Salesforce.com Force.com Platform User manual

Force.com Platform Fundamentals
An Introduction to Custom Application Development in the Cloud
Version 7
August 2012
By Phil Choi
Chris McGuire
Caroline Roth
With contributions by
Dave Carroll
Nick Tran
Andrea Leszek
Force.com Platform Fundamentals
© Copyright 2000–2012 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce.com is a registered trademark
of salesforce.com, inc., as are other names and marks. Other marks appearing herein may be
trademarks of their respective owners.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior consent of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-9789639-3-4
With special thanks to Michael Alderete, Grant Anderson, Steve Anderson, Dean Atchison, Sabine
Bennett, Sheri Bernard, Mysti Berry, Eric Bezar, James Bisso, Gina Blednyh, Michelle Chapman-Thurber,
Leah Cutter, Anita Dennis, Steve Fisher, Carol Franger, Katia Hage, Ron Hess, Vincent Hurtel, Paul
Kopacki, Ari Langer, Sarah Marovich, Jon Mountjoy, Tess Napili, Mrina Natarjan, Lauren Pederson,
Vahn Phan, Kimberley Rathbun, Elizabeth Rice, Mary Scotton, Andrew Smith, Tom Tobin, Garen Torikian,
Adam Torman, Andrew Waite, Joanne Ward, Diana Widjaja, Sarah Whitlock, Clive Wong, and the
Training & Certification team.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Preface.............................................................................................1
Welcome to the Cloud!.........................................................................................1
Platforms for Cloud Computing...............................................................2
About This Book..................................................................................................2
Intended Audience....................................................................................3
Chapter Contents......................................................................................3
Choosing Your Development Environment.............................................5
Sending Feedback.....................................................................................5
About Developer Force.........................................................................................5
Salesforce.com Training & Certification..............................................................6
Chapter 1: Introducing the Force.com Platform.................................7
The Basics of an App's User Interface..................................................................9
Tabs..........................................................................................................9
Forms......................................................................................................10
Links.......................................................................................................10
The Benefits of a Force.com Platform App........................................................10
Data-Centric Apps.................................................................................10
Collaborative Apps..................................................................................11
The Technologies Behind a Force.com Platform App.......................................12
A Multitenant Architecture....................................................................13
A Metadata-Driven Development Model...............................................14
APIs........................................................................................................15
Apex........................................................................................................16
Visualforce...............................................................................................16
Salesforce Mobile....................................................................................16
Sites.........................................................................................................17
The AppExchange Directory..................................................................17
Chapter 2: About the Sample Recruiting App..................................19
About Universal Containers................................................................................20
Considerations for the Recruiting App...............................................................20
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Table of Contents
Building the App: Our Design...........................................................................21
Custom Objects......................................................................................21
Security and Sharing Rules.....................................................................22
Workflow and Approval Processes..........................................................22
Custom Reports and Dashboards...........................................................24
Visualforce...............................................................................................24
Chapter 3: Reviewing Database Concepts........................................25
What's a Database?.............................................................................................26
What's in a Database?.........................................................................................27
What's a Relational Database?............................................................................28
Summary of Database Concepts.........................................................................30
Chapter 4: Building a Simple App...................................................31
Becoming Familiar with the Setup Area.............................................................32
Introducing Apps................................................................................................34
Try It Out: Defining an App..................................................................34
Look at What We've Done.....................................................................37
Introducing Objects............................................................................................38
The Position Custom Object..................................................................38
Try It Out: Defining the Position Custom Object.................................38
Introducing Tabs................................................................................................42
Try It Out: Defining the Positions Tab..................................................42
Look at What We've Done.....................................................................44
Becoming Familiar with Setup Detail Pages and Related Lists..........................46
Introducing Fields...............................................................................................48
Try It Out: Adding Text Fields..............................................................49
Try It Out: Adding Currency Fields.......................................................52
Try It Out: Adding Checkbox Fields......................................................52
Try It Out: Adding Date Fields..............................................................53
Look at What We've Done.................................................................................53
Chapter 5: Enhancing the App........................................................55
Adding Advanced Fields.....................................................................................56
Introducing Picklists...............................................................................56
Try It Out: Adding Picklists...................................................................56
Introducing Field Dependencies.............................................................59
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Table of Contents
Try It Out: Creating a Dependent Picklist.............................................60
Look at What We've Done.....................................................................63
Introducing Custom Formula Fields.......................................................64
Calculating How Long a Position Has Been Open................................65
Try It Out: Defining a “Days Open” Custom Formula Field.................66
Try It Out: Giving Fields Dynamic Default Values................................70
Look at What We've Done.....................................................................71
Introducing Validation Rules..............................................................................71
Try It Out: Defining a Validation Rule for Min and Max Pay...............72
Try It Out: Defining a Validation Rule for Close Date..........................74
Look at What We've Done.....................................................................76
Introducing Page Layouts...................................................................................78
Becoming Familiar with the Page Layout Editor...................................78
Try It Out: Grouping Fields into a New Section....................................80
Try It Out: Adding Spaces Between Fields............................................83
Try It Out: Editing Field Properties.......................................................84
Look at What We've Done.....................................................................85
Chapter 6: Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships..............87
Introducing Relationships...................................................................................88
Introducing Relationship Custom Fields............................................................89
Try It Out: Relating Hiring Managers to Positions................................90
Look at What We've Done.....................................................................90
Adding Candidates to the Mix...........................................................................92
Try It Out: Creating the Candidate Object............................................92
Try It Out: Adding Fields to the Candidate Object...............................93
Try It Out: Modifying the Candidate Page Layout Properties...............94
Look at What We've Done.....................................................................95
Bringing Candidates and Positions Together with Job Applications..................96
Try It Out: Creating the Job Application Object....................................97
Try It Out: Adding Fields to the Job Application Object.......................98
Look at What We've Done.....................................................................99
Introducing Search Layouts..............................................................................101
Try It Out: Adding Fields to the Candidate Lookup Dialog................103
Try It Out: Updating Additional Search Layouts.................................104
Managing Review Assessments........................................................................105
Try It Out: Creating the Review Object...............................................106
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Table of Contents
Try It Out: Adding Fields to the Review Object..................................107
Introducing Roll-Up Summary Fields..................................................113
Try It Out: Creating Roll-Up Summary Fields....................................113
Try It Out: Customizing the Review Object's Page and Search
Layouts............................................................................................115
Look at What We've Done...................................................................116
Creating a Many-to-Many Relationship..........................................................117
Try It Out: Creating the Employment Website Object........................119
Try It Out: Adding the URL Field to the Employment Website
Object..............................................................................................120
Try It Out: Creating the Job Posting Object........................................121
Try It Out: Adding Fields to the Job Posting Object...........................122
Customizing Related Lists in a Many-to-Many Relationship..............124
Try It Out: Customizing the Positions and Employment Websites
Related Lists....................................................................................124
Look at What We've Done...................................................................125
Putting it All Together.....................................................................................126
Try It Out: Downloading Sample Data................................................128
Try It Out: Using the Import Wizard...................................................129
Chapter 7: Securing and Sharing Data...........................................131
Controlling Access to Data in Our App...........................................................132
Required Permissions for the Recruiter.................................................132
Required Permissions for the Hiring Manager.....................................133
Required Permissions for the Interviewer.............................................135
Required Permissions for the Standard Employee................................136
So Where Are We Now?......................................................................136
Data Access Concepts.......................................................................................137
Controlling Access to Objects..........................................................................139
Introducing Profiles..............................................................................140
Standard Profiles...................................................................................140
Introducing Permission Sets.................................................................141
Profiles and Permission Sets in Our Recruiting App............................142
Try It Out: Creating the Recruiter Profile............................................143
Try It Out: Creating the Standard Employee Profile...........................147
Try It Out: Creating the Hiring Manager Permission Set....................148
Try It Out: Creating the Interviewer Permission Set............................153
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Table of Contents
Controlling Access to Fields.............................................................................155
Introducing Field-Level Security..........................................................156
Field-Level Security in Our Recruiting App.........................................156
Try It Out: Limiting Access to Fields in the Standard Employee
Profile..............................................................................................157
Try It Out: Checking Field-Level Security in Permission Sets.............160
Controlling Access to Records..........................................................................161
Introducing Organization-Wide Defaults............................................161
Org-Wide Defaults in Our Recruiting App.........................................162
Try It Out: Setting Org-Wide Defaults...............................................165
Introducing Role Hierarchies................................................................167
Comparing Roles, Profiles, and Permission Sets..................................168
Role Hierarchies in Our Recruiting App..............................................168
Try It Out: Defining a Role Hierarchy.................................................169
What's Left to be Shared?.....................................................................172
Introducing Sharing Rules....................................................................173
Sharing Rules in Our Recruiting App...................................................173
Try It Out: Defining a Public Group....................................................174
Try It Out: Defining Sharing Rules......................................................175
Introducing Manual Sharing.................................................................178
Try It Out: Defining a Manual Sharing Rule.......................................178
Displaying Field Values and Page Layouts According to Profiles....................179
Try It Out: Creating Record Types......................................................180
Putting It All Together.....................................................................................184
Try It Out: Creating Users....................................................................184
Try It Out: Verifying that Everything Works.......................................187
Delegating Data Administration......................................................................188
Overriding Sharing with Object Permissions........................................189
Delegated Administration Groups........................................................190
Try It Out: Defining the Recruiting Manager Administration
Group..............................................................................................191
Try It Out: Verifying that Delegated Administration Works...............193
Summing Up.....................................................................................................194
Chapter 8: Collaborating with Chatter...........................................195
Introducing Chatter..........................................................................................196
Tracking Fields on Your Objects......................................................................196
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Table of Contents
Try It Out: Enabling Feed Tracking on Positions and Job
Applications.....................................................................................196
Look at What We've Done...................................................................198
Following Records............................................................................................199
Try It Out: Following a Job Application Record..................................199
Starting a Group or Two..................................................................................201
Try It Out: Creating a Group...............................................................201
Summing Up.....................................................................................................202
Chapter 9: Using Custom Workflow and Approval Processes..........203
Introducing Workflow......................................................................................204
Introducing Workflow Rules................................................................205
Introducing Workflow Actions: Tasks, Field Updates, and Alerts.......205
Workflow in Our Recruiting App....................................................................206
Creating Workflow Rules That Assign Tasks..................................................207
Try It Out: Creating the “Send Rejection Letter” Workflow Rule.......207
Try It Out: Creating the “Send Rejection Letter” Workflow
Task.................................................................................................210
Try It Out: Creating the “Extend an Offer” Workflow Rule and
Task.................................................................................................213
Look at What We've Done...................................................................214
Creating a Workflow Rule That Updates Fields..............................................215
Introducing Queues...............................................................................216
Try It Out: Creating a Queue for Positions..........................................216
Try It Out: Creating a Workflow Rule That Updates Fields................219
Introducing Time-Dependent Workflow Actions................................220
Try It Out: Creating the “Notify Recruiting Manager”
Time-Dependent Workflow Task...................................................220
Look At What We've Done..................................................................222
Creating a Workflow Rule That Sends Email Alerts.......................................223
Introducing Email Templates...............................................................224
Try It Out: Building an Email Template..............................................224
Try It Out: Creating the New Position Workflow Rule and Alert.......227
Introducing Approvals......................................................................................229
Planning for Approval Processes...........................................................231
Try It Out: Creating an Email Template for Approvals.......................231
Try It Out: Creating an Approval Process............................................232
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Table of Contents
Try It Out: Creating Approval Steps....................................................236
Try It Out: Creating Approval Actions................................................240
Try It Out: Activating Our Approval Process.......................................243
Look At What We've Done..................................................................243
Summing Up.....................................................................................................247
Chapter 10: Analyzing Data with Reports and Dashboards.............249
Introducing Reports..........................................................................................250
Report Formats.....................................................................................252
Setting Up the Recruiting App for Reports..........................................255
Try It Out: Adding the Reports Tab....................................................255
Try It Out: Creating a Recruiting Reports Folder................................255
Creating a Summary Report.................................................................256
Try It Out: Creating a Summary Report..............................................257
Try It Out: Adding Columns and Filters..............................................261
Try It Out: Adding a Pie Chart............................................................263
Creating a Matrix Report......................................................................264
Try It Out: Creating a Matrix Report...................................................265
Try It Out: Adding Summary Fields....................................................266
Try It Out: Adding Columns and Filters..............................................268
Try It Out: Adding a Chart and Conditional Highlighting.................270
Introducing Dashboards...................................................................................272
Try It Out: Creating Additional Reports..............................................272
Try It Out: Creating a Dashboard........................................................275
Adding Dashboard Components..........................................................277
Try It Out: Adding a Chart Component..............................................278
Try It Out: Adding a Gauge Component.............................................279
Try It Out: Adding a Table Component..............................................280
Try It Out: Adding a Metric Component.............................................281
Refreshing Dashboards.........................................................................283
Introducing Custom Report Types...................................................................284
Creating Report Types..........................................................................284
Look At What We've Done.............................................................................289
Chapter 11: Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App
Development...........................................................................291
Introducing Mash-Ups and Web Services........................................................293
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Table of Contents
Introducing Visualforce.....................................................................................294
Introducing Visualforce Development Mode........................................296
Try It Out: Enabling Visualforce Development Mode.........................296
Implementing the Candidate Map ..................................................................297
Try It Out: Creating a Visualforce Page...............................................297
Try It Out: Writing Visualforce Markup..............................................299
Try It Out: Adding the Map to Our Visualforce Page.........................302
Try It Out: Adding the Candidate Map to Position Page
Layouts............................................................................................303
Try It Out: Testing the Candidate Map...............................................304
Implementing the Mass Update Status Button.................................................305
Planning the Mass Update Status Feature............................................306
Try It Out: Creating the Mass Update Status Page..............................307
Understanding the MassUpdateStatus Visualforce Markup.................309
Try It Out: Creating a Custom List Button.........................................312
Try It Out: Adding a Custom List Button to a Page Layout................314
Try It Out: Testing the Mass Update Status Feature...........................315
Taking Your App Public with Sites..................................................................316
Introducing Sites...................................................................................317
Introducing Force.com Domain Names................................................318
Try It Out: Registering Your Force.com Domain Name......................318
Try It Out: Creating a Force.com Site..................................................320
Try It Out: Creating the Public Jobs Page............................................324
Setting Your Active Home Page...........................................................327
Granting Public Access Settings...........................................................327
Testing Your Site..................................................................................328
Chapter 12: Learning More...........................................................329
Developer Force................................................................................................330
Help and Training Options..............................................................................330
Multimedia.......................................................................................................331
AppExchange Partner Program........................................................................331
What Do You Think?.......................................................................................332
Glossary................................................................................................333
Index.....................................................................................................359
viii
Preface
As users of the Internet, we're all familiar with the fascinating, innovative, creative, and sometimes
silly ways in which it has changed how we work and play. From social networking sites to wikis
to blogs, and more, it’s exciting to watch the innovations taking place that are changing the ways
we communicate and collaborate.
While these changes have certainly impacted how we work with content, a similar set of
Internet-driven ideas and technologies is changing how we build and work with business
applications. While yesterday's business applications required thousands, if not millions, of
dollars and sometimes years of professional services help to set up and customize, the technologies
offered by the Internet today make it much easier to create, configure, and use business
applications of all kinds. Indeed, the power of the Internet has given us the ability to solve new
kinds of business problems that, because of complexity or cost, had previously remained out of
reach.
Just as the changes that moved publishing technology from paper to bits made it possible for us
to have information about anything in the whole world right at our fingertips, the changes in
application technology make it similarly possible to imagine a robust, enterprise-class application
for almost any business need. Sound pretty good? Then you're probably wondering: “What's
the magic that makes this possible?”
Welcome to the Cloud!
These new ways of building and running applications are enabled by the world of cloud
computing, where you access applications, or apps, over the Internet as utilities, rather than as
pieces of software running on your desktop or in the server room. This model is already quite
common for consumer apps like email and photo sharing, and for certain business applications,
like customer relationship management (CRM).
1
Preface
Because almost all apps these days are delivered via a Web browser, it's increasingly hard to
tell which applications are “traditional software,” and which are run in the cloud. As with the
Internet, applications that run in the cloud have grown so ubiquitous that almost every business
user interacts with at least one, whether it's an email service, a Web conferencing application,
or a sales system.
Platforms for Cloud Computing
A new twist, the platform in the cloud, is making the delivery of application functionality even
more interesting. Increasingly, applications that run in the cloud are starting to look less like
websites and more like platforms, meaning they are starting to sprout Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs), code libraries, and even programming models. Collectively, these new kinds
of development technologies can be thought of as platforms to run apps in the cloud.
Similar to traditional platforms, cloud computing platforms provide tools that allow developers
to leverage existing functionality to create something new; however, because these platform
tools are accessed freely over the Internet rather than through an operating system or package
that was installed on a local machine, developers don't need to worry about the logistics of
putting together an executable that will be installed on a user's machine. Anyone with a Web
browser can access the app!
The possibilities presented by this new type of platform have emerged quickly, spurred on by
the popularity of mash-ups—a website or application that combines tools from multiple cloud
computing platforms to create new functionality. Some of the cloud computing platform tools
used in today's mash-ups include innovations like Google's search API, which allows developers
to use the power of that search engine in their applications, eBay's APIs for auctions and
listings, or Amazon.com's system for creating entirely new storefronts. For example, almost
any real estate website or application these days uses Google or Yahoo! maps under the hood,
illustrating how these new APIs are now commonly running alongside the more traditional
database, app server, or operating system platforms.
About This Book
This book introduces you to the Force.com platform, salesforce.com's platform for building
and running business applications in the cloud.
To illustrate the technologies available on the Force.com platform, and to show you just how
easy it is to create your own business application with the platform, this book walks you through
the process of creating a new recruiting application that runs in the cloud. To follow along you
2
Preface
won't need to learn any programming languages or hack your way through cryptic configuration
documents—instead, you'll just need to point-and-click your way through a Web interface,
following the easy step-by-step instructions in the book.
Note: Want an online version of this book? Go to
www.developerforce.com/events/regular/registration.php.
Intended Audience
This book can be easily understood by anyone from a business user to a professional developer.
However, to get the most out of the book, it helps to be familiar with basic Internet and
database concepts, such as tables and fields.
While the book focuses primarily on using the declarative, point-and-click functionality of the
Force.com platform, Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App Development on page 291 introduces
you to the platform's user interface programming tools and how you can use them to build
customer-facing websites. To fully understand that chapter, you should be familiar with HTML
and JavaScript. However, all the code you need is provided, so even if you're not an experienced
developer, you can still follow along to gain a deeper understanding of what can be done with
the Force.com platform.
Chapter Contents
If you're already familiar with the Force.com platform, you can skip around to the chapters in
which you're most interested:
Chapter
Description
Introducing the Force.com Platform
Learn about the technologies behind the
Force.com platform, including the
AppExchange directory.
About the Sample Recruiting App
Learn about the recruiting application that
we'll be building in this book and the fictitious
company for whom we'll be building it.
Reviewing Database Concepts
Review database concepts such as tables,
records, fields, keys, and relationships.
Building a Simple App
Create the first custom object in our recruiting
app, and add several basic fields.
3
Preface
Chapter
Description
Enhancing the App
Add picklists, dependent picklists, validation
rules, and formula fields to the custom object,
and then edit the layout of the object's detail
page.
Expanding the Simple App Using
Relationships
Add five more custom objects to our recruiting
app, and associate them with one another
using relationships.
Securing and Sharing Data
Set up rules for who can read, create, edit, and
delete records in the app.
Collaborating with Chatter
Enable Chatter for your organization so users
can keep up with the information they care
about.
Using Custom Workflow and Approval
Processes
Define workflow rules and approval processes
that assign tasks, update fields, and send
emails when certain criteria are met.
Analyzing Data with Reports and Dashboards Create custom reports, charts, and dashboards
that give users a bird's-eye view of recruiting
data.
Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App
Development
Learn how to use Visualforce to extend the
functionality of the platform by creating a
mash-up with Yahoo! maps, adding a tool for
mass updating records, and publishing a subset
of your data to anyone on the Web.
Learning More
Find out where you can get more information
about developing on the platform.
Glossary
Look up the definition of any term you find
unfamiliar.
Note: This book contains lots of screenshots. Because the Force.com platform is a
rapidly developing platform, the screenshots might vary slightly from what you see on
the screen, but don't worry! These differences should be minor and won't affect your
understanding of the system.
4
Preface
Choosing Your Development Environment
To follow along with the exercises in this book, you'll need a Salesforce account. If you're
already a Salesforce customer, you can use a Force.com sandbox. A sandbox is a copy of your
organization that you can use for testing configurations and training users without compromising
the data in your production organization. Salesforce Enterprise and Unlimited Editions come
with one free sandbox; users of other editions can use Developer Edition to do the exercises.
If you're new to Salesforce or if you don't want to use a sandbox, go to developer.force.com
and sign up for a free Developer Edition account. Developer Edition is a fully-functional
version of Salesforce that you can use to develop Salesforce apps. Since it's free, there are limits
on the amount of users, bandwidth, and storage you're allowed, but it includes all of the features
in Salesforce. When you sign up, you'll also automatically become part of the growing
community of Force.com platform developers around the world.
Sending Feedback
Questions or comments about anything you see in this book? Suggestions for topics that you'd
like to see covered in future versions? Go to the Developer Force discussion boards at
community.salesforce.com/sforce?category.id=developers and let us know
what you think! Or email us directly at [email protected].
About Developer Force
Developer Force is a community of developers who customize and build applications that run
in the cloud and are built with the Force.com platform. Developer Force members have access
to a full range of resources, including sample code, toolkits, an online developer community,
and the test environments necessary for building apps. The Developer Force website includes
an online version of this book and has information about the Dreamforce event that we hold
every year for Force.com platform developers. If you need more info, have a question to ask,
are seeking a toolkit or sample, or just want to dig a little deeper into Force.com platform
development, Developer Force is where it all comes together.
