39,59 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
A handy guide that covers the most essential topics for Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification in an easy-to-understand format
About This Book
- Get to grips with the fundamentals of Force.com to pass the certification exam with flying colors
- Create Force.com applications, automate business processes, and manage data operations to be a successful Salesforce.com Certified Force.com app builder
- A step-by-step guide that covers the most essential topics for the Platform App Builder Certification in an easy-to-understand format
Who This Book Is For
Salesforce beginners who need to prepare for the Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification exam will benefit from this book. This book is ideal for developers and admins who are new to Salesforce CRM and the Force.com platform. It is recommended that users have some basic programming knowledge and are familiar with salesforce. By the end of the book, you will be ready to appear for the exam and develop various applications on the cloud platform.
What You Will Learn
- Learn the basics of the force.com cloud platform
- Learn to build objects that align with your business
- Understand the process of building an application on force.com platform
- Kick-start your certification journey in basic- easy-to-follow guide
- Focus on important topics that help you accomplish your certification goals
- Learn to secure your application with the Salesforce security model
- Manipulate and process large amount of data using the data tools
- Prepare for the exam with sample mock questions
In Detail
The Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder exam is for individuals who want to demonstrate their skills and knowledge in designing, building, and implementing custom applications using the declarative customization capabilities of Force.com.
This book will build a strong foundation in Force.com to prepare you for the platform app builder certification exam. It will guide you through designing the interface while introducing the Lightning Process Builder. Next, we will implement business logic using various point and click features of Force.com. We will learn to manage data and create reports and dashboards. We will then learn to administer the force.com application by configuring the object-level, field-level, and record-level security.
By the end of this book, you will be completely equipped to take the Platform App Builder certification exam.
Style and approach
Simple and to-the-point examples that can be tried out in your developer org.
A practical book for professionals who want to take the Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification exam.
Sample questions for every topic in an exam pattern to help you prepare better, and tips to get things started.
Full of screen-shots, diagrams, and clear step-by-step instructions that cover the entire syllabus for the exam.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 252
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification Handbook
Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification Handbook
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: April 2016
Production reference: 1220416
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78528-369-7
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author
Siddhesh Kabe
Reviewer
Doug Ayers
Acquisition Editor
Sonali Vernekar
Content Development Editor
Mayur Pawanikar
Technical Editor
Naveenkumar Jain
Copy Editor
Rashmi Sawant
Project Coordinator
Nidhi Joshi
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Graphics
Kirk D'Penha
Production Coordinator
Shantanu N. Zagade
Cover Work
Shantanu N. Zagade
About the Author
Siddhesh Kabe calls himself the monk who sold his computer for the cloud. He has had a rock-solid career in consulting, training, designing, developing, and advocating the Force.com platform for 8 years. He has five certifications in Salesforce. He likes to break into things—code and gadgets—and believes that, given enough coffee, anything can be hacked into.
His other published work includes a science-fiction satire called Ragnarok and a fantasy graphic novel entitled Agatya. Apart from this, he is an active member of the Force.com community and owns an active blog (http://force.siddheshkabe.co.in). He is also the leader of the Force.com Pune Users Group.
Acknowledgments
When I first started writing the Force.com Developer Certification Handbook (DEV401), Packt Publishing in 2012, the goal was clear—how can you make the Salesforce development easy, accessible, and simple. You don't realize how daunting a task is, until you actually start it. But in the infamous words of Brian Tracy, you eat a large frog one bite at a time. And so the little bites started and the book finally released almost 4 years ago. When the team from Packt Publishing asked me to write a revised edition of the book, we all thought it would be easy.
With Salesforce, it hardly is. The pioneers of cloud computing are known for one thing—they change fast and for better. The exam had changed, the syllabus was different, and there were tons of new features coming in. When it comes to publishing, we cannot always tackle things quickly, not with a book as massive as this. Hence, while working with this book, I had to accommodate as many new features as I could before the book went live. The lessons learned from my previous experience and the feedback received on social media, in person and via e-mails, are all included in this book, and an extra effort has been made to make the book error-free.
One cannot trot forward without the undying support system and I would like to take this opportunity to thank some of those who were there for me. First and foremost, I would like to thank Govind and Shobhana Kabe, my parents and mentors, who insisted very vocally that I take computer engineering as a career. I cannot thank my wife, Deepika, enough and if I start enlisting all the ways she supports me, this acknowledgment will fill more pages than the book itself. My brother, Chaitanya Kabe, for being there with me always.
