Osama's Weblog

While reading a blog post on Winter 11 chatter upcoming, I noticed the new UI that is expecting to be released in the upcoming release.

Have a look

Salesforce Winter 11 UI

Things to be noticed include

• Application dropdown menu
• No sidebar search. But on the top of the page
• More options under User name.

Last month Salesforce.com and PayPal announced Paypal X toolkit for Force.com Platform.

PayPal, as everybody knows is the most commonly used payment gateway in e-commerce world. The important points about PayPal are:

• Facilitates payments
• Pay anyone, receive from anyone
• Account management
• Tools for information and reporting

PayPal provides its APIs for integration with other e-commerce websites. They recently launched few changes in their system which are :

• Pre-approval APIs
• Refund
• Convert Currency
• Parallel Payments
• Chained Payments

Using Parallel payments, you can split a single payment to any number of receivers. For example, a person purchases different items from different sellers. The person doesn’t have to arrange separate transactions for each seller. What he can do is just arrange a single payment which can be distributed among all the sellers. Isn’t it great?

Using Chained payments, you can send one payment to specific merchant who can further sends the payment after keeping his share. For example, you buy a product through a sales rep of an organization. You can arrange a chained payment for this purpose. You will pay to the sales rep and which will be forwarded to the organization’s account after the share of sales rep is deducted.

Force.com PayPal X toolkit is a set of apex classes for accessing API more easily. You can access them through force.com IDE after installing them into your organization. It takes care of transport . It securely manages API credentials. There is a custom object where you store your API credentials. It also supports adaptive accounts. It is easy to access PayPal sandobx sandbox, beta and live environments.
To access it, sign up on X.com. Obtain application ID from MyApps page. Now, create PayPal sandbox test account and signup on  http://developer.paypal.com. Now, Create test accounts for sandbox and obtain API credentials.

Install PayPal X toolkit from code share.

There are sample codes available for every kind of request that PayPal supports.
Now you don’t have to waste your time in writing custom code to integrate PayPal into your system. Just modify the template classes in the toolkit (which is usually the change in API credentials and some other information as required).

More info on this can be found at webinar by salesforce.com.

I was studying the latest pages developers guide and found some components that have been added to salesforce.com.

These are

• Apex Panel Bar
• Apex Panel Grid
• Apex Tab Panel

These controls can further enrich the user experience and the developer can now avoid to use external library components such as jQuery etc in visualforce.

I have created a simple demo which can show these working. Its almost same as in the guide.

I was wondering what if I have to create a one to one relationship between two objects. There is no declarative way where we can specify a one to one relationship between two objects.

We can write a trigger to enforce a one to one relationship between two objects. The trigger can be written on the child object that validates if there is any other record with same Parent record ID. If found then instead of inserting the record, it gives an alert.

The trigger will generate a list of child objects with specified parent ID. If the list’s length that is retrieved is greater than one, it will generate an alert.

List<ChildObject> co = [select name from ChildObject where parentId = ParentId]
If  (co.Size() < 2)
{
//insert
}
else
//generate alert


Some one asked me how to retrieve a list of sObjects in an SF organization using Apex and bind it to a picklist in a VisualForce page.

List of sObjects is returned when you hit the schema of your SF organization. You can get the Label of sObjects as well as API names.

The following code snippet shows how to do the above mentioned task

VisualForce page:

<apex:page controller="Schema2" >
<apex:form >
<apex:SelectList value="{!val}" size="1">
<apex:selectOptions value="{!Name}"></apex:selectOptions>
</apex:SelectList>
</apex:form>
</apex:page>


Apex Controller Code:

public class Schema2 {
public String val {get;set;}
public List<SelectOption> getName()
{
List<Schema.SObjectType> gd = Schema.getGlobalDescribe().Values(); //extracts the List of sObjects in an organization
List<SelectOption> options = new List<SelectOption>();
for(Schema.SObjectType f : gd)
{
options.add(new SelectOption(f.getDescribe().getLabel(), f.getDescribe().getLabel()));
}
return options;
}
}

Feel free to ask any questions

“VMForce: The birth of a new cloud …”. The company’s Salesforce, in conjunction with VMware have created a wonderful and powerful ecosystem that can further enhance the power of the cloud.