To find out more about the resources available on the Developer Force website, see
developer.force.com, and review the Learning More chapter.
5
Preface
Salesforce.com Training & Certification
A number of examples in this book have been provided by salesforce.com Training &
Certification and are drawn from the expert-led training courses available around the world.
Salesforce.com Training & Certification courses provide an opportunity to get hands-on
experience with the Force.com platform and Salesforce applications, and prepare you to become
Salesforce certified. Register for courses at www.salesforce.com/training.
6
Chapter 1
Introducing the Force.com Platform
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
The Basics of an App's
User Interface
The Benefits of a
Force.com Platform App
The Technologies Behind
a Force.com Platform App
Force.com is a platform for creating and deploying
next-generation applications for the social enterprise.
Because there are no servers or software to buy or manage,
you can focus solely on building apps that include built-in
social and mobile functionality, business processes, reporting,
and search. Your apps run on a secure, proven service that
scales, tunes, and backs up data automatically.
Why use Force.com:
•
•
•
•
Proven — More than 100,000+ companies trust Force.com,
including many industry leaders. They’ve built 220,000+ apps
that run in accredited, world-class data centers with backup,
failover, disaster-recovery, and an uptime record exceeding
99.9%. You can see real-time system performance data at
trust.salesforce.com.
Agile — Force.com is fast because it requires minimal coding.
Assemble your apps in building-block fashion using our visual
tools and library of components. Streamline development with
integrated sandbox environments, and integrate your apps using
open APIs. The time you save on development can be spent
on solving business problems.
Social — Work more effectively with your colleagues using
your own secure social network. Force.com includes an
enterprise framework with pre-built components for feeds,
profiles, conversations, updates, and file sharing. All
components are available through REST APIs that can be
easily integrated into any custom app.
Mobile — Build native mobile apps powered by a secure cloud
database, with rock-solid APIs. Or build mobile-optimized
browser apps, using our UI framework and HTML5 to support
multiple mobile devices with one code base. Or mix native and
HTML in a hybrid cocktail that gives you the best of both
7
Chapter 1: Introducing the Force.com Platform
worlds. However you want it, Force.com has what you need
to securely deliver apps on mobile devices.
8
Introducing the Force.com Platform
The Basics of an App's User Interface
If you haven't used Salesforce before, you'll find it worthwhile to log in and spend a bit of time
clicking around. Most Salesforce editions (including Developer Edition) have a basic Salesforce
Sales app, so we'll start by looking at that. The interface for these tasks has a lot in common
with the interface of whatever app you're planning to build.
Note: Haven't signed up for a Developer Edition account yet? Go to
www.developerforce.com/events/regular/registration.php.
Tabs
As you can see when you start clicking around, there are a few key elements that form the
foundation of the Sales app and of most applications created with the platform. First, across
the top of the app is a set of tabs that segment the app into different parts. Each tab corresponds
to a type of object, such as an account or contact, and within a tab you can perform actions on
particular records of that tab's type. For example, when you click on the Accounts tab, you can
create a new record for the “Acme” account. You can also edit existing accounts, or use a list
view to filter lists of accounts by certain criteria. Most app development work revolves around
creating tabs and defining the data and behaviors that support them.
Figure 1: Force.com Platform Apps Include Tabs, Forms, and Links
9
Chapter 1: Introducing the Force.com Platform
Forms
A second key element is the form that is displayed as part of a tab. As in any business app,
forms are the primary means of entering and viewing information in the system. Forms allow
you to view and edit the data associated with a particular record on a tab, like the contact
“Jerome Garcia” on the Contacts tab. When developing a new app you can define what
information appears in each form and how it is organized. For example, the form for a contact
record includes fields such as Last Name, Home Phone, Mailing City, Title,
Birthdate, Reports To, and Account. In a Force.com platform app, the form used to
enter information is referred to as an edit page and the read-only view of that information is
referred to as a detail page.
Links
Finally, because Force.com platform apps are delivered in a Web browser, they use links to
provide navigation to related data. For example, on an account detail page, there are links to
related records, such as the contacts who belong to the account and the sales user who manages
the account. Other links take you to recently visited records and to areas of the app where users
can set personal preferences. Links provide navigation within an app and to external Web sites.
The Benefits of a Force.com Platform App
To better understand what the platform is best suited for, let's look beyond the core elements
of tabs, forms, and links, and into the types of applications they enable. Two huge benefits
start to come into focus when you look at Force.com platform apps: they're data-centric and
collaborative.
Data-Centric Apps
Because the platform is centered around a database, it allows you to write apps that are
data-centric. A data-centric app is an application that is based on structured, consistent
information such as you find in a database or XML file. We can find these data-centric apps
everywhere, in small desktop databases like Microsoft Access or FileMaker, all the way to the
huge systems running on database management systems like Oracle or MySQL. Unlike
applications that are built around unstructured data, like plain text documents or HTML files,
data-centric apps make it easy to control, access, and manage data.
10
Introducing the Force.com Platform
For example, consider an exercise such as trying to determine the total sales for a month from
a set of Microsoft Word-based contracts versus a set of contracts in a simple database. Whereas
it takes a lot of effort to open each Word document, find the contract total, and then add them
all together, if this data is stored in the database of a data-centric app, we can more efficiently
get the same result by issuing a single query.
While most people don't need a data-centric application to keep track of anything other than
contacts, photos, or music, companies of all sizes constantly need to query and aggregate their
large amounts of data to make fast business decisions. As a result, the data-centric nature of
the Force.com platform makes it the perfect platform to build and host business applications.
Collaborative Apps
Because the platform can be accessed by multiple users at the same time, it allows you to write
apps that are collaborative. A collaborative app is an application with data and services that are
shared by multiple users in different locations. Unlike more traditional forms of software that
are installed on a single machine and are hard to access from a distance, collaborative apps on
the platform can be accessed from anywhere in the world with only a Web browser. This makes
it easy for teams to work together on activities like selling a product, managing a project, or
hiring an employee.
In addition to easy access over a Web browser, a number of built-in platform features also
facilitate productive group collaboration:
•
•
•
Use the platform's security and sharing model to finely control a user's access to different
data.
Use workflow rules to automatically assign tasks, update data, or send e-mail alerts when
certain business events occur, such as the creation of a new record or a change in the value
of a record field.
Use approval processes to set up a sequence of steps necessary for a record to be approved,
including who must approve it at each step.
Collectively, these features provide a framework for sharing apps across groups, divisions, and
entire corporations without relinquishing administrative control over sensitive data.
11
Chapter 1: Introducing the Force.com Platform
The Technologies Behind a Force.com Platform App
Now that we've talked about the kinds of apps the platform can build, let's review some of the
technologies behind the platform. These technologies have a big impact on what the platform
supports and what it's like to develop on it.
Table 1: Key Technologies Behind the Platform
12
Technology
Description
Multitenant
architecture
An application model in which all users and apps share a single,
common infrastructure and code base.
Metadata-driven
development model
An app development model that allows apps to be defined as
declarative “blueprints,” with no code required. Data models, objects,
forms, workflows, and more are defined by metadata.
API Access
Several application programming interfaces (APIs) provide direct
access to all data stored in Force.com from virtually any programming
language and platform:
• The SOAP API
• The REST API, an excellent technology for use with mobile
applications and Web 2.0 projects
• The RESTful Bulk API (also available using Data Loader) for
operations on large numbers of records
• The Metadata API for managing customizations in your
organization (also available using the Force.com Migration Tool)
• The RESTful Chatter API for accessing Chatter feeds and social
data
• The Streaming API, which provides notifications reflecting data
changes in your organization
Apex
The world’s first on-demand programming language, which runs in
the cloud on the Force.com platform servers.
Visualforce
A framework for creating feature-rich user interfaces for apps in the
cloud.
Salesforce Mobile
A native client that extends applications built on the Force.com
platform to iOS, Android, and BlackBerry devices. With Salesforce
Mobile, you can build custom apps using the platform’s
point-and-click development tools and run your apps on the most
Introducing the Force.com Platform
Technology
Description
popular smartphones and tablets—without learning any mobile
programming languages.
Sites
Public websites and applications that are directly integrated with your
Salesforce organization—without requiring users to log in with a
username and password.
AppExchange
directory
A Web directory where hundreds of Force.com apps are available to
Salesforce customers to review, demo, comment upon, and/or install.
Developers can submit their apps for listing on the AppExchange
directory if they want to share them with the community.
A Multitenant Architecture
In a multitenant architecture, all users share the same infrastructure and the same version of the
Force.com platform. In contrast to their single-tenant counterparts, such as client-server
enterprise applications or email servers, multitenant architectures release upgrades automatically
and simultaneously for all users. Consequently, no one has to worry about buying and
maintaining their own physical stack of hardware and software, or making sure that their
applications always have the latest patch installed.
Besides the Force.com platform, several popular, consumer-based applications also use a
multitenant architecture, including eBay, My Yahoo!, and Google Gmail. Multitenant
architecture allows these applications to be low cost, quick to deploy, and open to rapid
innovation—exactly the qualities for which salesforce.com has also become known.
13
Chapter 1: Introducing the Force.com Platform
Figure 2: On-Demand, Multitenant Applications that Run in the Cloud
The platform's multitenant architecture also impacts how developers use the platform to create
new applications. Specifically, it defines a clear boundary between the platform and the
applications that run on it. A boundary is important because it allows applications to define
their own components without jeopardizing the functionality of the core platform or the data
stored by other users.
A Metadata-Driven Development Model
The Force.com platform uses a metadata-driven development model to help app developers
become more productive in putting together apps. It means that the basic functionality of an
app—that is, the tabs, forms, and links—are defined as metadata in a database rather than
being hard-coded in a programming language. When a user accesses an app through the
Force.com platform, it renders the app's metadata into the interface the user experiences.
As a result of metadata-driven development, the Force.com platform app developers work at
a much higher level of abstraction than if they developed applications using Java or C#, and
are shielded from having to worry about low-level system details that the platform handles
automatically. At the same time, Force.com platform developers can also leverage advanced
features that the platform provides by default.
Customizing your app's metadata might sound intimidating, but as you'll see in this book, the
platform's user interface makes it easy. Anyone who is familiar with using a Web browser can
quickly get up to speed, even if he or she doesn't know any programming languages.
14
Introducing the Force.com Platform
Tip: Developers can use the Force.com Metadata API to programmatically manage
their app's setup. The Force.com Metadata API provides an alternative to the platform's
user interface by allowing developers to directly modify the XML files that control
their organization's metadata. Developers can also use the Metadata API to migrate
configuration changes between organizations, and create their own tools for managing
organization and application metadata. For more information, see Force.com Metadata
API Developer's Guide.
Although at first glance metadata-driven development may seem somewhat esoteric, it's exactly
the same model for how Web browsers work. Instead of hard coding the definition of a Web
page in a free-form programming language, a Web page author first defines the page as HTML,
which is itself a kind of metadata. When a user requests a page, the Web browser renders the
page using the metadata provided in the HTML tags. Even though the HTML/browser
combination does not allow authors as much formatting power as they might get in a regular
publishing tool, it simplifies the work of publishing content to a wide audience and increases
the Web page author's overall productivity.
Likewise, the Force.com platform vastly simplifies the work of building an app and increases
a developer's overall productivity. And, like Web pages that use JavaScript or Flash to add
functionality to HTML pages, the Force.com platform also provides ways for more advanced
developers to add custom functionality to the apps you build.
APIs
The platform's metadata-driven development model allows app developers to quickly build a
lot of functionality with tools provided by the platform; however, sometimes app developers
want to modify the actual data in an app and use third-party services to create more customized
app behaviors. To do this, they can use a number of APIs to integrate with the platform. The
core set of APIs include Force.com SOAP API and REST API, the Bulk API, Streaming
API, and Metadata API. You can call these APIs from a wide variety of client-side languages
- and toolkits are also available to ease the integration. For more information, see
https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewHelpDoc?id=integrate_what_is_api.htm&language=en_US
Our APIs provide straightforward, powerful, and open ways to programmatically access the
data and capabilities of any app running on the platform. They allow programmers to access
and manipulate apps from any server location, using any programming language that supports
Web services, like Java, PHP, C#, or .NET. For more information, see
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Integration.
15
Chapter 1: Introducing the Force.com Platform
Apex
As you might expect from the company that delivered the world's first cloud computing
platform, salesforce.com also introduced the world’s first cloud computing programming
language, Apex. Apex, whose syntax is similar to Java, the most popular programming language
for Web apps, runs on the Force.com platform servers. Apex is specifically designed for building
business applications to manage data and processes within the larger context of the Force.com
platform. The language provides a uniquely powerful and productive approach to creating
functionality and logic, allowing developers to focus just on the elements specific to their
application, while leaving the rest of the “plumbing” to the Force.com platform.
The majority of this book is intended for readers who don't necessarily code, so Apex is beyond
the scope of what we'll discuss here; however, you can learn everything there is to know at
wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Apex.
Visualforce
At the front of any great business application is a great user interface that's easy to use, powerful,
and suited exactly for the tasks, users, and devices the application serves. Visualforce is a
complete framework for creating such user interfaces, enabling any kind of interface design
and interaction to be built and delivered entirely in the cloud. The user interfaces you build
with Visualforce can extend the standard Force.com platform look and feel, or replace it with
a completely unique style and set of sophisticated interactions. Because Visualforce markup is
ultimately rendered into HTML, designers can use Visualforce tags alongside standard HTML,
JavaScript, Flash, or any other code that can execute within an HTML page on the platform.
And that's only the beginning: you can also use Visualforce pages to combine data from multiple
Force.com platform objects, or blend data from Web services into your applications, as we
discuss in Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App Development on page 291.
Salesforce Mobile
All around the globe, members of the business community are leaving their office chairs and
going mobile. Companies are issuing the latest smartphones to their employees to keep them
connected and productive. Tablets are sprouting up in cafes and conference rooms, enabling
efficiency everywhere. People are finding it less and less acceptable to be more than a click (or
tap) away from their data at all times.
As the primary points of Internet access shift from desktops and laptops to iPhones and iPads,
apps that don't provide mobile access to critical data will quickly become obsolete. Don't let
16
Introducing the Force.com Platform
your app get trampled by the mobile stampede! Instead, use Salesforce Mobile to deliver your
Force.com app to mobile users.
Salesforce Mobile is an app itself. It installs on mobile devices and utilizes the native
functionality of the device. When users log in to Salesforce Mobile, they can access and update
their Force.com data via an intuitive interface specially designed for the smaller form factor of
mobile device screens. The app stores a subset of data on the device to provide users with offline
access when a wireless connection is unavailable, and synchronizes that data with Force.com
when connectivity is reestablished.
The Force.com platform gives administrators full control over what users can and can't do with
Salesforce Mobile. For example, administrators can specify which data is available for mobile
access, limit the amount of data that users can transfer, and even remotely disable Salesforce
Mobile if a device is lost or stolen.
Salesforce Mobile is supported on the Apple iPhone and iPod touch, BlackBerry smartphones,
and Android tablets and smartphones. Refer to the list of supported devices to find out if
Salesforce Mobile runs on a specific device or operating system version. When you're ready to
take your app mobile, see the Salesforce Mobile Implementation Guide.
Sites
The apps you build on the Force.com platform might contain data and functionality that you
want to make accessible to people who are not Salesforce users. While it is possible to use the
SOAP API to integrate an external Web page or application with Salesforce, the Force.com
platform provides an easier, more efficient way of sharing data and functionality with people
outside of your organization: Sites.
Sites enables you to create public websites and applications that are directly integrated with
your Salesforce organization—without requiring users to log in with a username and password.
You can publicly expose any information stored in your organization through pages that match
the look and feel of your company's brand. Because these sites are built and hosted on the
Force.com platform servers, there are no data integration issues. And because sites are built
with Visualforce pages on the platform, data validation on collected information is performed
automatically. For more information, see developer.force.com/sites.
The AppExchange Directory
The final piece of technology that differentiates the Force.com platform from other platforms
is the AppExchange. The AppExchange is a Web directory where apps built on the Force.com
platform are available to salesforce.com customers to browse, demo, review, and install.
17
Chapter 1: Introducing the Force.com Platform
Developers can submit their apps for listing on the AppExchange directory if they want to
share them with the community.
To fully appreciate the benefits of the AppExchange, take a quick tour at
http://sites.force.com/appexchange. There you'll see the hundreds of innovative
and exciting apps that exist today, including everything from payroll management to telephony
integration, service and support surveys, adoption dashboards, and beyond. Some of these apps
have been created inhouse at salesforce.com, but most are built by partners and individual
developers who have chosen to take advantage of the Force.com platform.
18
Chapter 2
About the Sample Recruiting App
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
About Universal
Containers
Considerations for the
Recruiting App
Building the App: Our
Design
The goal of this book is to show you how easy it is to create
powerful, multifaceted applications that solve common
business problems. To do so, let's walk through the steps of
creating a simple application for a make-believe company
called Universal Containers.
Like many companies that have grown rapidly, Universal
Containers has been experiencing a few growing pains,
especially in its Human Resources department. In this book,
we're going to build a Recruiting app for the company that
allows it to move away from the Microsoft Word documents
and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that it has traditionally
used to an application that's available on demand.
By the time we finish building the Recruiting app in this
book, you should feel confident enough to build a custom
application in the cloud that suits your own company's needs.
So let's get started!
19
Chapter 2: About the Sample Recruiting App
About Universal Containers
First, let's learn a little more about our fictional company, Universal Containers.
Universal Containers is a rapidly growing international supplier of container products. The
company produces every kind of container from simple overnight letter mailers to custom
equipment packaging to large cargo shipping containers. In addition, Universal Containers
develops and maintains its own proprietary software to facilitate the design of its various types
of containers. As such, Universal Containers has a very diverse group of employees, including
facilities and operations professionals, software and design engineers, financial accountants,
and legal and human resources personnel.
Historically, the Human Resources department has used Microsoft Word documents and
Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to manage the recruiting and hiring process for new employees.
However, over the last two quarters it's become evident that unless this process is replaced by
one that is more collaborative, reliable, and scalable, the department won't be able to meet its
hiring goals for this fiscal year. Universal Containers needs a centralized application that can
bring all of its recruiting and hiring processes together, and the company has hired us to solve
this problem. Our approach will be to leverage their Salesforce account and build a recruiting
application on the Force.com platform. We're going to introduce Universal Containers to the
world of cloud computing!
Considerations for the Recruiting App
After meeting with Megan Smith, Universal Containers' vice president of Human Resources,
we've drawn up a few requirements for the new Recruiting app. The app needs to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
20
Track positions in all stages of the process, from those that are open to those that have
been filled or canceled.
Track all of the candidates who apply for a particular position, including the status of their
application (whether they've had a phone screen, are scheduled for interviews, have been
rejected or hired, or have passed on an offer that was presented).
Track the posting of jobs on external employment websites, such as Monster.com.
Allow employees to post reviews for candidates whom they've interviewed.
Provide security for the recruiting data so that it's not mistakenly viewed, edited, or deleted
by employees who shouldn't have access.
Automatically inform the relevant recruiter about the next steps that should be taken when
a decision has been made about an applicant.
About the Sample Recruiting App
•
•
•
•
•
•
Automatically inform all employees of new positions that have been posted.
Make sure that a new job opening has executive approval before it becomes active
Include reports that give users an overview of recruiting status.
Allow recruiters to map the locations of all candidates who are applying for a position, to
better understand relocation expenses.
Make it easy to perform several similar tasks at once, like rejecting multiple job applications.
Automatically post open positions on Universal Containers' public website.
An app that meets these requirements is going to greatly increase the efficiency of Universal
Containers' recruiting and hiring processes.
Building the App: Our Design
Let's take a look at the different parts of the Force.com platform that we'll use to implement
Universal Containers' Recruiting app. We'll learn about all of these things in a lot more detail
in later chapters, but for now, this quick preview will give you an idea about what's in store.
Custom Objects
Custom objects are the native components that model the data we need to store in our
Recruiting app. Similar to a database table, a custom object is composed of several fields that
store information such as a job applicant's name, or the maximum salary for a particular position.
However, unlike traditional database tables, we don't need to write any SQL in order to create
custom objects. We can simply point and click in the platform to create as many objects as we
need.
For our Recruiting app, we'll be creating six custom objects to track recruiting-related data:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Position
Candidate
Job Application
Review
Job Posting
Employment Website
Most of these objects will be displayed as tabs in our application. When a user clicks one of
the tabs, he or she will have access to individual instances of that particular object, as shown
in the following screenshot.
21
Chapter 2: About the Sample Recruiting App
Figure 3: Recruiting App Tabs
One of the powerful features of a custom object is the fact that it can have relationships with
other objects in the system. For example, for every review written by an interviewer and entered
into the system, we'll want to associate it with the job application of the candidate who was
being interviewed. Again, we won't need to write any SQL to make this happen—thanks to
the platform, defining a relationship will be as simple as a few clicks of the mouse.
Security and Sharing Rules
Another important function that we'll need to build into our app is the ability to restrict access
to data that particular users shouldn't see, without preventing other users from performing
their jobs effectively. We're going to implement this requirement with a group of components
that we've grouped under a single term: security and sharing rules.
With security and sharing rules, we'll first specify which custom objects a particular user should
be allowed to create, view, or edit (for example, Candidate and Position), and then which
instances of those objects should be accessible (for example, the records for candidate John
Smith or the Senior Sales Manager position). Controlling our data either with the wide brush
of object-level security or with the more detailed brush of record-level security will give us a
lot of power and flexibility in controlling what users can and can't see.
