store required information for e.g. invoice, purchase orders etc. Custom fields As with any entity, you need to store its attribute, similarly in salesforce an object can have fields. Out of the box objects have standard fields. Additionally, custom fields can be added to standard and custom fields. Following are few special types of fields that can be added to enrich product...

What? Alphanumeric fields which would contain data in encrypted form. Mostly to be used in case of government regulations, as they have processing overhead and certain limitations for e.g. these fields cannot be unique, indexed or have default values. Also, there is a limit of 175 characters. Where? Custom encrypted fields can be be used in various applications and can be displayed on page layouts and can be even included for validations via validation rules and apex code. Why? Certain business needs or government regulations require certain data to be stored in encrypted state and displayed in masked form. For e.g. Social security numbers or credit card numbers. Salesforce makes it easy to achieve it via Custom encrypted fields.  How? Custom encrypted fields can be created as just another custom field with type selected as " Text (Encrypted) ". Master Encryption key key to be used for data encryption can be managed via " Certificate and Key Management " und...

What? Simulated breakpoints a.k.a. checkpoints enable developers to assign breakpoints to assess stack values at that point of execution. Where? Simulated breakpoints are available in new Developer console.  Why? At many occasions developers need to assess variable/ instance values during execution. This comes in very handy especially when debugging something in production wherein developers cannot add "system.debug" statements at their will. With breakpoints, developers can very well place breakpoints at desired code locations and execute the code to get breakpoint results How? To create checkpoints, open a class/ trigger in developer console and click on left hand side (just next to line no.). Once added, you can view your breakpoints in "Checkpoint Locations" sub tab within Checkpoints tab.  Each execution of class/ trigger generates Checkpoint data in "Checkpoints" sub tab. Double click on the individual checkpoint log, to view correspondin...

Finally, there are few much needed feature additions to Salesforce's data import wizard.  Note: The Data Import Wizard is currently available through a pilot program. On a high level, I found following improvements:- Improved UI (bit glitches though) with wide screens having lesser height Data mapping on the fly Drag and drop file (thanks to HTML5) Specify actions for e.g. insert, update or both Capability to skip trigger execution for data being imported Improved data mapping with ability to map a column from data file to multiple properties Following is step to step procedure to use it (simplistic flow):- Open wizard Select object, action and provide data file View/ modify data mapping Review import information and confirm For more information visit  https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=data_import_wizard.htm&language=en_US

What? Extends chatter's capabilities to enable user to take custom actions for e.g. create a new related record or access a visualforce page. Where? It would be accessible via chatter section on Chatter tab, home page or chatter section in detail page of an object. Why? Publisher actions lets administrator/ developer expose additional functionalities to users via chatter feeds. So, now a user can create a new record from chatter feed as he/she used to create new post/ poll etc. For e.g. a user viewing account detail page can create a contact/ opportunity related to the Account, without navigating to any other page. How? Actions can be created from Object setup page or via "Buttons Links and Actions" link for each standard object in Setup and Administration section. There are two types of actions:- Create action :- allows user to create a new record. Administrator can define the fields to be displayed in the create page layout. Additionally, administrator c...