In an article published by the initiative entitled VMForce: Why? What? How? mentioned: In simple terms, VMforce is a service that will allow any Java developer to create applications that can run directly in the cloud. VMforce provides Java tools “out-of-the-box” which are already pre-integrated with a relational database, a search machine, analysis tools and reporting, user identity management as well as all construction-related services , implementation and management of enterprise-class applications.

VMforce allows developers to use Spring, Java development environment more popular for the rapid construction of applications and instant installation in a runtime environment for enterprise class cloud. This “Framework” is backed by a division of VMware: SpringSource.

For reference, the graphical development environment based on Eclipse SpringSource, making it even more attached to the world of open standards.

True, the fact is not required to purchase a server and middleware to run applications, but it is also possible by Java2 Enterprise Edition to interact with objects in Salesforce. This will allow developers who already have work done on Salesforce.com Salesforce platform, benefiting in the short, medium and long term of the enormous power of Java.

Who benefits from this? First the developers. Both of those companies that are dedicated to providing its development independently, as those who work within companies.

Secondly, the directors of departments of Information Technology, for now there is no need to buy more hardware, have more physical space, require more electricity and / or cooling to accommodate new applications (or existing).

Thirdly and equally important, the Directors-General and Financial companies, to encourage that with the pattern of “Software as a Service” a substantial saving in investment licensing, maintenance and all expenses incurred while installing database engine , middleware, etc. What about the cost of information storage.

Another advantage worth mentioning again is the fact that it has a Quality Level Agreement that guarantees a 99.9997% of time “up” of the application, being only necessary that the end users using only a browser .

The bottom line? The new cloud is born. A cloud attached to robust and open standards. A cloud that has the experience and support of VMware, Salesforce, Oracle and all that now makes up this thing called VMForce.

VMware and Salesforce.com appear to be launching a virtualization as a service offering based on a teaser Web page posted by the companies.

Details about the effort, dubbed VMforce, are sparse, but the companies promise to “make an exciting joint announcement on the future of cloud computing” on April 27.

VMware CEO Paul Maritz and Salesforce.com chief Marc Benioff will host the powwow. It’s likely the two parties will announce a data center tie up and some sort of virtualization as a service offering.

via ZDNet

As every one knows, Apple has launched IPAD which is a great gadget as far as portability is concerned. People need to use their business applications to make out most of their time valuable.  After Apple has launched IPAD, it seems to very simple to use salesforce.com in IPAD. People can use it anywhere if internet connectivity is available. Its portable and hence you have your salesforce account in your hands and can use it anywhere.

Thats the advantage of cloud computing. People don’t have to worry about their data and is reachable anywhere. Apple has doubled the value of cloud computing after launching such a device.

More and more cloud solutions need to be developed in order to cater future challenges and once you have such gadgets, its awesome!

Placing a visualforce page on sidebar is really simple.

1) Create a visualforce page.

2) Create a custom  HTML homepage component. Place the following code in the HTML area.

<iframe src="/apex/[PAGE NAME]?core.apexpages.devmode.url=1" width="100%" frameborder="0" height="100"></iframe>

replace [PAGE NAME] your custom page name.

3)Place it on the left side of home page layout.

and here u go…

I attended a salesforce.com webinar yesterday which was for partners only. There are few things which that need to be noticed.

1)      No Referral Partners: There will be no referral partners from now on. Only Consulting and ISV partners will be called Partners of Salesforce.

2)      Partners can resell as well.

3)      For being a consulting partner, at least one application must be published on AppExchange.

4)      There must be specified number of Force.com Certified Developers for being ISV Application Partner.

5)      Benefits for Consulting Partners:

a)      Free online training of every new release of Salesforce.com

b)      Certification Training: It will be done online and with nominal charges of US$ 690.00 only (For consulting partners only).