Workflow and Approval Processes
Three of our requirements involve automating business processes, such as triggering an alert
email to a recruiter whenever a job application's status has changed, and submitting new job
22
About the Sample Recruiting App
openings for executive approval. Once again, the Force.com platform makes these requirements
easy for us to implement natively with the built-in workflow and approval process components.
Workflow and approval processes allow us to create business logic based on rules:
•
•
Workflow rules can assign tasks to users, update fields, or send email alerts.
Approval processes allow users to submit sensitive records like new contracts or purchase
orders to other users for approval.
For example, in our Recruiting app, we can create a workflow rule that triggers an event
whenever the status of a job application has changed to Reject or Extend an Offer, as illustrated
below.
Figure 4: Workflow When a Job Application's Status Has Changed
When a hiring manager makes a decision to either extend an offer to or reject the candidate,
changing the status of the application triggers the appropriate task to be assigned to the recruiter
for that position. Based upon the hiring manager’s decision, the recruiter performs the
appropriate follow-up task.
Similarly, we can define an automatic approval process that sends all new positions to the
appropriate management for approval. If the position is approved, its status automatically
changes to Open - Approved and recruiters can start the hiring process. If the position is
rejected, its status automatically changes to Closed - Not Approved and the position won't be
filled.
23
Chapter 2: About the Sample Recruiting App
Custom Reports and Dashboards
Finally, we need to give users a way to inspect the status of all positions and job applicants in
the Universal Containers recruiting program. Managers need to delve into the intricate details
of how each recruiter is performing, while executives just want a high-level overview of how
departments are doing with staffing goals.
We can meet these requirements using reports and dashboards. Using report builder, we can
create detailed reports with filters, conditional highlighting, subtotals, and charts. With
dashboard builder, we can quickly create a dashboard of up to 20 different components on a
single page.
Visualforce
We'll be able to use point-and-click tools to satisfy nearly all of our Recruiting app use cases;
however, there are a few use cases, such as the mapping of candidate locations and the posting
of positions on Universal Containers' public jobs site, that will require us to use Visualforce,
the Force.com platform's tag-based markup language that allows you to build sophisticated,
custom user interfaces for apps. We won't address these use cases until the very last chapter,
and when we do, this book will provide all the code you need.
Although we haven't yet gone into detail about how any of this stuff is going to work, you can
probably see now just how flexible and powerful the Force.com platform can be when you're
creating a custom app.
In the next chapter, we'll start out by building our first custom object. We'll swiftly get a feel
for how the platform interface works, and it won't be any time at all before you're building app
components easily and quickly. When it's this easy, you can't help but become an expert!
24
Chapter 3
Reviewing Database Concepts
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
•
What's a Database?
What's in a Database?
What's a Relational
Database?
Summary of Database
Concepts
Now that we've introduced the power of the Force.com
platform and learned about the requirements of the
Recruiting app that we're going to build, let's take a moment
to talk about databases and why a simple understanding of
database concepts can help you realize the full potential of
the platform and make your app development a whole lot
easier.
As you know, the underlying architecture of the platform
includes a database where your data is stored. This means
that all of the information you enter is stored in that database
and then retrieved from the database whenever you view it
within your app.
Historically, companies were required to buy, build, and
maintain their own databases and IT infrastructures in order
to distribute and run their applications. Cloud computing
on the Force.com platform provides an alternative and makes
it easy for you, as a company or as a sole developer, to build
and deliver your app. Part of the simplicity of the cloud
computing model is that the technical responsibilities of
maintaining and running all of the database hardware and
software is handled by the hosting company (in this case,
salesforce.com), so you can focus on developing your app.
It's worth pointing out that although your data is stored in
a database and a simple understanding of database concepts
is helpful, you don't need to be a database developer to build
an app on the platform. We won't be doing any traditional
database programming in the course of developing our app.
25
Chapter 3: Reviewing Database Concepts
What's a Database?
In simple terms, a database is an organized collection of information. Common examples
include a phone book, a library catalog, an employee directory, a catalog of the MP3s you own,
or in the case of our Recruiting app, information about the open positions at a company, the
people who are applying for those positions, and the managers at our company who are in
charge of hiring each position.
Typically, you use a database to collect information about people, things, or concepts that are
important to you and whatever project you're working on. In standard database language, the
category of a person, thing, or concept you want to store information about is referred to as
an entity, although in standard Force.com platform terminology, we refer to this as an object.
In a database, each entity is represented by a table. A database table is simply a list of
information, presented with rows and columns, about the category of person, thing, or concept
you want to track. So in a phone book, you might have a table to store information about
residences and another table to store information about businesses; or in a library catalog, you
might have one table to store information about books and another to store information about
authors.
In our Recruiting app, we'll have one table to store information about open positions, another
table to store information about the candidates applying for the positions, and a table to store
information about hiring managers. (Our Recruiting app will have more than just this, but
we'll get to that later.)
In very simplistic terms, a Force.com platform object is similar to a database table in that you'll
have a separate object for each person, thing, or concept about which you want to collect
information. In reality, a Force.com platform object is much more than this because the full
functionality of the platform is behind each object. Each object automatically has built-in
features like a user interface, a security and sharing model, workflow processes, and much more
that you'll learn about in the rest of this book.
Note: As we introduce database concepts, “object” and “table” will be used
interchangeably because they are similar. Just remember that a Force.com platform
object is much more than just a database table.
It's important to understand that a single database table, or Force.com platform object, should
contain only one type of information. You don't want to lump all of your information into one
table, so you wouldn't store positions, candidates, and hiring managers all in the same place.
Not only is this not good database design, but it doesn't allow you to relate objects to one
another. For example, if all of our data were in one table, how would we ever know which
26
Reviewing Database Concepts
candidates were applying for which positions, or which managers were in charge of hiring for
which positions?
As we define our app, it's important for us to keep this in mind and ask ourselves questions
like, “What kind of information do we want to store? Can we separate our information into
distinct categories so that each object holds only one type of person, thing, or concept?” The
answers to these questions will guide us as we design the structure of our application.
What's in a Database?
As we mentioned, a database table presents your information in rows and columns. Let's take
a look at how a table of positions might look:
Figure 5: Position Information in a Table
Each row in the table represents the information about a specific instance of the object, for
example, the Recruiter position or the SW Engineer position. In standard Force.com platform
terminology, we call this a record. For every object you want to track in your app, you'll have
multiple records to represent each individual item about which you're storing information. It's
common for users who are new to the platform to confuse the meanings of object and record.
It'll make your development a lot easier if you remember that an object is a category of
information, such as a position or candidate, and the record is a single instance of an object,
such as a SW Engineer.
Note: As a side note here, we'll mention that the platform includes a set of built-in
objects when you first start using it; we call these standard objects. One example of a
standard object is the User object, which stores information about each person who
is a user of the app, like our hiring managers. You can also build your own objects to
27
Chapter 3: Reviewing Database Concepts
store information that's unique to your app; we call these custom objects. Both standard
objects and custom objects are not really all that different—one kind is prebuilt for
you, and the other you build yourself. We'll talk more about these later as you start to
build your app.
Now let's look at the columns in the table. Each column lists a particular piece of information
such as the Position Title or Max Pay. We refer to these as fields. Every object has a set of
fields that you use to enter the information about a particular record. For each field in the
table, a single item of data that you enter, such as Human Resources in the Functional Area,
is referred to as a data value.
Just like objects, fields come in two varieties: standard and custom. The standard fields are the
ones that are built into the platform and automatically added for you. The custom fields are
the ones you define to store specific pieces of information that are unique to your app.
Fundamentally, there is no difference between standard and custom fields. Both are simply
columns in the database table. We'll talk more about standard and custom fields later when
you begin building your app.
What's a Relational Database?
Now you have some information stored in your database, but so what? You could easily make
a list of positions using Microsoft Excel or some other spreadsheet software. For each position,
you could even list the hiring manager in a field called Hiring Manager, like this:
Figure 6: Position Information with Hiring Manager Field
But what if a hiring manager is responsible for hiring more than one position? You would need
to have duplicate records for the same hiring manager so you could capture every position for
which that hiring manager is responsible, like this:
28
Reviewing Database Concepts
Figure 7: Position Information with Duplicate Hiring Managers
This is not a good database design! Using this approach, data is repeated unnecessarily. In
addition, there is really no way to capture additional information about our hiring managers,
like their email addresses or phone numbers. And if we try to add information about which
candidates are applying for each position, you can imagine that our simple table will quickly
become extremely complex and unmanageable.
As we mentioned before, you want to create separate database tables, or objects, for each person,
thing, or concept you want to track. A better way to model our scenario here would be to create
one object for positions, one object for candidates, and one object for hiring managers. (Luckily,
the platform has a standard object that we'll be able to use to represent our hiring managers—the
User object.)
Once we have our data separated into discrete objects, we can easily relate objects to each other.
This is what a relational database is all about! A relationship is an association between two or
more tables. For example, we can relate positions to hiring managers so we know which positions
each hiring manager is responsible for:
Figure 8: Positions Related to Hiring Managers
29
Chapter 3: Reviewing Database Concepts
From a technical standpoint, each table in a relational database has a field in which the data
value uniquely identifies the record. This field is called the primary key. The primary key is one
part of what defines the relationship; the other part is the foreign key. A foreign key is a field
whose value is the same as the primary key of another table. You can think of a foreign key as
a copy of a primary key from another table. The relationship is made between two tables by
matching the values of the foreign key in one table with the values of the primary key in another.
Primary and foreign keys are fundamental to the concept of relationships because they enable
tables to be related to each other. As you begin building your app, you won't really need to
think too much about primary keys and foreign keys. The important concept to understand
here is that in a relational database, objects are related to each other through the use of common
fields that define those relationships.
Summary of Database Concepts
At this point, we're ready to dive into the building of our Recruiting app. But first let's recap
what we've learned about databases. Whether this was your first introduction to databases or
whether you're already an experienced database developer who's new to the Force.com platform,
the important things to remember are:
•
•
•
•
•
A database is an organized collection of information.
A database table stores information about a single type of person, thing, or concept—such
as a job position. In the Force.com platform, we use the term object here (even though an
object is much more than this, as you'll see).
A database row, or record in Force.com platform terms, represents a single instance of an
object—such as the SW Engineer position.
A field stores a particular piece of information on a record.
Relationships define the connection between two objects, and objects are related to each
other through the use of common fields.
Now that we've got that all covered, let's get started building our first object!
30
Chapter 4
Building a Simple App
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Becoming Familiar with
the Setup Area
Introducing Apps
Introducing Objects
Introducing Tabs
Becoming Familiar with
Setup Detail Pages and
Related Lists
Introducing Fields
Look at What We've
Done
Just as traditional programming books first teach you how
to write a simple “Hello World” program before getting into
more complicated things, in this chapter, we're going to
create a very simple version of the Recruiting app to show
you just how easy it is to get started with the Force.com
platform. Along the way we'll orient ourselves to the
platform's user interface (where we'll be doing most of our
work), and we'll learn how to create and configure our first
custom object. Although easy and straightforward, the tasks
we complete here will be the first step in developing a
full-featured Recruiting app. So let's dive right in!
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Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
Becoming Familiar with the Setup Area
Since we're going to spend most of our time working in the Setup area of the platform, let's
first become familiar with what it is and how to navigate to it.
The Setup area is a user preferences area, an application building and customization
environment, and an administration tool, all in one. We perform almost every task we need
to create our app in the Setup area, so most of the “Try It Out” sections of the book are going
to start with an instruction like, “Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Apps.” This is a short
way of saying:
1. Click the Your Name > Setup link in the top-right corner of the page (shown in
the following screenshot).
2. Go to the App Setup area on the left side of the page.
3. Click Create > Apps.
The final link that you click (in this example, Apps) will change depending on the task you're
trying to perform, but you get the general idea.
Figure 9: The Setup Area
Similar to the other parts of the application, the Setup area consists of a tab bar, a navigational
sidebar, and a main window:
32
Building a Simple App
•
•
The tab bar is made up of the same tabs that appear in the regular application. Just click
on any one of the tabs to exit the Setup area and go to that tab in the main application.
The navigational sidebar includes expandable lists of all the tools that are available in the
Setup area:
Force.com Home
The Force.com home page contains options and links for building, extending, and
managing apps. Only users with the “Customize Application” permission can see this
page.
System Overview
The Force.com System Overview page shows you important usage data and limits
about your organization.
Personal Setup
These tools control individual preferences and are available to all users.
App Setup
These tools configure the standard objects, custom objects, and custom apps that are
deployed and are typically used only by administrators.
Administration Setup
These tools configure the platform as a whole and are typically used only by
administrators.
Force.com Checkout
These tools let you purchase licenses and products from salesforce.com, change your
billing information, and so forth.
Note: Force.com Checkout is not available in Developer Edition.
•
The main window is where the navigational links or a selected setup tool are actually
displayed.
Tip: Since you're going to be developing apps in Force.com, you might want to make
the Setup area your default landing page when you log in. To do this:
1. In the Setup menu, Click My Personal Information > Personal
Information.
2. Click Edit.
3. Select Make Setup My Default Landing Page.
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Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
4. Click Save.
Now that we know what we're looking at, let's start creating our simple app.
Introducing Apps
What should we do first? If we were writing a software application, the first thing we'd need
to do is build a project where we could store all the code that we were going to write. With
the Force.com platform, the first thing we need to do is create a new app.
Like a programming project, an app is little more than a container for all of the objects, tabs,
and other functionality that we're going to build as part of our Recruiting application. It consists
simply of a name, a logo, and an ordered set of tabs. The simplest app contains only one
tab—the Home tab—and a default logo. As we define more tabs in the remainder of this book,
we can add them to the app later.
Let's start clicking through the process of actually creating a simple app now. Log in to your
Salesforce account so you can follow along!
Note: Because the platform is continually evolving, you might find that the screenshots
you see in this book vary slightly from what you see on your screen. These changes
should be minor and shouldn't affect your understanding.
Try It Out: Defining an App
To create an app:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Open a browser and go to www.salesforce.com.
Click Login.
Enter your username and password.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Apps.
If you see an introductory splash page, simply click Continue.
Note: Many parts of the application have these splash pages to help you
understand what you can do with the platform. If you never want to see a
particular page again, just click Don't show me this page again.
34
Building a Simple App
Welcome to the Apps list page! Like many of the setup tools, the starting page for the Apps
tool consists of a list of all the apps that are currently enabled for your organization. Depending
on what edition you're using or what you've already installed from the AppExchange, you'll
probably already have some standard apps listed here.
Beyond the Basics
There are actually two ways to create an app. The Quick Start button creates an app with
one custom object and associated tab. With the New button, you create an app with a
logo, add existing tabs, and specify the app's visibility for your profiles. In this book we'll
use the New button, but feel free to try out the Quick Start button later.
6. Click New. The New Custom App wizard appears.
7. In the App Label field, enter Recruiting.
The app label is the name that represents our app in the Force.com app menu that appears at
the top right of all pages. Users can use this menu to switch back and forth between apps.
Notice that a vertical red bar appears just to the left of this Label field. This red bar indicates
that you must provide a value for this field in order to save your work. If you don't enter a value
here and try to proceed, an error message is displayed.
Figure 10: Required Fields Highlighted in Red
8. Click your mouse inside the App Name field.
The app name is what the developers use to identify an app when writing code for the Force.com
platform. We won't do anything in this book that uses the app name, but the field is required,
so it needs a value. Fortunately, when you enter a value in the App Label field, the same
value should automatically appear in the App Name field. If it doesn't, enter Recruiting
in the App Name field now.
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Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
9. In the Description field, enter Manage positions, candidates, and
job applications, and track job postings on employment
websites.
10. Click Next.
The next screen in the New Custom App wizard allows you to specify the image file to use
for this app's logo. Whenever the app is selected in the Force.com app menu, this logo appears
in the upper-left corner of all pages. Since we're just creating a simple app, let's accept the
default logo that's already provided. We can always change it later.
11. Click Next.
As we said before, an app is a container for an ordered collection of tabs, and this step of the
New Custom App wizard allows us to specify which tabs we want to include in our new app.
The Available Tabs list shows us the standard and custom tabs that are available for us to
choose, and the Selected Tabs list shows us which tabs are already included, listed in the
order that they should be displayed. You'll notice that one tab, the Home tab, is already included
in our app by default. This is because the Home tab is required in every app, and must always
be in the first position; however, you can use the Default Landing Tab drop-down menu
to select which tab is first displayed when the app opens.
Again, since we're just creating a simple app, let's accept the defaults and move on. We'll add
more tabs later.
12. Click Next.
Now that we've defined some of the basic features of our app, you might be wondering what
remains to be done in the New Custom App wizard—shouldn't we already be done? It turns
out that one crucial step remains: we need to define the users who can access our app.
In this step of the New Custom App wizard, we can choose which user profiles should have
access to the app. We'll learn more about profiles in Securing and Sharing Data on page 131.
For now, just understand that every user is assigned to a profile, and profiles control which
apps the users assigned to that profile can view.
13. Select the Visible checkbox next to the Standard User and System Administrator
profiles.
14. Click Save.
That's it!
36
Building a Simple App
Look at What We've Done
Now that we've made it back to the Apps list page, let's see what we've just done. First of all,
we've got a new entry in the Apps list—our Recruiting app! It shows up in the list in the same
order it's going to appear in our Force.com app menu. In fact, let's go look at the Force.com
app menu now.
Figure 11: Force.com App Menu
Tip: If you want to change the position of our app in this menu, do so from the Apps
list page by clicking Reorder and rearranging the available apps as you see fit.
Now select the Recruiting app from the menu and see what happens—our app is launched
with a single Home tab! We've created the Recruiting app's Home tab, and we've added it to
the Force.com app menu. That's how easy it is to get started.
You'll notice that the approach we're taking here is iterative: we'll build part of the app, look
at what we've accomplished, and then add to it. This sequence not only reflects the fact that
we're leading you through the steps of building an app in this book, but you'll also find that
in building Force.com platform apps in general, this iterative process is common.
During the course of this book, you'll also notice that unlike with traditional coding projects,
your app is always functional. There's no build or compile phase, and as a result, you'll almost
never be chasing down syntax bugs or other typos. In fact, with this simple one-tab app, you
can already utilize all of the built-in functionality that comes with the platform, including
search, calendar events and tasks, user preferences, and a familiar user interface.
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Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
Introducing Objects
Now that our app is functional (but rather boring), let's make it a little more interesting by
introducing our first object.
As you might remember from the last chapter, an object is very similar to a database table in
the Force.com platform. The platform comes with a number of standard objects, like contacts,
accounts, and cases, which support default apps like Salesforce Sales and Salesforce Call Center.
We can also define custom objects that allow us to store information specific to our Recruiting
app.
Whether they're standard or custom, Force.com platform objects not only provide a structure
for storing data but they also power the interface elements that allow users to interact with the
data, such as tabs, the layout of fields on a page, and lists of related records. Because any object
can correspond to a tab, and an ordered collection of tabs makes up an app, objects make up
the heart of any app that we create with the platform.
With custom objects being so important—they have lots to do with how our app will look,
behave, and feel—what we do with custom objects and how we use them quickly becomes
essential to creating a successful app. The design of the data model behind an app is typically
the biggest factor in its success or failure.
That's enough talk about objects for now. Let's go define one!
The Position Custom Object
The first custom object that we'll create for our Recruiting app reflects a typical recruiting task:
describing a position. Recruiters at Universal Containers need to keep track of all the positions
they're hiring for, such as a Senior Developer, Sales Engineer, or Benefits Specialist. They'll
need easy access to all positions in the system through a tab, and they'll need to include certain
information for each position, such as its minimum and maximum salary range, the position's
location, and its hiring manager. In Force.com platform terms, we'll create a custom object,
create a custom tab for that object, and then define some custom fields.
Try It Out: Defining the Position Custom Object
To create the Position custom object, we're going to go back to the Setup area.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. On the Custom Objects page, click New Custom Object.
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Building a Simple App
Unlike defining a custom app, which we did through the New Custom App wizard, defining
a custom object is confined to just one page. You'll find that the platform uses wizards or single
pages depending on the amount of information that needs to be specified.
Figure 12: Custom Object Definition Page
3. In the Label field, enter Position.
4. In the Plural Label field, enter Positions.
5. The Object Name field is defaulted to Position. Let's leave it as is.
The Label and Plural Label of a custom object are what users see in all of the object's
related user interface elements, such as the object's tab or in search results headings. Object
labels work best as nouns, and the plural label is always used to label a custom object's tab (if
you create a tab for your object).
The value of a custom object's Object Name represents the unique name for the object when
it's referenced in other areas of the platform, such as formulas and Visualforce pages. This
value is helpfully auto-generated based on the value that you enter for the Label, except that
all spaces and punctuation are replaced with underscore characters. We'll talk more about
formulas and Visualforce later in this book. For now, just keep in mind that the Object Name
value must be unique across all objects defined in your organization.
Note: Within the platform, Object Name is actually stored with __c appended to
the end as a suffix (for example, Position__c). This identifies it as a custom object.
39
Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
6. In the Description field, enter This object stores information
about the open job positions at our company.
7. For the Context-Sensitive Help Setting, accept the default. If you later
want to provide customized help documentation for your users about this object,
you can come back and choose the Open a window using a custom
Visualforce option.
8. In the Record Name field, enter Position Title.
The Record Name is the label for the field that identifies individual position records in the
system. A custom object cannot be saved without this identifying field.
9. In the Data Type drop-down list, select Text.
The Data Type drop-down list allows you to select the type of value used for this identifying
field: either Text or Auto-Number. Some objects, like Positions or Accounts, can be identified
with a text field because there will always be a name for a position or account available. Other
objects, like a Case (used in the standard Call Center app) are harder to identify with a single
text field, so we assign them auto-numbers instead.
Tip: Whenever possible, it's best to use text as the data type for an identifying field
so that users can more easily identify a particular record when several of them appear
together in a single list.
