Category: Salesforce

I’ve been working the past year and a half with a New Orleans based insurance company whose operations are managed via Salesforce and two AppExchange applications called TechCanary and Accounting Seed.

One of many problems with TechCanary is that addresses are stored on multiple objects including but not limited to Account, Contact, Insurance Quote (not the native Quote but a custom object), Policy, Insured, Property, and others. I developed a Lightning Web Component that searches for all objects via a Salesforce Object Search Language (SOSL) query, puts the results in a Lightning Data Table, and then allows selecting and updating the selection’s common address.

Here’s a screenshot of the component on the home page dashboard.

Here’s a screenshot of the component using Salesforce’s Google Maps address search, which helps validate addresses.

Send me an email if you’d like to see the code.

I created a Python script to take all Salesforce CSV data export files and import them to a PostgreSQL database. The script is currently in use for a Heroku project I completed.

See the code here: https://github.com/rtoepfer/salesforce-data-import-postgresql

I’ve been brushing up on my Salesforce developer skills by creating a Lightning Web Component called “Salesforce Poker Run”. The idea is that an org’s users receive poker cards as they score a new sale or complete tasks. At the end of a game the winning hand gets a prize set by the admin. The game adds a bit of fun to mundane Salesforce data entry. Here’s a preview screenshot of my current beta. I still have some testing and graphic design to hash out. Stay tuned!

https://trailhead.com/me/rtoepfer

The Salesforce Lightning plugin for Outlook allows logging emails directly into Salesforce. However, workflow or process builder cannot trigger events on these logged emails (vote for that feature here [Salesforce Ideas]).

By default all logged email file attachments are related to the EmailMessage object that is created by the plugin. The EmailMessage can be related to any object via the plugin; however, the plugin does not allow the file attachment to also be related to an object. In fact, the share button on a file detail page only allows sharing to a group or person – not an object. Here’s the trigger to circumvent that restriction.

There’s no quick way to add actions to a Salesforce VisualForce page with an EnhancedList. Here’s the workaround.

<apex:page>
    <script type="text/javascript">    
    function endsWith(str, suffix) {
        return str.indexOf(suffix, str.length - suffix.length) !== -1;
    }
    function setActions() {        
        Ext.ComponentMgr.all.each( function(item, index, length) {
            if(endsWith(item.id, "grid")) {        
                var store = item.store;                    
                item.store.each( function(record) {
                    record.set("ACTION_COLUMN", ["My Action"]);
                });
            }
        });
    }
    </script>
    <apex:enhancedList type="Systems__c" height="300" oncomplete="setActions();" />
</apex:page>

Salesforce uses the Extjs framework (Sencha.com) to implement list views. All user interface components on an Extjs page are registered with a component manager. The code accesses the component manager, looks for a component whose id corresponds to a grid (our EnhancedList), and then changes the action items in the store associated with the grid.

For a recent client project working with the Salesforce.com platform I used Conga Composer to create custom quotes. The client is an engineering firm and one of the quotes required employee hours billed under dynamic categories. The quote needed each employee’s hours listed under the associated category.

Here’s how to create the quote.

1. Create a report table in Salesforce using the schema builder. Give the table 10 or so text columns, and an identifier column that will store the object id of the associated Salesforce Opportunity object (i.e. a key in normal database nomenclature).

2. Create a hours master-detail object in Salesforce using the schema builder. In my example each hours billed will be grouped by a project role and part.

3. Create an APEX trigger that will fill the report table each time an hours item is added to our opportunity. I keep my APEX logic code in individual classes with a single APEX trigger – this keeps everything clean and easy to debug if you have multiple APEX triggers that are order dependent.

For a recent client project working with the Salesforce.com platform I used Conga Composer to create custom quotes. The client is an engineering firm and one of the quotes required employee hours billed under dynamic categories. The quote needed each employee’s hours listed under the associated category.

Here’s how to create the quote.

I recently developed an application that synchronizes Salesforce.com data to a local PC. The application is developed in Java using the Swing graphical framework and uses a Salesforce.com JDBC driver provided by RSSBus. The application stores Salesforce.com credentials and synchronization interval timing data in a Java properties file. The application allows non-graphical execution via the “nogui” command argument. I also include an Apache Commons Daemon class and script that allows running the application as a service.