Iterative Logic

Using Invocable Methods with Skuid

Now that invocable methods are available I wanted to see if I could use them from inside of Skuid. Ideally, it would be great if Skuid could make invocable methods available from the Skuid builder interface similar to the way Process Builder does. It would allow us to write custom

Apex Trigger

Developing Custom Apex Roll-up Summary Field Logic

In this article, we will walk through creating custom roll-up summary field logic and how to avoid some common pitfalls. We will also explore various options for initiating a roll-up routine with tools such as Apex Triggers, Batch Apex, and Process Builder. Advantages of Custom Apex Roll-up Summaries Before we

Apex Code

Working with Apex Code Maps

Maps are a critical data type to get to know when developing on the Force.com platform. You can use them in a lot of creative ways to make your code more readable, efficient, and scalable. In this article I thought I would explore some of the ways I use

Ghost

I Switched to Ghost from Wordpress

I switched over to the Ghost.org blogging platform from Wordpress over the weekend and it was surprisingly painless. I have been planning the move all month long and finally decided to work out some time to do it. I had already imported my posts earlier in the month so

Typing Polymorphic Fields in Apex

Salesforce makes use of polymorphic relationship fields for native lookup fields that can reference multiple objects. The most common fields that use polymorphic relationships are Owner fields and Activity WhatId/WhoId fields. There may come a time when you need to work with these fields and be able to make

Apex Code

Friends don't let Friends Troubleshoot Alone

I recently had the opportunity to help a buddy of mine troubleshoot an issue that concerned Salesforce.com account shares. The error showed up on the developer message boards from years past but with no clear solution. It was only after explaining the issue to another colleague (Thanks Mike) that

Ways to Manage Common Data Entry Issues

Part 2 of my guest blog post for ShellBlack.com The scenario described in our previous blog post on analyzing data during a migration tells a very realistic story of a user just trying to get her job done while challenged with capturing required information for management. There was no

Improving Data Quality by Analyzing Data Migrations

Part 1 of my guest blog post for ShellBlack.com Data migrations are a necessary part of transitioning from your current system to the Salesforce platform. Because of this, there is a strong case to be made for tools that can easily move data from your current system to Salesforce

Apex Code

Multi-currency Support for Rollups

I recently came across a requirement to support multi-currency for a rollup trigger where the parent object and child object each maintained their own currencies. The objects where not part of a master-detail relationship (per the requirements) and it was a valid use-case that each object should maintain currency independently.

Good Day Sir Podcast

Good Day, Sir Podcast

I spend a lot of time with friends and colleagues discussing recent events in technology, salesforce, and software development. I have always found these conversations to be entertaining and valuable in pulling me out of my own bubble and exposing me to other ideas, concepts, news, or technologies that I

Salesforce.com Winter'14 Release Notes

The Salesforce.com Winter'14 Release Notes are now available for download.

Apex Code

Trigger Best Practices Part 2 - Unit Testing

It is worth mentioning that in most other development environments there isn't anything enforcing the use of unit testing other than internal policies or personal preference. However, Salesforce requires unit testing before code can be deployed to a production environment. This policy is enforced by requiring that you have written

Apex Code

Enabling Custom Paging using Apex and Visualforce

It’s a common request these days for me - which is the need to not only provide column level sorting but paging as well. While, a reusable sorting class is still a bit out of reach (though I have some ideas that I will explore in the near future)

apex triggers

Salesforce Apex Trigger Best Practices

For some time now I have been asked about best practices for implementing an Apex Trigger mainly by developers just getting into Salesforce.com development as well as system administrators that are not able to accomplish their needs with workflow and are interested in learning more about developing triggers. So

Apex Code

Cool tools @ Dreamforce – New IDE’s!!

Guest Post by Mike Eaton If there was anything I could honestly say I truly missed from my days of building Microsoft solutions, it was Visual Studio. From the early days of annoying floating windows to the introduction of .NET and dock-ability, there was always something new to find traversing

Salesforce Known Issues List now Available!

link: Salesforce Known Issues For some time now I have wanted Salesforce to publish a list of known issues for the platform. After all, why spend hours trying to troubleshoot an issue that has already been found and is actively being worked on. Also, on the flip side it gives

A little speculation about Salesforce Touch

With the coming release of Salesforce Touch, which I predict will be released either at or just after Dreamforce 2012, I wanted to explore what impact this will have for developers and the platform itself. So let’s start with what Salesforce Touch is. Salesforce Touch is a mobile interface

How to tell if a user has access to a record

This is actually a very exciting topic for me as I have always struggled with ways to secure the customizations I provided to users using Visualforce based on their access to data in the system. So let me first provide some background on when this issue comes up and then

Apex Code

Create your own History Related List in Visualforce

The story starts with getting a requirement to customize the detail view of an existing page. Nothing really extreme just need to be able to display a few sections dynamically based on information on the record etc (and record types was not an option). It's not the most ideal scenario

Apex Code

Bug: StandardController addFields Method

I recently came upon a bug when attempting to implement the new addFields method on an Apex Standard Controller class. The purpose of the add fields method is to allow a developer to specify fields that the standard controller should query along with the fields that are defined in the

Jquery

Using JQuery with Visualforce Pages

Lately I have been working to improve our user interfaces for areas of the application that we have customized heavily, most of which is modeled after the standard Salesforce CRM UI and works great. However, there were a few features that I wanted to fully customize or provide better real-time

My Experience with integrating large datasets with Salesforce.com

Integrating large data sets with Salesforce.com has always been a challenge that often requires a lot of trial and error and some creative caching techniques. I have written a number of integrations that have attempted to synchronize large data sets and while they did work they didn't scale very

Guarding Against Null Reference Errors in Apex Code

The joy of debugging and troubleshooting a null-reference error is enough to make you want to toss your notebook (or whatever is handy) through a wall (maybe I have anger issues...haha). So I wanted to write a few tips that have helped me reduce the number of times I

Conference

Dreamforce 2010

It's conference time! Sunday morning I am heading out to the Dreamforce conference. Looking forward to the event. I have gone the last two years and it has been fun, informative, and at times exhausting. I look forward to experiencing the event this year as a customer as opposed to

Apex Code

Salesforce Custom Labels

Custom labels can be a powerful ally for your code. I have only recently started incorporating them into my code as a best practice. When custom labels were first released they provided a means to allow custom text to be translated for multi-lingual support. That still is their primary function