To illustrate how custom object and record name labels work together in the app, let's fast
forward a bit to see where each label will appear once we've defined our Position custom object,
its tab, and a single Sr. Developer position record.
Figure 13: Custom Object and Record Name Labels
Let's move on.
40
Building a Simple App
10. In the Optional Features area, select the Allow Reports, Allow Activities,
and Track Field History checkboxes.
These three checkboxes actually enable some really robust functionality:
Allow Reports
Selecting this option makes the data in the position records available for reporting purposes.
The platform comes with a large number of standard reports, and users can also create
custom reports by using a simple yet powerful report builder. (To find out more about
reports, see Analyzing Data with Reports and Dashboards on page 249.)
Allow Activities
Selecting this option allows users to associate tasks and scheduled calendar events with a
particular position. For example, a user can create a task, such as “Update salary range for
Sr. Developer position,” and specify attributes such as priority, due date, and status. The
user can then handle the task or assign it to someone else. (To find out more about tasks,
see “Activity Overview” in the online help.)
Track Field History
Selecting this option allows the platform to automatically track edits to position records,
such as who changed the value of a field, when it was changed, and what the value of the
field was before and after the edit. History data is available for reporting, so users can easily
create audit trail reports when this feature is enabled. (To find out how to select which
data is tracked, see “Tracking Field History” in the online help.)
In general, select these options if there's any chance that they might be useful for whatever
custom object you're defining.
11. In the Deployment Status area, select Deployed.
Note: This step assumes that you're working in a development environment.
If you're not, and if you don't want users to see the Position object after you
click Save, select In Development. Setting the status to In
Development hides position records from all users except those with the
“Customize Application” user permission (that is, just about anyone who
isn't a System Administrator).
12. In the Object Creation Options area, select the Add Notes & Attachments
related list to default page layout and Launch New Custom Tab
Wizard after saving this custom object checkboxes.
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Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
These two options are available only when you're creating a new custom object. If you later
decide to go back and edit some of the details about your custom object, you won't see them.
But what do they do?
•
•
Enabling notes and attachments for an object means you can attach external documents to
any position record, in much the same way that you can add a PDF or photo as an
attachment to an email. It's handy functionality, so select it.
Launching the New Custom Tab wizard does exactly what it says—it's a shortcut to
launching the tab wizard after we've saved our Position object, and will save us a few clicks
if we know that we need a tab.
All set? Let's go ahead and save our Position custom object now.
13. Click Save.
That's all there is to it! As promised, the New Position Tab wizard is displayed instead of the
list of custom objects that we'd normally see. Let's take a moment to talk about why we should
even be defining a tab for our Position object in the first place. What's so great about tabs,
anyway?
Introducing Tabs
If you're familiar with the Force.com platform, you know that clicking tabs is how you navigate
around an app. Every tab serves as the starting point for viewing, editing, and entering
information for a particular object. When you click a tab at the top of the page, the
corresponding home page for that object appears. For example, if you click the Accounts tab,
the Accounts tab home page appears, giving you access to all of the account records that are
defined in your organization. Click the name of a particular account record and you'll view all
of the record's information in its associated detail page.
What's really powerful about building an app with the platform is that you can create custom
tabs that look and behave just like the tabs for standard objects that are already provided. From
the perspective of your end users, any customizations that you make appear perfectly seamless,
and as a developer, you don't have to do anything special to make it work that way! Let's see
how quickly we can create a tab for our Position object.
Try It Out: Defining the Positions Tab
To create a custom tab for our Position object, we're going to use the New Custom Object
Tab wizard that was so helpfully launched for us when we clicked Save after defining the
42
Building a Simple App
object. However, in case you forgot to select the Launch New Custom Tab Wizard after
saving this custom object option or if you're coming back to work that you previously
saved, have no fear! There's another way to launch the wizard.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Tabs.
2. In the Custom Object tabs area, click New.
Easy. Now that we're all on the same page, let's get started working through the wizard.
3. In the Object drop-down list, select Position.
If you launched the wizard directly after defining the custom object, the Position object is
automatically selected for you.
4. Click the Tab Style lookup icon to launch the Tab Style Selector as shown in the
following screenshot.
Every object that appears as a tab must have a unique color scheme and icon. This color scheme
is what identifies the object, not only on its tab but also in different places in the user interface,
such as in related lists and search results.
Figure 14: Custom Object Tab Setup Page and Tab Style Selector
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Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
In the Tab Style Selector, you can choose a predefined color and icon or you can create your
own. To keep things simple, we're going to select an existing style.
5. Click the Hide values which are used on other tabs link to make sure you choose
a unique style.
6. Click any colored box to choose a color scheme and icon.
Leave the Splash Page Custom Link drop-down list set to --None--. We'll learn more
about custom links in Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App Development on page 291.
7. In the Description field, enter A tab and color scheme for the
Position custom object.
8. Click Next.
9. Click Next again to accept the default user profile visibility.
Just as we controlled access to our Recruiting app by selecting user profiles in the New Custom
App wizard, we can also control access to our Positions tab by selecting user profiles here.
We'll learn more about user profiles and what they do in Securing and Sharing Data on page
131. For now, just know that accepting the defaults will make the tab visible to all users.
10. Deselect all of the Include Tab checkboxes except the one for our Recruiting app.
In performing this step, we're providing access to the Positions tab only when someone has
access to our Recruiting app. Unless an employee is interested in recruiting, he or she probably
doesn't need to see this tab.
11. Select the Append tab to users' existing personal customizations
checkbox.
If you don't select this option, any users who have personalized their tab display will not
immediately see the Positions tab. Also, if you've already created a new tab and didn't turn
this option on, you have to first delete the existing tab and then recreate it with this option
turned on to automatically push the tab to existing users. What a pain! Do yourself a favor and
just always keep this option selected.
12. Click Save.
You'll notice when the page refreshes that the Positions tab has automatically been added next
to the Home tab at the top of the page.
Look at What We've Done
To truly appreciate what we've just built with a few clicks, let's take a look at what we've done.
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Building a Simple App
1. First, click the Positions tab to display the Positions tab home page, as shown in the
following screenshot. Although the list is empty because we haven't yet created any
records, you can see how this page will become the gateway to viewing, creating,
editing, and deleting all of the positions that we create in our Recruiting app. It looks
just like the tab home page of any other standard object.
Figure 15: The Positions Tab Home Page
2. Now, check out the contents of the Create New... drop-down list in the left sidebar.
As promised, our custom object has been seamlessly incorporated into the platform
with the other standard objects like Event and Task. An end user need never know
that the Positions tab was created with a custom object, because it shows up alongside
the standard objects as well.
3. Select Position from the Create New... drop-down list, or click New in the Positions
tab home page. Voilà—it's the Position edit page! Sadly, though, our position still
doesn't have much room for data. At this point, all we have is a field for Position
Title (the record identifier) and Owner, a default field that appears on every object
to identify the user who created the object.
4. Click Cancel. It doesn't do much to create a position record with hardly any
interesting data. We need more fields! And sure enough, that's what we'll get to
next. First, though, we'll revisit our Position custom object and orient ourselves to
what else is available through a custom object detail page in the Setup area.
5. Notice the arrow icon ( ) on the right side of the page. Click it to open the
Force.com quick access menu. When you're building apps, the quick access menu
makes it easy to switch between object records and setup pages. This menu appears
from the list pages and record detail page for any object, so you can easily jump to
the setup pages for an object and its tabs, fields, and more. You'll get a chance to try
out the quick access menu in a little while.
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Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
Figure 16: Force.com Quick Access Menu
Note: You can see this menu because you have the “Customize Application”
permission, which allows you to create apps, objects, tabs, and fields. Users
who don't build apps, like those with the Standard User profile, won't see
this menu.
Becoming Familiar with Setup Detail Pages and Related
Lists
You may recall when we first introduced the concept of objects that we learned: “Whether
they're standard or custom, Force.com platform objects not only provide a structure for storing
data but they also power the interface elements that allow users to interact with the data, such
as tabs, the layout of fields on a page, and lists of related records.” If you've been following
along closely, you might have been wondering why we didn't get to define any fields (other
than the identifier field of Position Title) or user interface elements (other than the Positions
tab) when we created our Position object. If fields and user interface elements are a part of the
definition of what a custom object is all about, where do we get to define them?
It turns out that the Force.com platform differentiates between the initial creation of certain
components and details related to those components. In other words, the information that we
see when we define or edit a custom object is different from the information that we see when
we view a custom object that's already defined. Let's go back to our custom object list page to
see how this difference is reflected in the platform interface:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
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Building a Simple App
Here we are back in the custom object list page. You'll notice in the row for Position there are
three links that we can click:
Edit
This link takes us back to the Custom Object edit page where we originally defined our
Position object.
Del
This link deletes the custom object, including any records, tabs, reports, or other
components associated with that object.
Position
This link takes us to the custom object detail page for our Position object.
Figure 17: Custom Object List Page: Edit, Delete, and Detail Links
We're already familiar with the edit page from when we defined our Position object, and we
certainly don't want to delete our object. Let's go ahead and open up the detail page to see
what we can do there.
2. Click Position.
As you can see, the Custom Object edit page that we filled out when we defined our Position
object was just the tip of the iceberg. The top two areas of the Position detail page include all
of the information that we originally specified, plus a few standard fields that the platform
includes with every object. Below those areas are several additional groupings of data that allow
us to do more with our Position object.
In Force.com platform terms, those groupings of data are called related lists, and they're a big
part of what makes the platform so powerful. A related list is a list of records or other
components that are associated with whatever we're viewing. Related lists appear in both the
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Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
main application and in the Setup areas and represent a relationship between the items that
appear in the related list and the object or record that we're viewing in the detail area. We'll
learn a lot more about relationships in Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships on
page 87, but for now, just understand that anything that appears in an object's related list is
directly related to that object.
Now that we've found out where we can continue customizing our Position custom object,
let's use the Custom Fields & Relationships related lists to create some more fields in our
Position object.
Figure 18: Position Custom Object Detail Page
Introducing Fields
We're ready to add more fields to our Position custom object, but first, let's talk briefly about
what a field is and how it fits into the world of the Force.com platform.
As you might remember from the last chapter, a field is like a database column. The primary
characteristic of a field is its data type—some fields hold text values, while others hold currency
values, percentages, phone numbers, email addresses, or dates. Some fields look like checkboxes,
while still others are drop-down lists or record lookups from which a user makes a selection.
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Building a Simple App
The data type of a field controls the way the field is ultimately displayed in the user interface
and how data entered into the field is stored in the platform. To get a better feel for how the
fields will look, let's take a sneak peak at what the Position object is ultimately going to look
like and the types of custom fields we're going to create for it:
Figure 19: Position Custom Object Fields
There are a lot of fields here that we need to define, some more complicated than others. To
keep things simple, let's go through and create the simple text, currency, checkbox, and date
fields. We can tackle the more complicated picklist and custom formula fields in Enhancing
the App on page 55.
Try It Out: Adding Text Fields
First let's define a few text fields. We already created a basic text field for Position Title
when we defined our Position custom object. Looking at our screenshot, the only text fields
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Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
that remain are the text fields under the Description heading. We'll start by defining the Job
Description field.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. Click Position.
3. In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click New.
Every time you create a custom field, you'll first choose a data type from the field type selection
page.
The platform allows us to choose between different types of text fields:
•
•
•
Basic text fields allow users to enter any combination of letters and numbers on a single
line, up to as many as 255 characters.
Text area fields also have a 255 character limit but also allow carriage returns so the text
can be formatted on separate lines.
Long text fields allow as many as 32,768 characters, on separate lines.
Since job descriptions can be lengthy, let's choose a long text area.
4. Choose the Text Area (Long) data type and click Next.
Tip: Carefully consider the data type you choose for each of your custom fields, because
once you set it, it isn't always the best idea to change it later. See Notes on Changing
Custom Field Types in the online help for details.
The second page of the custom field wizard allows us to enter details about our long text area
field. The fields that appear in this step change depending on the data type that we selected
in the previous page.
5. In the Field Label field, enter Job Description.
Like the other labels we've seen in the platform so far, Field Label specifies the text that
appears when the field is rendered in the user interface. Notice that when we enter a value for
Field Label, Field Name is automatically populated with the same text but with all spaces
and punctuation replaced by underscores. The value for Field Name is a unique name that
is used to refer to the field when writing a custom formula or using the API.
Note: Within the platform, Field Name is actually stored with __c appended to
the end as a suffix (for example, Job_Description__c). This identifies it as a
custom field.
6. In the Length field, enter 32,768.
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Building a Simple App
The Length field allows us to restrict the maximum number of characters that are allowed.
Since we don't get any benefit from this kind of restriction, leave this value set to 32,768.
7. In the # Visible Lines field, enter 3.
This field allows us to specify how large our text box will appear on the page.
8. In the Description and Help Text fields, enter High-level description
of the job and its duties.
This help text is displayed on record detail and edit pages when users hover over the field's
label. Its purpose is to assist users in filling out the field correctly. It's optional to add help text
for a field, but it's a good idea if you have fields that you think users might be confused by.
There's no obvious default value for a text field, so just leave Default Value blank.
9. Click Next.
The third page of the Custom Field wizard allows us to restrict access to this field from certain
user profiles. We'll learn more about profiles and field-level security in Securing and Sharing
Data on page 131, so for now, just accept the defaults.
10. Click Next.
The last page of the wizard allows us to automatically place our field on the Position page
layout. Again, we'll learn about page layouts in the next chapter, so for now, just accept the
defaults.
11. Click Save & New.
Instead of clicking Save and returning to the Position object detail page, clicking Save & New
saves a few clicks and allows us to finish up the other text area fields that we need. Here's what
you need to know to define them:
Table 2: Position Object Long Text Area Fields
Data Type
Field Label
Length
# Visible Lines
Default Value
Text Area (Long) Responsibilities
32,768
3
Leave unspecified
Text Area (Long) Skills Required
32,768
3
Leave unspecified
Text Area (Long) Educational
Requirements
32,768
3
Leave unspecified
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Now that we've wet our feet with text fields, let's quickly create a few more fields of other
types. You'll find that with few exceptions, they're all very similar to one another.
Try It Out: Adding Currency Fields
To keep track of a position's salary range, we need to add two currency fields: Min Pay and
Max Pay. Note that unlike some fields, once we define these as currency fields, we won't be
able to change them to any other type.
Defining a currency field is almost identical to defining a text field, with a few slight differences:
•
•
The Length of a currency field actually corresponds to the number of digits to the left of
the decimal point. An additional Decimal Places field handles the number of digits
that should be displayed to the right.
In the Details page of the wizard, a new checkbox called Required is displayed. We can
select this option if we want to force our users to enter a value for this field when creating
a new position.
Everything else should be familiar to you, so go ahead and use the custom field wizard to define
the following fields:
Table 3: Position Object Currency Fields
Data Type
Field Label
Length
Decimal
Places
Required
Default Value
Currency
Min Pay
7
2
Leave
unchecked
Leave
unspecified
Currency
Max Pay
7
2
Leave
unchecked
Leave
unspecified
Try It Out: Adding Checkbox Fields
Here are some easy ones. The Position object requires a few checkbox fields: one to indicate
if travel is required for the position, and four others to indicate which programming languages
are required. By default, these values should be unchecked. (Note that similar to currency fields,
once you define a field as a checkbox, you can't change it to any other type.)
Use the custom field wizard to define these fields:
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Building a Simple App
Table 4: Position Object Checkbox Fields
Field Type
Field Label
Default Value
Checkbox
Travel Required
Unchecked
Checkbox
Java
Unchecked
Checkbox
JavaScript
Unchecked
Checkbox
C#
Unchecked
Checkbox
Apex
Unchecked
Try It Out: Adding Date Fields
Finally, before we close out this chapter, let's add three date fields to our Recruiting app to
track the date a position opens, the date it closes, and the date by which it should be filled.
Date fields are great because they automatically include a popup calendar interface from which
users can select a day without any typing—yet another built-in feature that we can leverage in
our app without any extra work!
Once again we'll use the custom field wizard to define these three fields:
Table 5: Position Object Date Fields
Field Type
Field Label
Required
Default Value
Date
Open Date
Unchecked
Leave unspecified
Date
Hire By
Unchecked
Leave unspecified
Date
Close Date
Unchecked
Leave unspecified
Look at What We've Done
We've defined text, currency, checkbox, and date fields for our Position object. Let's take a
look by going to the Positions tab and clicking New.
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Chapter 4: Building a Simple App
Figure 20: Position Object Fields
Check out all the fields we've just made! It's not the most elegant layout for all of our fields
(each field got added to the page in the order that we created it), but it's definitely functional,
and it looks just like any other page. Wasn't that easy?
Once again, welcome to the power of the Force.com platform. First we created a new recruiting
app with a single Home tab, then we created a Position object and tab, and now we've just
added a few fields, all in less than 15 minutes of clicking around. From start to finish we always
had a fully functional app, and we never had to spend any time compiling or debugging our
“code!”
In the next chapter, we'll enhance our simple Recruiting app even further by adding some
additional fields that are more complex, defining validation rules to help our data stay clean,
and then moving the fields around in a page layout so users can more easily find and enter the
information they need. Let's keep going!
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In this chapter ...
•
•
•
Adding Advanced Fields
Introducing Validation
Rules
Introducing Page Layouts
In the last chapter, we got our Recruiting app off to a quick
start by defining the Position custom object, tab, and several
simple fields. This simple version of our app had the same
look and feel as any other page on the Force.com platform,
and we were able to whip it together in a matter of minutes.
In this chapter, we're going to enhance the Positions tab:
first by defining a few more advanced fields, then by defining
a validation rule to make sure our data stays clean, and finally
by moving our fields around within a page layout. These
additions will help change the detail page of our Positions
tab from a somewhat flat and inelegant user interface to
something that users find powerful and intuitive to use. Let's
get started!
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Chapter 5: Enhancing the App
Adding Advanced Fields
In this section, let's revisit the custom field wizard to help us create fields with more
sophisticated functionality: picklists, dependent picklists, and fields that leverage custom
formulas. We'll see how the platform's user interface helps guide us through the setup of these
more complicated fields.
Introducing Picklists
When viewing the preview of what we wanted our Positions page to ultimately look like, there
were several fields that were specified with drop-down lists. In Force.com platform terms,
these fields are called picklists, and they consist of several predefined options from which a user
can select.
Picklists come in two flavors: a standard picklist, in which a user can select only one option,
and a multi-select picklist, in which a user can select multiple options at a time. For the purposes
of our Position object, we need to define standard picklists for a position's location, status,
type of job, functional area, and job level.
Figure 21: Location Picklist Field
Try It Out: Adding Picklists
Let's walk through the creation of the Location picklist field. Then, as in the previous chapter,
we'll give you the information that you need to create the others on your own.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
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Enhancing the App
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Click Position.
In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click New.
Select the Picklist data type and click Next.
In the Field Label text box, enter Location.
In the large text area box just below, enter the following picklist values, each on its
own line:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
San Francisco, CA
Austin, TX
Boulder, CO
London, England
New York, NY
Mumbai, India
Sydney, Australia
Tokyo, Japan
7. Select the Use first value as default value checkbox.
This option allows us to populate the field with a default value. If you leave it deselected, the
field defaults to None on all new position records. Otherwise the field defaults to the first value
that you specify in the list of possible picklist values. Because most positions at Universal
Containers are based at its headquarters in San Francisco, CA, this should be the default.
8. Accept all other default settings for field-level security and page layouts.
9. Click Save & New.
Easy! Now specify the remaining picklists according to the table below:
Table 6: Status, Type, Functional Area, and Job Level Picklist Values
Data Type
Field Label
Picklist Values
Sort
Use First
Alphabetically? Value as
Default?
Picklist
Status
New Position
No
Yes
Pending Approval
Open - Approved
Closed - Filled
Closed - Not Approved
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Chapter 5: Enhancing the App
Data Type
Field Label
Picklist Values
Sort
Use First
Alphabetically? Value as
Default?
Closed - Canceled
Picklist
Type
Full Time
No
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Part Time
Internship
Contractor
Picklist
Functional
Area
Finance
Human Resources
Information Technology
Retail Operations
Warehousing
Miscellaneous
Picklist
Job Level
FN-100
FN-200
FN-300
FN-400
HR-100
HR-200
HR-300
HR-400
IT-100
IT-200
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Enhancing the App
Data Type
Field Label
Picklist Values
Sort
Use First
Alphabetically? Value as
Default?
IT-300
IT-400
RO-100
RO-200
RO-300
RO-400
WH-100
WH-200
WH-300
WH-400
MC-100
MC-200
MC-300
MC-400
Introducing Field Dependencies
Now that we've made all those picklists, answer this question: How many times have you
clicked on a drop-down list and found far too many values to choose from? For example, maybe
you were selecting Uruguay from a list of countries, and every country in the world was on the
list. That meant that you had to scroll all the way down to the countries that started with the
letter U. What a pain!
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Fortunately, the folks who built the Force.com platform have encountered that situation a few
times themselves, and as a result, they've given us a tool to help us avoid this problem with our
own picklist fields: field dependencies.
Field dependencies are filters that allow us to change the contents of a picklist based on the
value of another field. For example, rather than displaying every value for Country in a single
picklist, we can limit the values that are displayed based on a value for another field, like
Continent. That way our users can find the appropriate country more quickly and easily.
Picklist fields can be either controlling or dependent fields. A controlling field controls the
available values in one or more corresponding dependent fields. A dependent field displays
values based on the value selected in its corresponding controlling field. In the previous example,
the Continent picklist is the controlling field, while the Country picklist is the dependent field.
Try It Out: Creating a Dependent Picklist
Looking at the picklists that we've created, it's quickly obvious that our users might get frustrated
with the length of our Job Level picklist. Let's make our users happy by turning Job Level
into a dependent field of the Functional Area picklist. Doing this will allow users to see
only the four relevant job level values when a department is selected in the Functional Area
picklist:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Position.