A special thanks to Doug Ayers for painstakingly going through the content and giving a honest and valuable feedback.
I would like to thank the team at Packt Publishing for being patient and keeping up with me as I kept missing deadline after deadline. A special thanks to the content editor, Mayur Pawanikar, for not losing patience as he kept chasing me for the content. Thanks to the technical editor, Naveenkumar Jain, for helping with the content and to Sonali Vernekar for initiating this project.
I would like to thank the mentors I met on this journey of the Salesforce platform, who helped and guided me at different stages of my career. Without their guidance, I would not be where I am today. No book on the Salesforce platform can be complete without mentioning the amazing developer community and the Salesforce developers team itself; thank you for the great cloud platform and the developer events that have helped us from time to time.
About the Reviewer
Doug Ayers has over 9 years of experience leading teams to build reliable web apps and enterprise services with agile engineering practices on Salesforce and Java platforms. He holds multiple Salesforce developer certifications and is pursuing the Technical Architect certification. He enjoys the rich ecosystem of open source software and contributes to the community on GitHub, https://github.com/DouglasCAyers, Twitter, https://twitter.com/DouglasCAyers, and his technology blog, http://douglascayers.com.
As someone who is continually learning and trying new approaches, he enjoys collaborating with and mentoring others. He volunteers as a coach for the VetForce Program, https://veterans.force.com, and leads and speaks at the Nashville Salesforce Developers Group.
www.PacktPub.com
eBooks, discount offers, and more
Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at <[email protected]> for more details.
At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks.
https://www2.packtpub.com/books/subscription/packtlib
Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. Here, you can search, access, and read Packt's entire library of books.
Why subscribe?
Instant updates on new Packt books
Get notified! Find out when new books are published by following @PacktEnterprise on Twitter or the Packt Enterprise Facebook page.
Preface
This book will assist you in building a strong foundation in Force.com to prepare for the Platform App Builder Certification Exam. It will help you to design, build, and implement custom applications using the declarative customization capabilities of the Force.com platform.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Force.com, helps you understand the application life cycle of an application build using Force.com.
Chapter 2, Creating a Database on Force.com, helps you start with building a database model to support our application.
Chapter 3, User Interface, focuses on how to create user interfaces and user experiences.
Chapter 4, Implementing Business Logic, focuses on the declarative syntax used to write business logic and connect our database to the user experience.
Chapter 5, Data Management, covers the cloud-based import wizard and the utility data loader to import data. It also gives a brief overview of automatic data loading.
Chapter 6, Analytics and Reporting, teaches you how to generate reports and display maximum information using colorful charts.
Chapter 7, Application Administration, discusses how to configure the application for multiple users.
Chapter 8, Exam Guide and Practice Test, helps you understand the exam and answer the frequently asked questions. This chapter also includes a practice test that will help refresh the skills we have learned throughout the book.
What you need for this book
The Salesforce online application can run on any computer with an Internet connection and supports the following browsers:
Who this book is for
This book is intended for Salesforce developers who are preparing for the Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder exam. This book provides an introduction to the Force.com platform if you are new to the platform and don't know where to start.
Conventions
You will also find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "You may notice that we used the Unix command rm to remove the Drush directory rather than the DOS del command."
A block of code is set as follows:
Newterms and importantwords are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "As shown in the following screenshot, and click on Reset Security Token."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Customer support
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Downloading the color images of this book
We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/SalesforcePlatformAppBuilderCertificationHandbook_ColorImages.pdf.
Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.
To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy
Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
Questions
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <[email protected]>, and we will do our best to address the problem.
Chapter 1. Getting Started with Force.com
This chapter will introduce you to the Force.com platform. We will understand the life cycle of an application build using Force.com. We will define a multi-tenant architecture and understand how it will impact the data of organizations stored on the cloud. And finally, we will build our first application on Force.com.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
So, let's get started and step into the cloud.
The cloud computing model of Force.com
Force.com is a cloud computing platform used to build enterprise applications. The end user does not have to worry about networks, hardware, software licenses, or any other things. The data saved is completely secure in the cloud.