In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click Field Dependencies.
Click New.
For the Controlling Field drop-down list, choose Functional Area.
For the Dependent Field drop-down list, choose Job Level.
Click Continue.
A field dependency matrix displays with all the values in the controlling field across the top
header row and the dependent field values listed in the columns below. For each possible value
of the controlling field, we need to include the values that should be displayed in the dependent
picklist when that controlling value is selected. In the field dependency matrix, yellow
highlighting shows which dependent field values are included in the picklist for a particular
controlling field value.
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Enhancing the App
Figure 22: Field Dependency Matrix
To include a dependent field value, you simply double-click it. To exclude a dependent value
from the list, double-click it again.
For example, let's try it out by including the values that should be displayed in the Job Level
picklist whenever Finance is selected in the Functional Area picklist:
8. In the column labeled Finance, double-click FN-100, FN-200, FN-300, and FN-400.
Those four fields should now be shaded yellow in the Finance column.
Instead of double-clicking every Job Level value, we can also use SHIFT+click to select a
range of values or CTRL+click to select multiple values at once. Once those values are
highlighted in blue, we can click Include Values to include them, or Exclude Values to remove
them. Let's try it out.
9. In the column labeled Human Resources, single-click HR-100 and then press and
hold the SHIFT key while clicking HR-400.
10. Click Include Values.
Now we have values selected for both the Finance and Human Resources columns!
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11. Continue highlighting the appropriate values for all of the remaining columns, as
described in the following table.
Tip: To get to all of the values that you need to modify for this step, you'll need to
click Previous or Next to see additional columns.
Table 7: Functional Area and Job Level Field Dependency Matrix
Functional Area
Job Level
(Controlling picklist field)
(Dependent picklist field)
Finance
FN-100
FN-200
FN-300
FN-400
Human Resources
HR-100
HR-200
HR-300
HR-400
Information Technology
IT-100
IT-200
IT-300
IT-400
Retail Operations
RO-100
RO-200
RO-300
RO-400
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Enhancing the App
Functional Area
Job Level
(Controlling picklist field)
(Dependent picklist field)
Warehousing
WH-100
WH-200
WH-300
WH-400
Miscellaneous
MC-100
MC-200
MC-300
MC-400
12. Click Preview to test the results in a small popup window.
13. Click Save.
Look at What We've Done
Now that we've created all those picklists, let's revisit the Positions tab to see what we have so
far.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Go to the Positions tab.
Click New.
In the Functional Area picklist, select Finance.
Open the Job Level picklist.
Figure 23: Dependent Picklist Fields
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Chapter 5: Enhancing the App
Our Recruiting app users are going to be very happy that they no longer have to deal with a
long, onerous picklist. Now let's go add a field that's even more powerful and complex than a
dependent picklist: a custom formula field.
Introducing Custom Formula Fields
Up to this point, the fields that we've defined have all had one thing in common—they each
require a user to give them a value. Fields like that are very helpful for storing and retrieving
data, but wouldn't it be great if we could somehow define a “smart” field? That is, what if we
could define a field that looked at information that was already entered into the system and
then told us something new about it?
Fortunately, custom formula fields give us the ability to do just that. Just as you can use a
spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel to define calculations and metrics specific to your
business, we can use custom formula fields to define calculations and metrics that are specific
to our Recruiting app.
For example, on our Position object, we've already created fields for minimum pay and maximum
pay. If Universal Containers gives out yearly bonuses based on salary, we could create a custom
formula field that automatically calculated the average bonus that someone hired to that position
might receive.
How would we perform this calculation if we were using a spreadsheet? The columns in our
spreadsheet would represent the fields that we defined on our Position object, and each row
of the spreadsheet would represent a different position record. To create a calculation, we'd
enter a formula in a new column that averages the values of Min Pay and Max Pay in a single
row and then multiplies it by a standard bonus percentage. We could then determine the
average bonus for every position record row in our spreadsheet.
Custom formulas work in a very similar way. Think of a custom formula like a spreadsheet
formula that can reference other values in the same data record, perform calculations on them,
and return a result. However, instead of using cell references, you use merge fields, which serve
as placeholders for data that will be replaced with information from your records, user
information, or company information. And, instead of typing fields, operators, and functions,
you can click to select them.
The net result is that anyone can quickly and easily learn to create formula fields. And, as with
all platform tools, the cloud computing delivery model makes it easy to experiment. You can
create a formula, view the results, and change the formula again and again, as many times as
you want! Your underlying data is never affected.
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Enhancing the App
Tip: When defining your own custom formula fields, leverage the work of others. You
can find more than a hundred sample formulas on the Salesforce.com Community website
at http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/usefulFormulaFields/.
Calculating How Long a Position Has Been Open
Let's think about another custom formula field that we could create for our Position object—a
custom formula field that calculates how many days a position has been open. To do this, let's
first think about the logic that we should use to define the field, and then we can go through
the process of creating it in our Recruiting app.
Let's think about the data that we need to make this calculation: we need to know the current
date and the date the position was created. If we could somehow subtract these two, we'd have
the number of days that the position has been open. Fortunately, it's easy to get both of these
values:
•
•
For the current date, we can use the platform's built-in TODAY() function. TODAY()
returns today's date.
For the date that the position was opened, we can use the Open Date field that we defined
in the last chapter.
When using fields in formulas, you can't just refer to a field by its name. Instead, you need to
refer to it by its merge field name, also called its API name. The format of the API name is
typically the name of the field but with spaces instead of underscores. For custom fields, the
API name is suffixed with two underscores and the letter “c,” like this: Open_Date__c. This
naming convention in the platform helps distinguish between standard and custom fields.
Tip: You don't need to memorize the API names of fields you want to use in formulas.
Simply use the field picker in the formula editor to insert fields and the platform
automatically inserts the API name for you. If you ever want to know the API name
of a specific field and you aren't using the formula editor, you can view the field's detail
page.
Now that we have our two dates, we want to subtract them: TODAY() - Open_Date__c.
Even if the two dates span different months or years, the platform is sophisticated enough to
know how to handle all the intricacies of such a calculation behind the scenes. We just have
to provide the dates, and the platform can do all the rest.
So far so good, but one problem still remains—what if the position has already closed? Our
formula only works if we assume the position is still open. Once it closes, however, the value
of our current formula will keep incrementing every day as TODAY() gets farther and farther
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Chapter 5: Enhancing the App
away from the original Open Date. If we can, we want to use the Close Date field in the
formula instead of TODAY() after a position closes. How can we do this?
Once again, we can dip into the extensive library of platform functions. The IF() function
allows us to perform a test and then return different values depending on whether the result
of the test is true or false. The IF() function's syntax looks like this:
IF(logical_test,
value_if_true,
value_if_false)
For the logical_test portion, we'll test whether the Close Date field has a value—if
it does, the position obviously must be closed. We'll test for this with a third built-in function:
ISBLANK(). ISBLANK() takes a single field and returns true if it does not contain a value
and false if it does. So now our formula looks like this:
IF( ISBLANK( Close_Date__c ) ,
value_if_true,
value_if_false)
By replacing value_if_true and value_if_false with the other formulas we talked
about, we've now figured out our whole formula:
IF( ISBLANK( Close_Date__c ) ,
TODAY() - Open_Date__c ,
Close_Date__c - Open_Date__c )
Great! Our formula calculates the number of days a position has been open, regardless of
whether it's currently open or closed. Now, let's go define a field for it on our Position object.
Try It Out: Defining a “Days Open” Custom Formula Field
We'll begin building the formula field the same way we created our other custom fields.
1. From the Positions tab, click to open the quick access menu (if it isn't open
already).
2. Hover over View Fields and click New.
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Enhancing the App
Figure 24: Opening the New Custom Field Wizard from the Quick Access
Menu
3. Select the Formula data type, and click Next.
Step 2 of the New Custom Field wizard appears.
Figure 25: Custom Formula Field Wizard Step 2
4. In the Field Label field, enter Days Open.
5. Select the Number formula return type.
In this case, even though we're subtracting Date fields, we want to end up with just a regular
numeric value.
6. Change the Decimal Places value to 0, and click Next.
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Now it's time to enter the details of our formula.
7. Click the Advanced Formula tab, as shown in the following screenshot.
Figure 26: Custom Formula Field Editor
We want to use the Advanced Formula tab so we can access the platform's built-in functions
through the Functions list on the right side.
8. From the Functions list, double-click IF.
Our formula now looks like this:
IF(logical_test, value_if_true, value_if_false)
Let's go ahead and define the logical test:
9. Delete logical_test from the formula, but leave your cursor there.
10. From the Functions list, double-click ISBLANK.
11. Delete expression from the ISBLANK function you just inserted, but leave your
cursor there.
12. Click the Insert Field button. Two columns appear in an overlay.
13. In the left column, select Position.
14. In the right column, select Close Date.
15. Click Insert.
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Enhancing the App
Did you notice that you didn't have to remember to use the API name of the Close Date
field? The platform remembered for you when it inserted the value. Our formula now looks
like this:
IF( ISBLANK( Close_Date__c ) , value_if_true, value_if_false)
Now, let's specify the value if our logical test evaluates to true:
16. Delete value_if_true from the formula, but leave your cursor there.
17. Press Enter on your keyboard, and space over 10 spaces.
Adding the carriage return and spaces makes our formula more legible for others.
18. From the Functions list, double-click TODAY.
19. Click the Insert Operator button and choose Subtract.
20. Click the Insert Field button.
21. In the left column, select Position.
22. In the right column, select Open Date.
23. Click Insert.
We're getting closer—our formula now looks like this:
IF( ISBLANK( Close_Date__c ) ,
TODAY() - Open_Date__c , value_if_false)
Finally, let's specify the value if our logical test evaluates to false:
24. Delete value_if_false from the formula, but leave your cursor there.
25. Press Enter on your keyboard, and space over 10 spaces.
26. Click the Insert Field button.
27. In the left column, select Position.
28. In the right column, select Close Date and click Insert.
29. Click Insert Operator and choose Subtract.
30. Click the Insert Field button.
31. In the left column, select Position.
32. In the right column, select Open Date and click Insert.
Our formula now matches our original:
IF( ISBLANK( Close_Date__c ) ,
TODAY() - Open_Date__c ,
Close_Date__c - Open_Date__c )
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Now that we've gone through those steps of the procedure, note that we could have just typed
in the formula that we figured out in the last section. However, using the formula editor is a
lot easier because you don't have to remember function syntax or API names of fields and
objects. Let's keep going and finish up this field:
33. Click Check Syntax to check your formula for errors.
34. In the Description text box, enter The number of days a position
has been (or was) open.
35. Add an optional Help Text description if you wish.
36. Select Treat blank fields as blanks, and click Next.
37. Accept all remaining field-level security and page layout defaults.
38. Click Save.
Try It Out: Giving Fields Dynamic Default Values
We can also use custom formulas to give our fields dynamic default values. While some fields
like the Travel Required checkbox or the Job Location picklist have default values that
apply in every situation, there are other fields with defaults that can't be so easily defined. For
example, at Universal Containers, recruiters are generally expected to fill a position within 90
days of it being opened. While we can't choose a single date that will always be 90 days after
a position is opened, we can define a custom formula that takes the date the position is created
and adds 90 days. The platform allows us to specify this formula as the Hire By field's default
value:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. Click Position.
3. In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click Edit next to the Hire By
field.
4. Next to the Default Value text box, click Show Formula Editor.
Look familiar? This is similar to the editor that we used to define our Days Open custom
formula field.
5. From the Functions list, double-click TODAY.
6. Click the Insert Operator button, and choose Add.
7. Type 90.
Your default value formula should be:
TODAY() + 90
8. Click Save.
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It's that easy! Now to wrap up the fields on our Positions tab, let's set the default value of the
Open Date field to the day that the record is created. To do this, follow these steps again,
but use TODAY() as the Default Value.
Look at What We've Done
Let's revisit the Positions tab to take a look at what we've just done.
1. Click the Positions tab.
2. Click New.
Our Days Open formula field doesn't show up on our Position edit page—that's because it's
a formula field and doesn't require any user input to display. However, we can see that our
Open Date and Hire By fields already have default values: Open Date should be today's
date, and Hire By is 90 days later. We can change these values if we want, or we can just
leave them as they are.
In order to see our Days Open field, we'll have to define our first position record. Let's do
that now.
3. Enter any values you want to define for a new position. At the very least, you must
enter a value for the required Position Title field.
4. Click Save.
The new position is now displayed in its own record detail page. At the bottom of the page,
notice our Days Open formula field, just above the Created By field. It should show 0,
since we just created the position. If you want to see the value change, edit the record and set
the Open Date to a week earlier. Isn't that neat?
Introducing Validation Rules
Now that we've defined all the fields that we want on our Position object, let's see if we can
articulate a couple of rules about the data that should be entered into those fields. Even though
the recruiters and hiring managers at Universal Containers are bright people, everyone
sometimes makes mistakes when filling out a form, and a good app should catch the obvious
errors.
For example, does it ever make sense for the value of the Min Pay field to be more than the
value of the Max Pay field? Or should Close Date ever be unspecified if the Status field
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is set to Closed - Filled or Closed - Not Approved? Clearly not. We can catch these sorts of
errors in our app with yet another built-in feature of the platform: validation rules.
Validation rules verify that the data a user enters in your app meets the standards that you
specify. If it doesn't, the validation rule prevents the record from being saved, and the user sees
an error message that you define either next to the problematic field or at the top of the edit
page. Let's build a couple of validation rules now for our Recruiting app.
Tip: You can find many sample validation rules in the Salesforce online help.
Try It Out: Defining a Validation Rule for Min and Max Pay
For our first validation rule, let's start off simple: Min Pay should never be greater than Max
Pay.
1. From the Positions tab, click to open the quick access menu (if it isn't open
already).
2. Hover over View Validation Rules and click New.
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Enhancing the App
Figure 27: Validation Rule Edit Page
3. In the Rule Name text box, enter Min_Pay_Rule.
The name of a validation rule can't include any spaces, but if you forget, the platform helpfully
changes them to underscores (_) for you.
4. Select the Active checkbox.
This checkbox specifies whether the validation rule should start working as soon as it's saved.
Because this rule is pretty straightforward (and because we want to test it later!), it makes sense
to turn it on right away.
5. In the Description text box, enter Min Pay should never exceed Max
Pay.
Now it's time to define the meat of our validation rule: the error condition. If you have a sense
of déjà vu when looking at the Error Condition Formula area of the page, don't be alarmed!
Just like formula fields and default field values, a validation rule can leverage a number of
built-in operators and functions to define a true-or-false error condition that determines
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whether data is valid. When this condition evaluates to true, an error message displays and the
record can't be saved.
We want our error condition to be true whenever Min Pay is greater than Max Pay, so let's
use our formula editor to specify that now:
6. Click the Insert Field button. Just like in the formula field editor, two columns
appear in an overlay.
7. In the left column, select Position.
8. In the right column, select Min Pay.
9. Click Insert.
10. Click the Insert Operator button, and choose Greater Than.
11. Click the Insert Field button once again.
12. In the left column, select Position.
13. In the right column, select Max Pay.
14. Click Insert.
You should now have an error condition formula that looks like this:
Min_Pay__c
>
Max_Pay__c
Now the only thing that remains is to specify the error message when our error condition
evaluates to true.
15. In the Error Message text box, enter Min Pay cannot exceed Max Pay.
16. Next to the Error Location field, select the Top of Page radio button.
Tip: If a rule requires a user to review the values of multiple fields, it's more appropriate
to place the error message at the top of the page because you don't know which field
the user needs to change.
17. Click Save.
Easy! Now that we've familiarized ourselves with a simple validation rule, let's define one that's
a little trickier.
Try It Out: Defining a Validation Rule for Close Date
For our next validation rule, let's ensure that Close Date has a value whenever the Status
field is set to Closed - Filled or Closed - Not Approved.
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The hardest part of this validation rule is defining the error condition formula. When defining
a condition like this, it's sometimes easiest to think about it in logical terms first, and then
translate that logic to the functions and operators that are provided in the formula editor. In
this case, our error condition is true whenever:
Close Date is Not Specified
AND
(Status is "Closed - Filled" OR
"Closed - Not Approved")
Let's start with the first piece: “Close Date is Not Specified.” To translate this into terms the
formula editor understands, we'll need to use the ISBLANK() function again. As you might
remember from defining the Days Open custom formula field, ISBLANK() takes a single
field or expression and returns true if it doesn't contain a value. So, remembering that we have
to use the internal field name of the Close Date field in our formula, Close Date is
Not Specified translates to:
ISBLANK( Close_Date__c )
Next, let's figure out how to translate “Status is 'Closed - Filled'.” To test for picklist values,
we'll need to use another function: ISPICKVAL(). ISPICKVAL() takes a picklist field name
and value, and returns true whenever that value is selected. So “Status is 'Closed - Filled'”
translates to:
ISPICKVAL( Status__c , "Closed - Filled")
Tip: When working with picklists in formulas, convert them to text using either the
ISPICKVAL() function or the TEXT() function. For example, to check the value of
a picklist using the TEXT() function, use TEXT(Status__c) = “Closed Filled”.
Now we just have to combine these translations, which we can do using a mix of the && and
|| functions. Both functions evaluate an unlimited number of expressions, but && returns true
if all of the expressions are true while || returns true if any of the expressions are true. For
example:
exp1 && exp2 && exp3
returns true when exp1, exp2, and exp3 are all true. Likewise,
exp1 || exp2 || exp3
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returns true when any one of exp1, exp2, or exp3 are true.
Put these functions all together with our other expression translations, and we get our completed
error condition formula:
ISBLANK(Close_Date__c) &&
(ISPICKVAL(Status__c , "Closed - Filled") ||
ISPICKVAL(Status__c , "Closed - Not Approved"))
Phew! Now we can quickly define our second validation rule using this formula:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Position.
In the Validation Rules related list, click New.
In the Rule Name text box, enter Close_Date_Rule.
Select the Active checkbox.
In the Description text box, enter Close Date must be specified
when Status is set to 'Closed - Filled' or 'Closed - Not
Approved.'
7. In the Error Condition Formula area, enter the following formula:
ISBLANK(Close_Date__c) &&
(ISPICKVAL(Status__c , "Closed - Filled") ||
ISPICKVAL(Status__c , "Closed - Not Approved"))
8. Click Check Syntax to make sure the format of the formula is correct.
9. In the Error Message text box, enter Close Date must be specified
when Status is set to 'Closed.'
10. Next to the Error Location field, select the Field radio button, and then choose
Close Date from the drop-down list.
11. Click Save.
Look at What We've Done
Let's revisit the Positions tab to test the validation rules that we've just made.
1. Click the Positions tab.
2. Click New.
First let's try defining a new position with a value for Min Pay that's larger than Max Pay.
3. Specify any value for the required Position Title field.
4. In the Min Pay field, enter 80,000.
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Enhancing the App
5. In the Max Pay field, enter 40,000.
6. Click Save.
Did you see what happened? Your custom error message popped exactly like any other error
message in the app!
Figure 28: Error Message from a Validation Rule
Now let's test our other validation rule:
7. In the Min Pay field, enter 40,000.
8. In the Max Pay field, enter 80,000.
9. From the Status drop-down list, choose Closed - Not Approved.
10. Click Save.
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Our second validation rule is triggered, this time because we didn't specify a value for Close
Date. Once we do, the record saves normally.
The Positions tab is now fully functional, with a couple of validation rules to ensure that users
don't make certain mistakes. But are the fields where we want them? Are the fields that must
have values marked as required? In the next section, we'll fine-tune our Position custom object
by modifying its page layout.
Introducing Page Layouts
After defining all those fields and validation rules, we now have a fully functional Position
custom object. However, it doesn't look all that nice—all of the long text areas appear at the
top, and it's hard to scan. Let's move some things around to make this page easier for our users.
We can do that by customizing the Position object's page layout.
A page layout controls the position and organization of the fields and related lists that are visible
to users when viewing a record. Page layouts also help us control the visibility and editability
of the fields on a record. We can set fields as read-only or hidden, and we can also control
which fields require users to enter a value and which don't.
Page layouts are powerful tools for creating a good experience for our users, but it's crucial that
we remember one important rule: page layouts should never be used to restrict access to sensitive
data that a user shouldn't view or edit. Although we can hide a field from a page layout, users
can still access that field through other parts of the app, such as in reports or via the API.
(We'll learn more about security that covers all parts of the app in Securing and Sharing Data
on page 131.)
Now let's see if we can organize the fields on our Position object in a way that's more user
friendly.
Becoming Familiar with the Page Layout Editor
The Force.com platform has two drag-and-drop tools for editing page layouts: the original
page layout editor and the enhanced page layout editor.
The enhanced page layout editor provides all of the same functionality as the original editor,
but with additional enhancements, including an intuitive WYSIWYG interface and the ability
to customize the space between fields in your layouts. Since the enhanced page layout editor
is enabled by default, it's the one we'll use to edit page layouts in this book.
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Note: The enhanced page layout editor doesn't work with some older browsers. If
you don't want to upgrade your browser, you can always switch to the original page
layout editor by clicking Your Name > Setup > Customize > User Interface and
deselecting the Enable Enhanced Page Layout Editor; however, if you use
the original page layout editor, what you see on your screen will not match the
procedures in this book, and you won't be able to customize the space between fields
in your layouts.
Let's try using the page layout editor to edit the page layout of the Position object:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. Click Position.
3. In the Page Layouts related list, click Edit next to Position Layout.
Welcome to the page layout editor! As you can see, this editor is different from the ones that
we've already used in other areas of the platform. That's because we're designing a user interface
and need to see how our page will look as we're working. Before going any further, let's give
ourselves a quick orientation to how this page is set up.
Figure 29: Page Layout Editor
The page layout editor consists of a palette at the top of the screen and the page layout below
it. The palette contains the user interface elements that are available for you to add to the page
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Chapter 5: Enhancing the App
layout, including fields, buttons, links, and related lists. To add one of these user interface
elements to the page layout, simply select the category to which the element belongs on the
left column of the palette and drag the element from the palette to the page layout. To remove
a user interface element from the page layout, drag the element from the page layout to the
right side of the palette, or click the X ( ) icon that appears when you hover over the field. A
toolbar above the palette provides various functions, such as saving and previewing your changes.
Now that we know what we're looking at, let's rearrange the fields in the way a user might
want to see them.
Try It Out: Grouping Fields into a New Section
Let's start modifying our page layout by first defining a new section for salary information. On
a page layout, a section is simply an area where we can group similar fields under an appropriate
heading. This makes it easy for our users to quickly identify and enter the information for a
record, especially if our object has a large number of fields:
1. In the palette, select the Fields category.
2. Drag the Section user interface element from the palette to just above the System
Information section on the page layout.
When you drag a new section on to the page layout, the Section Properties popup window
appears.
3. In the Section Name text box, enter Compensation.
The Section Name field controls the text that's displayed as the heading for the section.
4. In the Display Section Header On area, select both the Detail Page and Edit
Page checkboxes.
Displaying the header on both the detail and edit pages helps users understand the context of
the information, regardless of whether they are editing the position or just viewing it.
5. In the Layout drop-down list, choose 2-Column.
This option allows us to choose whether we want the fields in our section to be arranged in
two columns or one. The default is two columns and is the most commonly-used choice.
However, if our section is going to contain text area fields, the one-column layout gives them
more space on the page for display.
6. In the Tab-key Order drop-down list, choose Left-Right.
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This setting controls the direction that a user's cursor will move when using the Tab key to
navigate from field to field.
7. Click OK.
We have a new section for Compensation just above the System Information section! Let's
add the Min Pay and Max Pay fields:
8. While pressing CTRL, click both the Min Pay and Max Pay fields in the
Information section, and drag them to the new Compensation section as shown.
Figure 30: Adding Fields to the Compensation Section
Pressing CTRL allows you to select multiple individual user interface elements with your
mouse. Alternatively, pressing the SHIFT key allows you to select a group of elements.
Now that we've gone through the process for building one section, let's build two more. As
we do this, you might have to scroll up and down to view the entire layout, depending on the
size of your screen. Rest assured that if you have to scroll, the palette will move with you,
making it easy to add user interface elements even at the very bottom of the page layout.
9. Create a new one-column Description section below the Compensation section, and
drag Job Description, Responsibilities, Skills Required, and
Educational Requirements into it.
10. Create a new two-column Required Languages section below the Description section,
and drag Apex, C#, Java, and JavaScript into it.
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As you work, you may notice that the fields you add to the page layout are grayed-out in the
palette, but the Section user interface element is never grayed-out. This is because fields can
only appear one time on each page layout, but the Section user interface element can be reused
to create as many sections as you want.
Tip: If you make a mistake while editing the page layout, you can use CTRL+Z and
CTRL+Y to undo and redo your recent moves, respectively. The toolbar contains
Redo and Undo buttons as well.
While we're shuffling fields around, let's reorganize the Information section so it's more
readable.
11. Arrange the first column of the Information section as follows:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Position Title
Status
Type
Functional Area
Job Level
Travel Required
Created By
12. Arrange the second column of the Information section as follows:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Owner
Location
Open Date
Hire By
Close Date
Days Open
Last Modified By
That's much better—our fields are organized and it's easy to locate all the information we
need.
The Information section still looks a little dense, though. Fortunately, the page layout editor
provides a way to add blank spaces that separate the fields within the section to improve its
readability even further.
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Try It Out: Adding Spaces Between Fields
When designing a page layout, you'll often want to distinguish or “pop” certain fields within
a section. An easy and effective way to do this is by inserting blank spaces between fields. For
example, in the Information section, inserting blank spaces below the first row in each column
draws a user's eye to the most important information in the section, the position title and
owner. We can also use blank spaces above the bottom row in each column to separate the
Created By and Last Modified By fields from the critical position information. Let's
give it a try!
1. Select any category in the palette except for Related Lists and Buttons.
2. Drag the Blank Space user interface element from the palette to the page layout right
below the Position Title field.
Figure 31: Dragging and Dropping Blank Spaces in a Page Layout
As with the Section user interface element, the Blank Space user interface element is never
grayed-out in the palette when you drag it to the page layout because the element can be reused
as many times as you want.
3. On the palette, select the Blank Space user interface element again and drag it below
the Owner field.
4. Add two more blank spaces to the page layout, one above the Created By field
and the other above the Last Modified By field.
Before we move on, you should be aware that if you accidentally navigate away from the page
layout before saving your work, your changes will be lost. Rather than tempting fate, let's do
a quick save of the work that we've done so far.
5. Click Quick Save in the toolbar above the palette, or press CTRL+S if you prefer
using keyboard shortcuts.
The quick save feature allows you to save your changes and continue editing the page layout.
Clicking Save in the toolbar also saves your work, but it takes you back to the page from which
you accessed the page layout editor. We have a few more minor tweaks to make to our page
layout, so we don't want to leave the page layout editor just yet.
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Try It Out: Editing Field Properties
We just used the page layout editor to organize our Position page layout in a logical, easy-to-read
fashion, but the page layout editor lets us do more than design the presentation of data—we
can also use it to help determine which fields are required, and which fields are read-only:
•
•
If it's required, a user won't be able to create a position record without specifying a value.
If it's read-only, a user who views a position record edit page won't be able to change its
value.
Required fields are denoted with a red asterisk (
a lock icon (
), while read-only fields are denoted with
).
Warning: Although we can make these changes on the page layout, don't forget our
earlier warning! Page layouts should never be used as the sole means to restrict access
to sensitive data that a user shouldn't view or edit. That's because page layouts control
only a record's edit and detail pages; they don't control access to those fields in any
other part of the platform.
At this point, we don't have any fields that need to be read-only, but we do want to make sure
that the salary range is always defined for each position, so let's make the Min Pay and Max
Pay fields required. Once we do that, we'll be all done with our Position object!
To make the Min Pay and Max Pay fields required, we need to edit the properties of each
field:
1. In the page layout editor, double-click the Min Pay field, or select the wrench icon
( ) next to the field name.
This popup window allows us to edit the Min Pay field's properties. We can set the field to
read-only and/or required. If we didn't want a user to see the Min Pay field at all, we could
simply drag it off the layout and onto the palette. We want to make sure it stays visible for
right now, so let's leave it in its current spot.
2. Select the Required checkbox, and click OK.
3. Repeat these steps for the Max Pay field.
4. Click Save to finish customizing the page layout.
Hooray! We're all done with our Position object's page layout.
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Look at What We've Done
Congratulations. We've just built ourselves a simple Recruiting app that tracks details about
an organization's open positions. Let's check out what we've done by revisiting the Positions
tab and clicking New. Because of the changes that we've made in our page layout, our Position
edit page should now look like this:
Figure 32: Final Version of the Position Layout
We have an object with a tab, we've added custom fields, and we've arranged them in a page
layout. We've finished our simple app, and now we're well on our way to creating the more
complex Recruiting app that we described earlier.
Things are going to get even more interesting in the next chapter. We'll add a few more custom
objects to track things like candidates, job applications, and reviews, and then we'll enhance
our Recruiting app even further by defining how our objects relate to one another. Before you
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know it, we're going to have an incredibly powerful Web application, all implemented with a
few clicks in the platform.
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Chapter 6
Expanding the Simple App Using
Relationships
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Introducing Relationships
Introducing Relationship
Custom Fields
Adding Candidates to the
Mix
Bringing Candidates and
Positions Together with
Job Applications
Introducing Search
Layouts
Managing Review
Assessments
Creating a Many-to-Many
Relationship
Putting it All Together
So far we've accomplished a fair amount—we've created the
Recruiting app and built out a fully functional Position
custom object with a tab and several types of fields. It's a
good start, but there's more to do.
Having just one object in our Recruiting app is like having
a party with just one guest—not all that interesting! We
need to invite more “people” to the party by building custom
objects to represent candidates, job applications, and reviews,
and, even more importantly, we need to create relationships
between them. Just like a party isn't all that fun if you don't
know any of the other guests, an app isn't all that powerful
unless its objects have links to other objects in the app. That's
going to be the focus of this chapter, so let's get started!
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Introducing Relationships
So what is a relationship, and why are they important for our app? Just as a personal relationship
is a two-way association between two people, in terms of relational data, a relationship is a
two-way association between two objects. Without relationships, we could build out as many
custom objects as we could think of, but they'd have no way of linking to one another.
For example, after building a Position object and a Job Application object, we could have lots
of information about a particular position and lots of information about a particular candidate
who's submitted an application for it, but there would be no way of seeing information about
the job application when looking at the position record, and no way of seeing information
about the position when looking at the job application record. That's just not right!
With relationships, we can make that connection and display data about other related object
records on a particular record's detail page. For example, once we define a relationship between
the Position and Job Application objects we just talked about, our position record can have a
related list of all the job applications for candidates who have applied for the position, while a
job application record can have a link to the positions for which that candidate is applying.
Suddenly the “people” at our Recruiting app “party” know some of the other guests, and the
app just got a lot more interesting.
Figure 33: Relationships Allow Information about Other Object Records to be Displayed
on a Record Detail Page
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Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Introducing Relationship Custom Fields
As we learned in Reviewing Database Concepts on page 25, we can define a relationship
between two objects through the use of common fields. On the platform, we can define
relationships between objects by creating a relationship custom field that associates one object
with another. A relationship field is a custom field on an object record that contains a link to
another record. When we place a relationship custom field on an object, we're effectively
creating a many-to-one relationship between the object on which the relationship field is placed
and the other object.
There are different types of relationship fields, each with different implications. The simplest
and most flexible type is a lookup relationship field, which creates a simple relationship between
two objects. For example, if we place a lookup relationship field on a Job Application object
that references position records, many job application records can be related to a single position
record. This will be reflected both with a new Position field on the job application record
and with a new Job Applications related list on the position record. You can also put multiple
lookup relationship fields on a single object, which means that our Job Application object can
also point to a Candidate object.
A second type of relationship field, master-detail relationship, is a bit more complex, but more
powerful. Master-detail relationships create a special parent-child relationship between objects:
the object on which you create the master-detail relationship field is the child or “detail,” and
the object referenced in the field is the parent or “master.” In a master-detail relationship, the
ownership and sharing of detail records are determined by the master record, and when you
delete the master record, all of its detail records are automatically deleted along with it.
Master-detail relationship fields are always required on detail records, and once you set a
master-detail relationship field's value, you can't change it.
When do you use a master-detail relationship? If you have an object that derives its significance
from another object. For example, say you have a Review custom object that contains an
interviewer's feedback on a job application. If you delete a job application record, you will
probably want all of its review records deleted as well, being that reviews of something that no
longer exists aren't very useful. In this case, you want to create a master-detail relationship on
the Review custom object with the Job Application object as the master object.
That's the sort of thing that we're going to do in this chapter. First, let's start with the really
quick and easy example of putting a Hiring Manager field on our Position object—we'll
create a many-to-one relationship between the Position object and the standard User object
that comes with every organization, reflecting the fact that a hiring manager can be responsible
for several positions at a time. Then we'll build out a few more objects and implement a more
complex relationship involving positions, job applications, candidates, and reviews.
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Chapter 6: Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Try It Out: Relating Hiring Managers to Positions
For our first relationship, let's associate a hiring manager with a position by putting a lookup
relationship field on the Position object. The lookup field will allow users to select the hiring
manager for the position by selecting from all the users of the Recruiting app.
For example, if Ben Stuart, our recruiter, wants to assign Anastasia O'Toole as the hiring
manager for the Benefits Specialist position, he'll be able to do so by clicking the lookup icon
( ) next to the lookup relationship field that we are going to create. Her name will then appear
on the Position detail page.
To create the lookup relationship field that accomplishes this, we'll need to go back to the now
familiar Position object detail page.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Position.
In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click New.
Select Lookup Relationship, and click Next.
In the Related To drop-down list, choose User, and click Next.
As we've mentioned, User is a standard object that comes with all organizations on the platform.
It contains information about everyone who uses the app in your organization.
6. In the Field Label text box, enter Hiring Manager. Once you move your
cursor, the Field Name text box should be automatically populated with
Hiring_Manager.
7. Click Next.
8. Accept the defaults in the remaining two steps of the wizard.
9. Click Save.
Look at What We've Done
Now return to the Positions tab, and click New. The Position edit page includes a new Hiring
Manager lookup field! If you click the lookup icon next to this field (
), you can search
through all of the users of the Recruiting app and select one as the hiring manager. That user's
name now appears on the position record:
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Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Figure 34: Hiring Manager Lookup Relationship
As you can see, it was easy to set up this simple relationship between positions and users. And
as a general rule, you'll find that relationships are pretty easy to set up.
What gets a little tricky is when we start wanting to create relationships that don't represent
a simple many-to-one relationship. We'll see an example of one of those in a little bit. Right
now, let's build a custom object for candidates so we'll be able to create some more relationships
in our Recruiting app.
Beyond the Basics
Did you know you can use Schema Builder to view the details of your schema and to
quickly add and edit objects and relationship fields?
Say you’re having a hard time visualizing how the Hiring Manager lookup is related to
the Position and User objects. Schema Builder provides a dynamic environment that lets
you see field details, such as whether the field is required, and shows how standard and
custom objects are connected through lookup and master-detail relationships. You can
zoom and pan in Schema Builder, edit an object’s properties, and double-click any field
to edit it.
To find out more, see “Working with Schema Builder” in the Salesforce online help.
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Adding Candidates to the Mix
Let's add a Candidate custom object to our app so we can manage the information about our
candidates. We'll also add fields to the object, modify the page layout properties, and create a
candidate record. The process for creating the Candidate custom object is almost identical to
the one we followed to create the Position custom object, so we'll zip through this quickly.
Try It Out: Creating the Candidate Object
To create our Candidate custom object, navigate back to Your Name > Setup > Create >
Objects, click New Custom Object, and fill out the page according to the following table.
Table 8: Values for Defining the Candidate Object
92
Field
Value
Label
Candidate
Plural Label
Candidates
Object Name
Candidate
Description
Represents an applicant who might apply for
one or more positions
Context-Sensitive Help Setting
Open the standard Salesforce Help &
Training window
Record Name
Candidate Number
Data Type
Auto Number
Display Format
C-{00000}
Starting Number
00001
Allow Reports
Yes
Allow Activities
Yes
Track Field History
Yes
Deployment Status
Deployed
Add Notes & Attachments related list to
default page layout
Yes
Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Field
Value
Launch New Custom Tab Wizard after saving Yes
this custom object
To create the Candidates tab, select a Tab Style in the first step of the wizard, and then
accept all the defaults until you get to the Add to Custom Apps page. On this page, select only
the Recruiting App and click Save.
The Recruiting app now has three tabs: Home, Positions, and Candidates. Now let's add some
custom fields to the Candidate object.
Try It Out: Adding Fields to the Candidate Object
To create custom fields on the Candidate object, click Your Name > Setup > Create >
Objects, and click Candidate to view its detail page. In the Custom Fields & Relationships
related list, use the New button to create custom fields according to the following table. Where
necessary, we've indicated some additional values you'll need to fill in. Otherwise, you can
simply accept all defaults.
One difference you'll see in the Candidate object fields is that three of them—First Name,
Last Name, and Email—have the External ID option selected. This option allows the
values in these fields to be indexed for search from the sidebar of the application. If we didn't
select these values as external IDs, we'd only be able to search for records based on the
Candidate Number field. Setting the Email field as an external ID is also going to help us
with importing data a little later in this chapter.
Table 9: Candidate Object Custom Fields
Data Type
Field Label
Other Values
Text
First Name
Length: 50
External ID: Selected
Text
Last Name
Length: 50
External ID: Selected
Phone
Phone
Email
Email
External ID: Selected
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Data Type
Field Label
Other Values
Text
Street
Length: 50
Text
City
Length: 50
Text
State/Province
Length: 50
Text
Zip/Postal Code
Length: 15
Text
Country
Length: 50
Text
Current Employer
Length: 50
Number
Years of Experience
Length: 2
Decimal Places: 0
Text
SSN
Length: 9
Picklist
Education
Picklist values:
• HS Diploma
• BA/BS
• MA/MS/MBA
• Ph.D.
• Post Doc
Checkbox
Currently Employed
Default: Checked
Checkbox
US Citizen
Default: Checked
Checkbox
Visa Required
Default: Unchecked
Phone
Mobile
Phone
Fax
Try It Out: Modifying the Candidate Page Layout Properties
To finish up with this object, let's organize all of our fields on the page layout and mark some
fields as required. To do so, let's go to the Candidate page layout page.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. Click Candidate.
3. In the Page Layouts related list, click Edit next to the Candidate Layout.
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Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
4. Create three new double-column sections below the Information section: Address,
Employment, and Additional Details. Drag the appropriate fields into them, as
shown in the Candidate Object Page Layout image, and don't forget to click Quick
Save so you can save your work as you go.
5. Set the First Name, Last Name, and Email fields to required as follows:
a. Use CTRL+click to select all three required fields.
b. Double-click your selection.
c. Select the Required checkbox in the Select All row, and click OK.
6. Click Save.
Your Candidate page layout should now look similar to the following screenshot.
Figure 35: Candidate Object Page Layout
Look at What We've Done
Here's a quick way to verify that you did everything correctly.
1. Click the Candidates tab.
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2. Click New.
3. Create a new record for a candidate named Ethan Tran.
4. Enter a value for each of the required fields. Salesforce will not verify the email
address you enter in the Email field right now, so feel free to enter a fictitious one.
5. Click Save.
How does the page layout look? Are the fields where you want them?
If you page layout doesn't look quite right and you need to make a few adjustments, click the
Edit Layout link in the upper right corner.
Figure 36: Edit Layout Link
The Edit Layout link takes you directly to the page layout editor and lets you modify the page
you are currently viewing.
If you are able to successfully create a new candidate record and everything looks okay, let's
move on to the Job Application object!
Bringing Candidates and Positions Together with Job
Applications
Our app can track candidates and open positions, but there's a crucial element that's missing:
how do we know which candidates are interested in which positions? We can create lookup
relationship fields on the Candidate object that let recruiters specify the positions in which the
candidate is interested, but what if we want to track additional information, such as whether
the candidate is currently scheduled to interview for one of those positions? And wouldn't it
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be helpful if the recruiter has a way of storing the cover letters that candidates tailor for each
specific job to which they are applying?
We can satisfy these requirements with a Job Application custom object that stores data about
an individual candidate's application to a single position. Each time a candidate wants to apply
for a position, the recruiter can create a job application record that contains the candidate's
name and the position to which he or she is applying, as well as any cover letter that the
candidate may have submitted specifically for that position. Recruiters will also be able to
indicate the status of the candidate's application, such as whether he or she is scheduled for
an interview or if the application has been rejected. After we create the Job Application object
and its fields, we'll make a few small modifications to the Position, Candidate, and Job
Application objects so that each position record displays the names of the candidates who have
applied to it, and each candidate record displays the name of the positions to which the candidate
has applied.
Try It Out: Creating the Job Application Object
You should be a pro at this by now! To create our Job Application custom object, navigate
back to Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects, click New Custom Object, and fill out the
page according to the following table.
Table 10: Values for Defining the Job Application Object
Field
Value
Label
Job Application
Plural Label
Job Applications
Object Name
Job_Application
Description
Represents a candidate's application to a
position
Context-Sensitive Help Setting
Open the standard Salesforce Help &
Training window
Record Name
Job Application Number
Data Type
Auto Number
Display Format
JA-{00000}
Starting Number
00001
Allow Reports
Yes
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Field
Value
Allow Activities
Yes
Track Field History
Yes
Deployment Status
Deployed
Add Notes & Attachments related list to
default page layout
Yes
Launch New Custom Tab Wizard after saving Yes
this custom object
To create the Job Applications tab, select a Tab Style in the first step of the wizard, and
then accept all the defaults until you get to the Add to Custom Apps page. On this page, select
only the Recruiting app, and then click Save.
We're now just a few custom fields away from linking the Job Application object with the
Position and Candidate objects.
Try It Out: Adding Fields to the Job Application Object
Here's another procedure that we've done several times before, but this time we only need to
define four custom fields instead of the nearly twenty that we built for the Candidate object.
We'll need to add a text field for the candidate's cover letter, a picklist field so that we can
track the application's status, and two lookup relationship fields that will create relationships
between the Job Application object and the Position and Candidate objects.
Although these fields are almost identical to the ones we created earlier, you'll notice when
you're defining the lookup relationship fields that there's a new step in the custom field wizard
Step 6: Add Custom Related Lists. This step of the wizard is where we can specify a heading for
the Job Applications related list that will show up on both the Candidate and Position detail
pages.
Why didn't we see this step earlier when we created our Hiring Manager lookup field? It
turns out that User is a unique standard object: it doesn't have a tab, and you cannot add related
lists to it. The platform knows this, so it leaves out the related list step whenever someone adds
a lookup relationship field that references the User object.
Now that we're all squared away with that small difference, let's finish up these Job Application
fields. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects, and then click Job Application to
view its detail page. In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, use the New button to
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create custom fields according to the following table. Where necessary, we've indicated some
additional values you'll need to fill in. Otherwise you can simply accept all defaults.