The following features of Force.com make it a 100 percent cloud-based system:
Just like how tenants in a single building share the resources of electricity and water, in the multi-tenant system tenants share common resources and databases.
In a multi-tenant system, such as Salesforce.com, different organizations use the same shared database system that is separated by a secure virtual partition. Special programs keep the data separated and make sure that no single organization monopolizes the resources.
Automatic upgrades: In a cloud computing system, all the new updates are automatically released to its subscribers. Any developments or customizations made during the previous version are automatically updated to the latest version without any manual modification to the code. This results in all instances of Salesforce staying up to date and on the same version.Subscription model: Force.com is distributed under the subscription model. The user can purchase a few licenses and build the system. After the system is up and successful, further user licenses can be purchased from Salesforce. This model ensures that there are no large startup fees and we pay as we go, which adds fixed, predictable costs in the future.The subscription model can be visualized like the electricity distribution system. We pay for whatever electricity we use and not the complete generator and the infrastructure.
Scalability: The multi-tenant kernel is already tested and runs for many users simultaneously. If the organization is growing, there is always room for scaling the application with new users without worrying about load balancing and data limitation. Force.com provides data storage on a per-user basis, which means that the data storage increases with the number of users added to the organization.Upgrades and maintenance: Force.com releases three updated versions every year. The new releases consist of feature updates to Salesforce.com and the Force.com platform with selected top ideas from IdeaExchange. IdeaExchange is the community of Salesforce users where the users submit ideas and the community votes for them. The most popular ideas are considered by Salesforce in their next release.All instances hosted on the servers are upgraded with no additional cost. The Salesforce maintenance outage during a major release is only 5 minutes.
The sandboxes are upgraded early so there can be testing for compatibility with the new release. The new releases are backward-compatible with previous releases, thus the old code will work with new versions. The upgrades are taken care of by Force.com and the end user gets the latest-version running application.
Understanding the new model of the Salesforce1 platform
In the earlier edition of this book, we discussed the Force.com platform in detail. In the last couple of years, Salesforce has introduced a new Salesforce1 platform. It encompasses all the existing features of the Force.com platform but also includes the new powerful tools for mobile development. The new Salesforce1 platform is built mobile-first and all the existing features of cloud development are automatically available for mobiles. From Winter 16, Salesforce has also introduced the lighting experience. The lighting experience is another extension to the existing platform. It provides a brand new set of design and development library that let developers build applications that work on mobiles as well as the Web.
Let's take a detailed look at the services that form the platform offered by Force.com. The following section provides us with an overview of the Force.com platform.
Force.com platform
Force.com is the world's first cloud application development platform where end users can build, share, and run an application directly on the cloud. While most cloud computing systems provide the ability to deploy the code from the local machine, Force.com lets us directly write the code in the cloud.
The Force.com platform runs in a hosted multi-tenant environment, which gives the end users freedom to build their custom application without hardware purchases, database maintenance, and maintaining a software license. Salesforce.com provides the following main products:
The following screenshot shows the Force.com platform:
The application built on Force.com is automatically hosted on the cloud platform. It can be used separately (without the standard Sales, Service, and Marketing cloud) or can be used in parallel with the existing Salesforce application.
The users can access the application using a browser from any mobile, computer, tablet, and any of the operating system such as Windows, UNIX, Mac, and so on, giving them complete freedom of location.
For a complete list of supported browsers, visit:
https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewHelpDoc?id=getstart_browser_overview.htm
Model-View-Controller architecture
The most efficient way to build an enterprise application is to clearly separate out the model: the data, the code (the controller), and the UI (the View). By separating the three, we can make sure that each area is handled by an expert. The business logic is separated from the backend database and the frontend user interface.
It is also easy to upgrade a part of the system without disturbing the entire structure. The following diagram illustrates the model-view-controller of Force.com:
We will be looking in detail at each layer in the MVC architecture in subsequent chapters.
Key technologies behind the Force.com platform
Force.com is a hosted multi-tenant service used to build a custom cloud computing application. It is a 100 percent cloud platform where we pay no extra cost for the hardware and network. Any application built on Force.com is directly hosted on the cloud and can be accessed using a simple browser from a computer or a mobile.
The Force.com platform runs on some basic key technologies.