Table 11: Add Custom Fields to the Job Application Object
Data Type
Field Label
Lookup Relationship Candidate
Other Values
Related To: Candidate
Related List Label: Job Applications
Lookup Relationship Position
Related To: Position
Related List Label: Job Applications
Text Area (Long)
Cover Letter
Length: 32,768
# of Visible Lines: 6
Picklist
Status
Picklist values:
• New
• Review Resume
• Phone Screen
• Schedule Interviews
• Extend an Offer
• Hired
• Rejected
Use first value as default value: Selected
Look at What We've Done
Tada! If you click on the new Job Applications tab and click New, you'll see the Candidate
lookup field, a Position lookup field, the candidate's cover letter, and a Status picklist
field.
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Figure 37: Custom Fields on the Job Application Edit Page
But there's more! Because we've built a couple of lookup relationships, our candidate and
position record detail pages now each have a new Job Applications related list. And the Job
Application detail page includes links to the candidate and position records that it references.
All three objects are now related and linked to one another!
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Figure 38: Job Application Links to Position and Candidate Data
Before we move on, let's see if we can clean up the usability of our app a bit more so our users
don't have to identify candidates and job applications by number when they click the lookup
button in the Job Application edit page, or when they look at the Job Applications related list
on the Candidate or Position detail pages.
Introducing Search Layouts
By default, all lookup dialogs and related lists that result from new relationships, such as the
ones we've defined in this chapter, only display the record name or number. For example, if
you go ahead and create a job application, you might find the Candidate lookup dialog a little
cryptic because the only listed field is Candidate Number. You probably expected to see the
First Name, Last Name, and additional fields, as shown in the following screenshot.
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Figure 39: Default Candidate Lookup on the Job Application Object
Likewise, the Job Applications related lists on the Position and Candidate detail pages only
display a job application number. It is much more useful if these related lists also include the
associated candidate's name or position.
To fix these issues, we can add fields to the search layouts for the objects that we've defined.
Search layouts are ordered groups of fields that are displayed when a record is presented in a
particular context, such as in search results, a lookup dialog, or a related list. By adding fields,
we can give users more information and help them locate records more quickly.
The Search Layouts related list on the custom object detail page is the place to modify these
sets of fields. Go to Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects and select the Candidate object.
You'll see that the available search layouts include the following:
Table 12: Available Search Layouts
102
Layout Name
Description
Search Results
The search results that originate from searching in the left sidebar
search of the application or in advanced search.
Lookup Dialogs
The lookup dialog results that originate from clicking the
next to a lookup field on an edit page.
button
Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Layout Name
Description
Lookup Phone
Dialogs
The look updialog results that originate from clicking the
button
next to a lookup field with a phone data type on an edit page.
Candidates Tab
The list of recent records that appears on the home page of a tab, and
in related lists on other object detail pages.
Candidates List View This layout isn’t for specifying fields. Instead, use it to specify the
buttons that appear on the list view page for an object.
Search Filter Fields
The filters that can be applied to search results.
Try It Out: Adding Fields to the Candidate Lookup Dialog
Let's add fields to our Candidate lookup dialog:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. Click Candidate.
3. In the Search Layouts related list, click Edit next to the Lookup Dialogs layout.
The Edit Search Layout page includes a list of available fields from the Candidate object. You
can choose up to ten fields to include in the lookup dialog, and order them in any way you
choose, except that the object's unique name or number field (such as Candidate Number)
must be listed first.
4. Move the following fields into the Selected Fields box under Candidate Number:
•
•
•
•
•
First Name
Last Name
City
State/Province
Phone
5. Click Save.
That's it! To try it out, return to the Job Applications tab, and click New. When you click the
lookup icon next to the Candidate field, the dialog is now much more useful.
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Figure 40: Modified Candidate Lookup on the Job Application Object
Try It Out: Updating Additional Search Layouts
Now that we've updated one search layout for lookups, the rest should be easy. Use the Search
Layouts related list on the custom object detail page to modify the other search layouts as
described in the following table.
Table 13: Additional Search Layouts
104
Object
Search Layout
Add These Fields
Candidate
•
•
Search Results
Candidates Tab
•
•
•
•
•
•
Candidate Number
First Name
Last Name
City
State/Province
Phone
Candidate
•
Search Filter Fields
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Candidate Number
First Name
Last Name
Education
Years of Experience
City
State/Province
Country
Currently Employed
Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Object
Search Layout
Add These Fields
Position
•
•
•
•
Search Results
Lookup Dialogs
Positions Tab
Search Filter Fields
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Position Title
Location
Functional Area
Job Level
Type
Hiring Manager
Status
Open Date
Close Date
Job Application
•
•
•
•
Search Results
Lookup Dialogs
Job Applications Tab
Search Filter Fields
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Job Application Number
Candidate
Position
Status
Created Date
Owner First Name
Owner Last Name
Now let's create another custom object to provide our hiring managers and interviewers with
a place to enter their comments about job applications.
Managing Review Assessments
Interviewers, recruiters, and hiring managers need to be able to create reviews so that they can
record their comments about each candidate's job application, and rate the candidate's suitability
for the position. They also need to see the reviews posted by other people. To allow our users
to perform these tasks, we'll need to create a custom Review object and relate it to the Job
Application object.
The Review object has a many-to-one relationship with the Job Application object because
one job application can have one or more reviews associated with it. A related list on the job
application record will show the associated reviews, representing the “many” side of the
relationship.
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Figure 41: Review Has a Many-to-One Relationship with Job Application
However, instead of creating this relationship with a lookup relationship field, this time we'll
use a master-detail relationship field. A master-detail relationship field makes sense in this
case because reviews lose their meaning when taken out of the context of a job application, so
we'll want to automatically delete reviews when we delete the job application to which they're
related.
Try It Out: Creating the Review Object
To create the Review object, navigate back to Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects, click
New Custom Object, and fill out the page according to the following table.
Table 14: Values for Defining the Review Object
106
Field
Value
Label
Review
Plural Label
Reviews
Object Name
Review
Description
Represents an interviewer's assessment of a
particular candidate
Context-Sensitive Help Setting
Open the standard Salesforce Help &
Training window
Record Name
Review Number
Data Type
Auto Number
Display Format
R-{000000}
Starting Number
000001
Allow Reports
Yes
Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Field
Value
Allow Activities
Yes
Track Field History
Yes
Deployment Status
Deployed
Add Notes & Attachments related list to
default page layout
Yes
Launch New Custom Tab Wizard after saving No
this custom object
Notice that we didn't launch the tab wizard this time. Reviews don't need a tab of their own
because they can be accessed via a related list on the Job Application detail page. When you
create an object with a tab, the platform provides access to that object's records in various places
other than just the tab, such as in search results and the Recent Items list in the sidebar area
of every page. Because most Recruiting app users won't need to see reviews unless it's in the
context of a job application, we don't need to create a separate tab for them.
Now let's finish up the custom fields on the Review object.
Try It Out: Adding Fields to the Review Object
Let's start by adding the master-detail relationship field, which will relate our Review object
with the Job Application object. To create the master-detail relationship field, access the Review
object detail page.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Review.
In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click New.
Select Master-Detail Relationship, and click Next.
In the Related To drop-down list, choose Job Application, and click Next.
Click in the Field Label text box to automatically populate it with the field name
Job_Application.
7. Leave the Read/Write radio button selected.
This sharing setting prevents people from creating, editing, or deleting a review unless they
can also create, edit, or delete the associated job application. We'll learn about sharing and
security in the next chapter.
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8. Click Next.
9. Accept the defaults in the remaining three steps of the wizard.
10. Click Save.
Your master-detail relationship is complete!
Beyond the Basics
Did you know you can create master-detail relationships with multiple levels? With
multilevel master-detail relationships you can create reports that roll up data from all
levels of the data model, and trigger cascading deletes when a master record is deleted.
Say you want a candidate’s applications and review records to be deleted when a hiring
manager deletes a candidate. You can create a new master-detail relationship field that
relates the Job Application object with the Candidate object. Because the Review and Job
Application objects are already related to each other in a master-detail relationship, you’ve
built a multilevel relationship where Candidate is the master, Job Application is the detail,
and Review is the subdetail.
To find out more, see “Multilevel Master-Detail Relationships” in the Salesforce online
help.
Now that your master-detail relationship is in place, let's think about the other types of fields
that would be useful to people looking at a review record.
Most likely, users will want to see the name of the candidate and the position for which they
are being reviewed. We could create a lookup relationship to the Position and Candidate
objects, and then require reviewers to enter those fields when creating a review record, but
what if they select the wrong value? Besides, wouldn't it be better if these fields were somehow
automatically populated?
To solve this, we'll tap into the synergy of formulas and relationships to create cross-object
formulas. Cross-object formulas are formulas that span two or more objects by referencing
merge fields from related records. This means that formulas on our Review object can access
fields on the Job Application object, and formulas on the Job Application object can access
fields on both the Position and Candidate objects. We're going to take it even one step further
by creating formula fields on our Review object that span the Job Application object to reference
fields on the Candidate and Position objects. You'll quickly discover that using related data is
much easier than it sounds!
Let's begin by building a formula field on the Review object that references the title of the
position on the review's parent job application record.
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Review.
In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click New.
Select the Formula data type, and click Next.
In the Field Label field, enter Position. Once you move your cursor, the
Field Name text box automatically populates with Position.
6. Select the Text formula return type and click Next.
7. Click the Insert Field button.
The Insert Field overlay appears, as shown below.
Figure 42: Insert Field Overlay
8. Select Review in the first column.
When you choose Review, the second column displays all of the Review object's fields as well
as its related objects, which are denoted by a greater-than sign (>). Notice that the Created
By and Last Modified By fields also have greater-than signs. This is because these are
lookup fields to the User object.
9. Select Job Application > in the second column. The third column displays the
fields of the Job Application object.
10. Select Position > in the third column. The fourth column displays the fields of
the Position object.
Be sure that you select Position > (with the greater than sign) and not Position. The
one with the greater-than sign is the Position object, while the one without the greater than
sign is the Position lookup field on the Job Application object. In most cases, formulas that
access lookup fields return a cryptic record ID. Instead, we want our formula to return the
position's title.
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11. Choose Position Title in the fourth column.
12. Click Insert.
Your formula now looks like this:
Job_Application__r.Position__r.Name
The formula spans to the review's related job application (Job_Application__r), then to
the job application's related position (Position__r), and finally references the position's title
(Name). Notice that each part of the formula is separated by a period, and that the relationship
names consist of the related object followed by __r.
13. Click Next.
14. Accept all remaining field-level security and page layout defaults.
15. Click Save.
That wraps up our first cross-object formula field. Let's try another. This time, we'll add a
cross-object formula field on our Review object that displays the first and last names of the
candidate being reviewed. We'll also up the ante by using the HYPERLINK function so that
users can access the candidate's record by clicking the field.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Review.
In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click New.
Select the Formula data type, and click Next.
In the Field Label field, enter Candidate. Once you move your cursor, the
Field Name text box automatically populates with Candidate.
6. Select the Text formula return type and click Next.
7. From the Functions list, double-click HYPERLINK.
The HYPERLINK function lets you create a hyperlink to any URL or record in Salesforce. The
text of the hyperlink can differ from the URL itself, which is useful here because we want our
hyperlink to display the first and last names of the candidate while the URL points to the
candidate record itself.
8. Delete url from the HYPERLINK function you just inserted, but leave your cursor
there.
9. Click the Insert Field button, and select Review >, Job Application >,
Candidate >, Record ID, and click Insert.
Salesforce generates a unique ID for every record. By inserting the record ID of the candidate
in our HYPERLINK function, we're enabling our formula field to locate and link to the
candidate's record.
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10. Delete friendly_name from the HYPERLINK function, but leave your cursor
there.
11. Click the Insert Field button, and select Review >, Job Application >,
Candidate >, First Name, then click Insert.
12. Enter a space, then click the Insert Operator button and choose Concatenate.
The Concatenate operator inserts an ampersand (&) in your formula, and joins the values on
either side of the ampersand. Here we're going to use the Concatenate operator to join the
first and last names of the candidate in a single field, even though they are stored in separate
fields on the Candidate object. The Concatenate operator also lets us insert a space between
the two names, as you'll see in the next step.
13. Enter another space, then type a blank space enclosed in quotes, like this:
" "
This appends a blank space after the first name of the candidate.
14. Enter a space, then click the Insert Operator button and choose Concatenate once
more to add a second ampersand in your formula.
15. Click the Insert Field button, and select Review >, Job Application >,
Candidate >, Last Name, then click Insert.
16. Delete [ target ] from the HYPERLINK function. This is an optional parameter
that isn't necessary for our formula field.
17. Click Check Syntax to check your formula for errors. Your finished formula should
look like this:
HYPERLINK
( Job_Application__r.Candidate__r.Id ,
Job_Application__r.Candidate__r.First_Name__c
&
" "
&
Job_Application__r.Candidate__r.Last_Name__c )
18. Click Next.
19. Accept all remaining field-level security and page layout defaults.
20. Click Save.
Whew! That one required a little more thought, but using a bit of brainpower here has
tremendously improved the usability of our app, which you'll see in a moment when we test
our changes to the Review object. Before we start testing, though, let's quickly add two more
easy fields to finish our Review object. We need a text area field for the reviewer's assessment,
and a number field in which the reviewer can give the candidate a numeric score.
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Go to Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects and select the Review object. Use the New
button in the Custom Fields & Relationships related list to create the remaining custom fields
for the Review object according to the following table. Where necessary, we've indicated some
additional values you'll need to fill in. Otherwise, accept all defaults.
Table 15: Add Custom Fields to the Review Object
Data Type
Field Label
Other Values
Text Area (Long)
Assessment
Length: 32,768
# of Visible Lines: 6
Number
Rating
Length: 1
Always require a value in this
field in order to save a record
Help text: Enter a 1-5
rating of the
candidate.
When you're done, add a quick validation rule to ensure that the Ratings field only accepts the
numbers 1 through 5. This will keep our review rating system consistent throughout our
organization.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Review.
In the Validation Rules related list, click New.
In the Rule Name text box, enter Rating_Scale_Rule.
Select the Active checkbox.
In the Description text box, enter Rating must be from 1 to 5.
Enter the following error condition formula:
(Rating__c <1 || Rating__c > 5)
This formula prevents the record from being saved if the value of the Rating field
is less than one or greater than five.
8. In the Error Message text box, enter Invalid rating. Rating must be
from 1 to 5.
9. Next to the Error Location field, select the Field radio button, and then choose
Rating from the drop-down list.
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10. Click Save.
Our Review object is complete! We've added several features that will help users access the
data they need in order to assess each job application. There's one more easy improvement we
need to streamline our job application review process. It involves returning to our Job
Application object and taking advantage of one of the benefits we gain by using a master-detail
relationship.
Introducing Roll-Up Summary Fields
The rating system we created on the Review object lets users quickly see each reviewer's opinion
of the candidate's suitability for the position. While each individual opinion is important, it
would be even better to see these ratings compiled in a way that summarizes how the candidate
did overall. For example, wouldn't it be great if we could have a Total Rating field on each
Job Application record that shows the sum of all the job application's review ratings?
The good news is that we can! A simple roll-up summary field on the Job Application object
can summarize data from a set of related detail records and automatically display the output
on a master record. Use roll-up summary fields to display the sum, minimum, or maximum
value of a field in a related list, or the record count of all records listed in a related list.
Try It Out: Creating Roll-Up Summary Fields
Begin creating your roll-up summary just as you create any other custom field:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Job Application.
In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click New.
Select the Roll-Up Summary data type, and click Next.
When creating a field on an object that is not the master in a master-detail relationship, the
Roll-Up Summary data type is not available. This is because roll-up summary fields are only
available on the master object in a master-detail relationship.
5. In the Field Label field, enter Total Rating. Once you move your cursor,
the Field Name text box automatically populates with Total_Rating.
6. Click Next.
7. In the Summarized Object drop-down list, choose Reviews.
8. Under Select Roll-Up Type, select SUM.
9. In the Field to Aggregate drop-down list, select Rating.
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10. Leave All records should be included in the calculation selected,
and click Next.
11. Accept all remaining field-level security and page layout defaults.
12. Click Save.
Now our job application records aggregate the ratings of their related reviews. This data could
be a little deceptive, though, since some job applications might get reviewed more than others.
It would be more helpful if we could see the average rating.
Roll-up summary fields themselves don't allow you to average values together, but you can use
them in formulas that do. Let's create a second roll-up summary field on the Job Application
object, and then build a simple formula field that uses both roll-up summary fields to find the
average rating.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Job Application.
In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click New.
Select the Roll-Up Summary data type, and click Next.
In the Field Label field, enter Number of Reviews. Once you move your
cursor, the Field Name text box automatically populates with Number_of_Reviews.
6. Click Next.
7. In the Summarized Object drop-down list, choose Reviews.
8. Under Select Roll-Up Type, select COUNT.
We don't need to specify a Field to Aggregate this time since we're just counting the
number of related detail records and are not interested in any specific field.
9. Leave All records should be included in the calculation selected,
and click Next.
10. Accept all remaining field-level security and page layout defaults.
11. Click Save.
Both roll-up summary fields are in place now. Let's build a formula field called Average
Rating that divides the value of the first roll-up summary field by the value of the second.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Job Application.
In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click New.
Select the Formula data type, and click Next.
In the Field Label field, enter Average Rating. Once you move your cursor,
the Field Name text box automatically populates with Average_Rating.
6. Select the Number formula return type and click Next.
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7. Click the Insert Field button.
8. Select Job Application >, then Total Rating, and click Insert.
9. Click the Insert Operator button and choose Divide.
10. Click the Insert Field button again.
11. Choose Job Application >, then Number of Reviews, and click Insert. Your
formula should look like this:
Total_Rating__c / Number_of_Reviews__c
12. Click Next.
13. Accept the defaults in the remaining steps of the wizard.
14. Click Save.
That wraps up all the fields and relationships we need to manage our reviews. Let's quickly
organize the presentation of our fields and then test everything we've created.
Try It Out: Customizing the Review Object's Page and Search Layouts
First, let's update the page layout of the Review object so that the Assessment text field is
in a single column section of the same name.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Review.
In the Page Layouts related list, click Edit next to Review Layout.
Drag a new section just below the System Information section. The Section Properties
dialog box opens.
5. Name the section Assessment, and configure it to contain one column.
6. Drag the Assessment and Rating fields into the Assessment section.
7. Click Save.
Now, let's configure our Review search layouts so that reviews are always displayed with the
associated job application, position, and candidate.
1. In the Search Layouts related list on the Review object detail page, click Edit next
to Lookup Dialogs and add the following fields:
•
•
•
•
•
Review Number
Rating
Job Application
Candidate
Position
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Chapter 6: Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
•
Created Date
2. Repeat for the Search Filter Fields layout.
To update the Reviews related list that appears on the Job Application detail page, we'll have
to edit the related list directly on the Job Application page layout. This is different from how
we added fields to the Job Application related list on the position and candidate detail pages
because the Review object doesn't have an associated tab, and therefore, doesn't have a tab
search layout. Remember—the tab search layout is responsible for both the fields that appear
in the list on the tab home page and the default fields that appear in related lists on other object
detail pages.
Note: The tab search layout is responsible for the fields in the related list layout only
if the related list properties have not been modified on other objects' page layouts. For
example, if you modify the properties of the Job Application related list on the Position
page layout, those changes will always override the field specifications of the Job
Application tab search layout.
Because the Review object doesn't have a tab search layout, we have to set those fields another
way.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Job Application.
In the Page Layouts related list, click Edit next to Job Application Layout.
On the Job Application page layout, locate the Reviews related list and click the
wrench icon ( ) to edit its properties.
5. On the Related List Properties dialog box, add the following fields to the Selected
Fields box:
•
•
•
•
•
Review Number
Rating
Candidate
Position
Created Date
6. From the Sort By drop-down list, choose Review Number.
7. Click OK.
8. Click Save on the page layout edit page.
Look at What We've Done
Terrific! Let's go see what we've made:
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Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
1. Click the Job Applications tab and select a record, or create one if you haven't already.
Tip: When you use the Candidate and Position lookup dialogs as you're creating a
job application record, note that, by default, they only display the most recently viewed
records. You can locate additional records by using the search box, which returns
records based on the Candidate Number or Position Title fields, respectively.
Use the * wildcard with other characters to improve your search results. For example,
searching on C* returns every candidate record. Likewise, searching on *e returns all
position records that include the letter 'e' in the title.
After the job application is created, notice that the Reviews related list now appears on the Job
Application detail page. That's because we related the Review object to the Job Application
object with a master-detail relationship.
2. In the Reviews related list, click New Review to create a review.
Do you see how the platform automatically filled in the job application number in the review's
edit page? That's one of the small, but important, benefits of using the platform to build an
application like this—not only is it easy to create links and relationships between objects, but
the platform anticipates what we're doing and helps us accomplish our task with as few clicks
as possible.
3. Complete the fields on the review, and click Save.
Notice that the name of the candidate and the title of the position appear on the review detail
page. If you click the candidate's name, his or her record displays.
Go ahead and click around the rest of the app, creating a few more positions, job applications,
candidates, and reviews. Pretty neat, huh? Our data is all interconnected, and our edits to the
search layouts allow us to view details of several related objects all at once.
Creating a Many-to-Many Relationship
Our Recruiting app now has quite a few many-to-one relationships, but what if we needed to
create a many-to-many relationship? For example, what if we have an object that stored
information about various employment websites, and we wanted to track which open positions
we posted to those sites? This would require a many-to-many relationship because:
•
•
One position could be posted on many employment websites.
One employment website could list many positions.
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Chapter 6: Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Here's where we get a little creative. Instead of creating a relationship field on the Position
object that directly links to the Employment Website object, we can link them using a junction
object. A junction object is a custom object with two master-detail relationships, and is the key
to making a many-to-many relationship.