The multi-tenant kernel
The base of the platform forms a multi-tenant kernel where all users share a common code base and physical infrastructure. The multiple tenants, who are hosted on a shared server, share the resources under governor limits to prevent a single instance monopolizing the resources. The custom code and data are separated by software virtualization and users cannot access each other's code.
The multi-tenant kernel ensures that all the instances are updated to the latest version of the software simultaneously. The updates are applied automatically without any patches or software download.
The multi-tenant architecture is already live for one million users. This helps developers easily scale the applications from one to a million users with little or no modification at all. The following figure illustrates the multi-tenant architecture:
Traditional software systems are hosted on a single-tenant system, usually a client-server-based enterprise application. With the multi-tenant architecture, the end user does not have to worry about the hardware layer or software upgrades and patches. The software system deployed over the Internet can be accessed using a browser from any location possible, even wide ranges of mobile devices.
The multi-tenant architecture also allows the applications to be low-cost, quick to deploy, and open to innovation. Other examples of software using the multi-tenant architecture are webmail systems (such as www.gmail.com and www.yahoo.com) and online storage systems, such as www.dropbox.com, or note-taking applications, such as Evernote, Springpad, and so on.
Force.com metadata
Force.com is entirely metadata-driven. The metadata is defined in XML and can be extracted and imported. We will look into metadata in detail later in this chapter.
Force.com Webservice API
The data and the metadata stored on the Force.com server can be accessed programmatically through the Webservice API. This enables the developers to extend the functionality to virtually any language, operating system, and platform possible.
The web services are based on open web standards, such as SOAP, XML, and JSON REST, and are directly compatible with other technologies, such as .Net, Java, SAP, and Oracle. We can easily integrate the Force.com application with the current business application without rewriting the entire code.
Apex and Visualforce
Apex is the world's first on-demand language introduced by Salesforce. It is an object-oriented language very similar to C# or Java. Apex is specially designed to process bulk data for business applications. Apex is used to write the controller in the MVC architecture.
Salesforce Object Query Language (SOQL) gives developers an easy and declarative query language that can fetch and process a large amount of data in an easy, human-readable query language. For those who have used other relational database systems, such as Oracle, SQL Server, and so on, it is similar to SQL but does not support advanced capabilities, such as joins.
Apex and SOQL together give developers powerful tools to manage data and processes for their application, leaving the rest of the overhead on the Force.com platform.
The following screenshot shows the page editor for Visualforce. It is easy to use and splits a page into two parts: the one at the bottom is for development and the other shows the output:
Visualforce is an easy-to-use, yet powerful framework used to create rich user interfaces, thus extending the standard tabs and forms to any kind of interfaces imaginable. Visualforce ultimately renders into HTML, and hence we can use any HTML code alongside the Visualforce markup to create a powerful and rich UI to manage business applications.
Apart from the UI, Visualforce provides very easy and direct access to the server-side data and metadata from Apex. This powerful combination of a rich UI with access to the Salesforce metadata makes Visualforce the ultimate solution to build powerful business applications on Salesforce.
As the Salesforce.com Certified Force.com Developer Certification does not include Apex and Visualforce, we won't be going into Apex and Visualforce in detail.
The Developer Console
The Developer Console is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for tools to help write code, run tests, and debug the system. The developer console provides an editor for writing code. It also provides a UI to monitor and debug Unit test classes, as shown in the following screenshot:
AppExchange
AppExchange is a directory of applications built on the Force.com platform. Developers can choose to submit their developed applications on AppExchange. The applications extend the functionality of Force.com beyond CRM with many ready-made business applications available to download and use.
AppExchange is available at http://appexchange.salesforce.com.
Force.com sites
Using Force.com sites or site.com, we can build public-facing websites that use the existing Salesforce data and browser technologies, such as HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Angular JS, Bootstrap, and so on. The sites can have an external login for sensitive data or a no-login public portal that can be linked to the corporate website as well.
Site.com helps create websites using drag-and-drop controls. Users with little or no HTML knowledge can build websites using the site.com editor.
Force.com development
Like any other traditional software development process, the Force.com platform offers tools used to define data, business processes, logic, and rich UIs for the business application. Many of these tools are built-in, point-and-click tools simplified for users without any development skills. Any user with no programming knowledge can build applications suitable for their business on Force.com.
The