For our app, we're going to create a junction object called Job Posting. A job posting fits into
the space between positions and employment websites—one position can be posted many
times, and one employment website can have many job postings, but a job posting always
represents a posting about a single position on a single employment website. In essence, the
Job Posting object has a many-to-one relationship with both the Position and the Employment
Website objects, and through those many-to-one relationships, we'll have a many-to-many
relationship between the Position and Employment Website objects.
Tip: In many apps, the sole purpose of a junction object is to simply relate two objects,
so it often makes sense to give the junction object a name that indicates the association
or relationship it creates. For example, if you wanted to use a junction object to create
a many-to-many relationship between bugs and cases, you could name the junction
object BugCaseAssociation.
Let's look at a typical scenario at Universal Containers. There are open positions for a Project
Manager and a Sr. Developer. The Project Manager position is only posted on Monster.com,
but the Sr. Developer position is more difficult to fill, so it's posted on both Monster.com and
Dice. Every time a position is posted, a job posting record tracks the post. As you can see in
the following diagram, one position can be posted many times, and both positions can be
posted to the same employment website.
Figure 43: Using a Job Posting Object to Create a Many-to-Many Relationship Between
Positions and Employment Websites
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Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
In relational database terms, each job posting record is a row in the Job Posting table consisting
of a foreign key to a position record and a foreign key to an employment website record. The
following entity relationship diagram shows this relationship.
Figure 44: Entity Relationship Diagram for the Position, Job Posting, and Employment
Website Objects
Consequently, in order to define a many-to-many relationship between the Position and
Employment Website objects, we'll need to create a Job Posting object with the following
fields:
•
•
A Position master-detail relationship
An Employment Website master-detail relationship
Let's get started.
Try It Out: Creating the Employment Website Object
To create our Employment Website custom object, navigate back to Your Name > Setup >
Create > Objects, click New Custom Object, and fill out the page according to the following
table.
Table 16: Values for Defining the Employment Website Object
Field
Value
Label
Employment Website
Plural Label
Employment Websites
Starts with Vowel Sound
Checked
Object Name
Employment_Website
Description
Information about a particular employment
website
Context-Sensitive Help Setting
Open the standard Salesforce Help &
Training window
Record Name
Employment Website Name
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Field
Value
Data Type
Text
Allow Reports
Yes
Allow Activities
Yes
Track Field History
Yes
Deployment Status
Deployed
Add Notes & Attachments related list to
default page layout
Yes
Launch New Custom Tab Wizard after saving Yes
this custom object
To create the Employment Website tab, select a Tab Style in the first step of the wizard,
and then accept all the defaults until you get to the Add to Custom Apps page. On this page,
select only the Recruiting App, and then click Save.
Let's wrap up the Employment Website object by adding a few custom fields.
Try It Out: Adding the URL Field to the Employment Website Object
Obviously, the Employment Website object needs to store the Web address of the employment
website. We'll use the URL data type for this field. That way, when users click the field, the
URL will open in a separate browser window. In addition to the URL, since most employment
websites charge per posting, we'll want to keep track of how much it costs to post there, as
well as our maximum budget for posting on the site.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects, and then click Employment Website to
view its detail page. In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, use the New button to
create custom fields according to the following table. Where necessary, we've indicated some
additional values you'll need to fill in. Otherwise you can simply accept all defaults.
Table 17: Add Custom Fields to the Job Application Object
120
Data Type
Field Label
Other Values
URL
Web Address
Required
Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Data Type
Field Label
Other Values
Currency
Price Per Post
Length: 5
Decimal Places: 2
Required
Currency
Maximum Budget
Length: 6
Decimal Places: 2
Required
Try It Out: Creating the Job Posting Object
Now it's time to create our Job Posting junction object! Navigate back to Your Name > Setup
> Create > Objects, click New Custom Object, and fill out the page according to the following
table.
Table 18: Values for Defining the Job Posting Object
Field
Value
Label
Job Posting
Plural Label
Job Postings
Object Name
Job_Posting
Description
Represents the junction object between a
position and an employment website
Context-Sensitive Help Setting
Open the standard Salesforce Help &
Training window
Record Name
Job Posting Number
Data Type
Auto Number
Display Format
JP-{00000}
Starting Number
00001
Allow Reports
Yes
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Chapter 6: Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Field
Value
Allow Activities
Yes
Track Field History
Yes
Deployment Status
Deployed
Add Notes & Attachments related list to
default page layout
Yes
Launch New Custom Tab Wizard after saving No
this custom object
That was simple enough, but we're not quite done. We need to create the master-detail
relationship fields that relate the Job Posting object with the Position and Employment Website
objects.
Try It Out: Adding Fields to the Job Posting Object
To turn the Job Posting object into the junction object that relates the Position and Employment
Website objects, we'll need to add two master-detail relationship fields. The first master-detail
relationship will be the primary relationship. The detail and edit pages of our junction object
(Job Posting) will use the color and any associated icon of the primary master object (Position).
In addition, the junction object records will inherit the value of the Owner field and sharing
settings from their associated primary master record.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Job Posting.
In the Custom Fields & Relationships related list, click New.
Select Master-Detail Relationship, and click Next.
In the Related To drop-down list, choose Position, and click Next.
In the Field Label text box, enter Position. When you move your cursor, the
Field Name text box should be automatically populated with Position as well.
7. Accept the remaining defaults, and click Next until you reach the final step of the
wizard.
Here, we are given the chance to add the Job Postings related list to the Position object page
layout. Instead of displaying information about related job postings, we want this list to show
all the employment websites where this position is posted. So let's add the Job Posting related
list, but rename it Employment Websites.
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8. In the Related List Label text box, enter Employment Websites.
9. Accept the other defaults and click Save & New.
We're halfway through the creation of our many-to-many relationship. The next step is to
create a second master-detail relationship on the Job Posting object to link it with the
Employment Website object.
The second master-detail relationship creates a secondary relationship. Unlike the primary
relationship, the secondary relationship has no affect on the look and feel of the junction object.
However, just as in the primary relationship, the sharing settings of the master record in the
secondary relationship also affect who can access the junction record, and deleting a record of
the secondary master object will automatically delete its associated junction object records. So
in our app, if you delete an employment website record, all of its associated job posting records
are deleted as well, even if the position is open.
10. Select Master-Detail Relationship, and click Next.
11. In the Related To drop-down list, choose Employment Website, and click Next.
12. In the Field Label text box, enter Employment Website. When you move
your cursor, the Field Name text box should be automatically populated with
Employment_Website as well.
13. Click Next. Because we are creating a master-detail relationship, these settings
cannot be changed.
14. Click Next. These settings cannot be changed as well.
15. Click Next to view the final step of the wizard.
This time we are given the chance to add the Job Postings related list to Employment Website
object page layout. We'll eventually configure this related list to show all the positions that are
posted on this website, so let's add the Job Postings related list but rename it Positions.
16. In the Related List Label text box, enter Positions.
17. Accept the other defaults and click Save.
Now our many-to-many relationship is complete! Or is it?
While we have an Employment Websites related list on the Position object and a Positions
related list on the Employment Websites object, both related lists still display job posting
records. This won't do.
In order to achieve our goal of listing multiple positions on an employment website record and
multiple employment websites on a position record, we need to customize the fields in these
related lists.
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Customizing Related Lists in a Many-to-Many Relationship
The capability to customize related lists in a many-to-many relationship is more robust than
the capability to customize related lists in a lookup relationship. When you have a lookup
relationship between two objects (like the one we created between the Job Application and
Candidate objects), the related list on one object can only display fields from the object to
which it is directly related; it cannot span to other objects the way formulas can. For example,
the Job Applications related list on a candidate record can display any job application field,
but it can't display any fields from the Position object, even though the Job Application object
has lookup relationships with both the Candidate and Position objects.
Fortunately for us, many-to-many relationships allow for greater flexibility. When working
with a many-to-many relationship, the junction object's related list on one master object can
display the other master object's fields. We're going to take advantage of this by configuring
the Positions related list on each employment website record to display fields from the Position
object and vice versa, thus allowing these two objects to span to each other. It's all coming
together now!
Try It Out: Customizing the Positions and Employment Websites Related
Lists
Let's start by modifying the Employment Websites related list on the Position object.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Position.
In the Page Layouts related list, click Edit next to the Position Layout.
Locate the Employment Websites related list and click its wrench ( ) icon.
In the popup window that appears, you'll notice the Available Fields column lists fields
from both the Job Posting object and the Employment Website object. If there wasn't a
master-detail relationship between job postings and employment websites, the Available
Fields column list would only list job posting fields.
5. Move the Employment Website: Employment Website Name and
Employment Website: Web Address fields to the Selected Fields column,
and use the up and down arrows to arrange the fields in the following order:
•
•
•
124
Employment Website: Employment Website Name
Employment Website: Web Address
Job Posting: Job Number
Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
6. Click OK.
7. Click Save on the page layout.
Now do the same for the Positions related list on the Employment Website object as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Employment Website.
In the Page Layouts related list, click Edit next to the Employment Website Layout.
Locate the Positions related list and click its wrench icon ( ).
Move the following fields to the Selected Fields column, and use the up and
down arrows to arrange them in the following order:
•
•
•
•
•
Position: Position Title
Job Posting: Job Posting Number
Position: Functional Area
Position: Location
Position: Open Date
6. Click OK.
7. Click Save on the page layout.
Look at What We've Done
Our many-to-many relationship is complete! Let's see it in action.
1. Create a few sample position and employment website records.
2. Scroll down to the Employment Websites related list at the bottom of any position
record, and click New Job Posting. The Job Posting edit page appears.
3. Use the lookup icon to select the employment website where you want to post the
position, and click Save.
The Employment Websites related list on that position now shows the name and Web address
of the website to which you just posted, as well as the job posting number. Click the name of
the employment website in the related list and scroll down to view the Positions related list,
which shows all the positions posted to that website.
Now you know how easy it is to make related information just a click away!
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Putting it All Together
We just created several objects and a lot of relationships. The following simple diagram shows
us what we've accomplished so far.
Figure 45: Recruiting App Relationships
All of these relationships, objects, and fields are shown below in an entity relationship diagram.
An entity relationship diagram (ERD) is a conceptual representation of structured data, and
is especially useful for planning and understanding an app.
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Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Figure 46: Recruiting App Entity Relationship Diagram
We've now built all of our Recruiting app objects and tabs, and we've defined lots of custom
fields—everything from text fields and picklists to more complex formula fields and lookup
relationship fields. We've created a robust user interface so that our recruiters and hiring
managers can enter and retrieve data about positions and related candidates, job applications,
and reviews, and we did all of this without writing a single line of code!
Remember when we assigned Anastasia O’Toole as the hiring manager for the Benefits
Specialist position? Let's look at what Anastasia can do now: She can create and update her
positions, and track which websites she's posted them on. She can look at details about any
candidates who have applied for the Benefits Specialist job, and she can review their related
job applications. She can also check the status of the job applications. She no longer has to go
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to Human Resources to search through Microsoft Word documents and spreadsheets to manage
her tasks in the hiring process. The Recruiting app is well on its way to becoming a
fully-functional and useful application!
However, before we leave this chapter behind, let's get ourselves prepared for the rest of this
book by creating and importing some real data. It'll help us when we get to our next chapter
on security and sharing if we have some records that we can work with.
Try It Out: Downloading Sample Data
In addition to entering data via our tabbed pages, we can also use the handy Import Wizard
to import multiple records at a time. The ability to easily import data into your custom objects
is one of the Force.com platform's key benefits. Let's download some sample data so we can
add more records to our custom objects without tons of typing.
1. Download the RecruitingApp-7_0.zip file containing the sample CSV
(comma-separated values) import files from
developer.force.com/books/fundamentals.
2. Extract the zip file to any directory on your computer.
3. Go to the directory to which you extracted the zip file. This directory contains three
CSV files: Positions.csv, Candidates.csv, and JobApplications.csv.
(The directory also other contains files that you'll use later in Moving Beyond
Point-and-Click App Development on page 291.)
Before we import anything, we need to make a modification to the import file for positions.
The sample Positions.csv you downloaded contains fictional users in the Hiring Manager
column. The names of these users most likely won't match any user in your organization, and
if you import the file “as is,” the Import Wizard won't be able to find any matching users, and
the Hiring Manager field on each position record will be left blank. So let's go ahead and
make that change.
4. Go to the directory to which you extracted the zip file and open Positions.csv
in Excel, a text editor, or any other program that can read CSV files.
5. In the Hiring Manager column, replace the fictional users with the first and last
name of a user in your organization.
6. Save the file, making sure to maintain the CSV format.
Note: If your locale isn't English (United States), the date and field values in
Positions.csv are also invalid. You'll need to change them before you import.
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Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Try It Out: Using the Import Wizard
Now, let's walk through the process of importing position records using the Import Wizard
and the Positions.csv file you downloaded.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Data Management > Import Custom Objects.
Click Start the Import Wizard!. The Import Wizard appears.
Select Position for the type of record you're importing, and click Next.
Choose Yes to prevent duplicate position records from being created as a result of
this import. Accept the other defaults for matching, and click Next.
5. Select None for the record owner field. We didn't include a User field in the CSV
file to designate record owners. The Import Wizard assigns you as the owner of all
new records.
6. Choose the Hiring Manager lookup relationship field so you can link position
records with existing User records in the Recruiting app, and click Next.
7. Select Name as the field you want to match against as the Import Wizard compares
Hiring Manager names in your import file with User names in the system, and
click Next.
8. Click Browse and find C:\recruiting\Positions.csv. Click Next.
9. Use the drop-down lists to specify the Salesforce fields that correspond to the columns
in your import file. For your convenience, identically matching labels are automatically
selected. Click Next.
10. Click Import Now!
Use the following table to repeat the import process for candidate records. You'll notice the
wizard skips the two steps about lookup relationship field matching—because the Candidate
object doesn't have any lookup relationship fields, the Import Wizard automatically leaves
those steps out.
Table 19: Importing the Candidates.csv File
For this wizard step...
Select these options...
Choose Record
Candidate
Prevent Duplicates
No—insert all records in my import file
Specify Relationships
None
File Upload
Browse to C:\recruiting\Candidates.csv
Field Mapping
Accept all defaults
Verify Import Settings
Click Import Now!
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Chapter 6: Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Finally let's do it one more time for job application records. In this iteration, we're going to
make use of the Email field, an external ID on the Candidate object, to match up job
applications with the correct candidate records.
Table 20: Importing the Job_Applications.csv File
For this wizard step...
Select these options...
Choose Record
Job Application
Prevent Duplicates
No—insert all records in my import file
Specify Relationships
Which user field...? None
Which lookup fields...? Candidate, Position
Define Lookup Matching
Which field on Candidate...? Email (External ID)
Which field on Position...? Position Title
File Upload
Browse to C:\recruiting\Job_Applications.csv
Field Mapping
Email (col 0): Candidate
Position Title (col 1): Position
Verify Import Settings
Click Import Now!
Great! While the files are importing, you can go to Your Name > Setup > Monitoring >
Imports to check on their status.
Once the import operations have completed, return to the Positions, Candidates, or Job
Applications tab and click Go! next to the View drop-down list. You'll see a list of all the new
records you just imported.
We've just added a bunch of data to our app without a lot of work. In the next chapter, we'll
take a look at all the ways we can control access to this data using the built-in tools of the
platform. We'll get into the nitty-gritty about security, sharing rules, permissions, roles, and
profiles.
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Chapter 7
Securing and Sharing Data
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Controlling Access to
Data in Our App
Data Access Concepts
Controlling Access to
Objects
Controlling Access to
Fields
Controlling Access to
Records
Displaying Field Values
and Page Layouts
According to Profiles
Putting It All Together
Delegating Data
Administration
Summing Up
In the last chapter, we expanded the Recruiting app to
include advanced fields and complex object relationships.
The new Candidate object tracks information about
prospective employees, recruiters can relate candidates to
positions through the new Job Application object, and
interviewers can add assessments and ratings of the
candidates on the new Review object. That's a pretty robust
app! The enhanced data model also lays the groundwork for
adding powerful functionality like workflow and approvals
and reporting, which we'll cover in later chapters.
Now that we've got all of our object relationships in place,
it's time to start thinking about who's actually going to be
using the app and how much access they should have to its
data. As with many apps, our Recruiting app exposes
sensitive information, like social security numbers, salary
amounts, and applicant reviews that could really come back
to haunt us if the wrong people saw them. We need to
provide security without making it harder for our recruiters,
hiring managers, and interviewers to do their jobs.
Here we're going to see another one of the huge benefits
that the Force.com platform has to offer. You get
simple-to-configure security controls that easily allow us to
restrict access to data that users shouldn't see, without a lot
of headaches. Similar to Access Control Lists or Windows
folder permissions, the Force.com platform allows us to
specify who can view, create, edit, or delete any record or
field in the app. In this chapter, we'll see how we can use
the Force.com platform to implement those rules.
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Chapter 7: Securing and Sharing Data
Controlling Access to Data in Our App
As we've already seen, there are three types of users who will need to access the data in our
Recruiting app: recruiters, hiring managers, and interviewers. To these three, let's add a fourth
type of user—a standard employee who doesn't perform any interviews and who never needs
to hire anyone. (This employee will help us determine the default permissions that should
apply to all of the new recruiting objects in our app.)
One by one, let's take a look at the kinds of access that each one of these users needs and, more
importantly, the kinds of access they don't need to do their jobs. Once we've compiled a set of
required permissions, we'll figure out how to implement them in the rest of the chapter.
Required Permissions for the Recruiter
For our first set of required permissions, let's take a look at Mario Ruiz, a recruiter at Universal
Containers. To do his job, Mario needs to be able to create, view, and modify any position,
candidate, job application, or review that's in the system, and have full control over job postings
on employment websites. Likewise, Mario needs to view and modify the recruiting records
that all of the other recruiters own, since all of the recruiters at Universal Containers work
together to fill every position, regardless of who created it.
Although Mario has the most powerful role in our Recruiting app, we still can't give him
complete free reign. While it's OK for job posting and employment website data to be
permanently deleted at any time, state and federal public records laws require that all other
recruitment-related records be saved for a number of years so that if a hiring decision is
questioned, it can be defended in court. Consequently, we need to make sure that Mario will
never accidentally delete a record that needs to be saved to fulfill the law.
But how will he keep the number of positions, candidates, job applications, and reviews in
check if he can't delete them? Won't the app become swamped with old data? Not if we're
smart about it—instead of having Mario delete old records, we can use the Status field on
a record as an indication of whether it's current. We'll filter out all of the old records by using
a simple list view.
Here's a summary of the required permissions that we need to implement for a recruiter:
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Securing and Sharing Data
Table 21: Summary of Required Permissions: Recruiter
Position
Recruiter
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Candidate Job
Review
Application
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Job Posting Employment
Website
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Delete
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Delete
Required Permissions for the Hiring Manager
Our next set of required permissions is more challenging. Ben Stuart, our hiring manager,
needs to be able to access the recruiting records related to his open positions, but he shouldn't
be mucking around with other recruiting records (unless they're owned by other hiring managers
who report to him). Also, there are certain sensitive fields that he has no need to see, like the
social security number field. Let's go object by object to really drill down on what Ben does
and doesn't need to access in order to perform his job:
Position
First of all, Ben likes to post his own positions so that he can publicize them as fast as
possible, but in our app, Mario the recruiter ultimately needs to take ownership of the
record to make sure the position gets filled. As a result, Ben needs the ability to create
positions, but then we'll need to find a mechanism to make sure that they ultimately get
transferred to Mario for ownership. (Hint: as you'll see in Using Custom Workflow and
Approval Processes on page 203, we'll tackle that problem with a workflow rule that transfers
position ownership to a recruiter when a new position is created by a hiring manager. For
now just assume that this already works.)
Ben should also be able to update and view all fields for positions for which he's the hiring
manager, but he should only be able to view other managers' positions.
Candidate
Ben sometimes wants to poach a prime candidate who's applying for a position under
another manager, but this is a practice that Universal Containers frowns upon. As a result,
Ben should only be able to view those candidates who have applied for a position on which
he's the hiring manager. Also, since Ben has no reason to see a candidate's social security
number, this field should be restricted from his view.
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Job Application
As the hiring manager, Ben needs to be able to update the status of those job applications
to specify which candidates should be selected or rejected. However, he should not be able
to change the candidate listed on the job application, nor the position to which the
candidate is applying, so we'll have to find a way of preventing Ben from updating the
lookup fields on job applications.
Review
To make a decision about the candidates who are applying, Ben needs to see the reviews
posted by the interviewers, as well as make comments on them if he thinks the interviewer
was being too biased in his or her review. Likewise, Ben needs to be able to create reviews
so that he can remember his own impressions of the candidates he interviews.
Job Posting
Ben wants to make sure his harder-to-fill positions are visible to the most talented people
in the field. The most efficient way to do this is by posting open positions on various
employment websites. Given that employment websites have different types of users with
varying skill sets, we should give Ben the power to unilaterally create job postings on
employment websites, since Ben is the best person to ascertain which skill sets are necessary
for his open positions.
Employment Website
If Ben had his way, he would usurp all of the company's budget for posting his open
positions on employment websites; therefore, Ben shouldn't be allowed to modify
employment website records, as that would let him redefine the company's budget for
posting jobs and could lead to an accounting fiasco. Still, we need to make sure that Ben
can view employment website records to get an idea of the employment websites with
which Universal Containers has accounts, and how much of the budget for that employment
website is available.
Here's a summary of the required permissions we need to implement for a hiring manager:
Table 22: Summary of Required Permissions: Hiring Manager
Position
Hiring
Manager
134
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit*
Candidate Job
Review
Application
•
Read*
(No
SSN)
•
•
Read
Edit
(No
lookup
fields)
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Job Posting Employment
Website
•
•
•
Read* •
Create*
Edit*
Read
Securing and Sharing Data
* Only for those records that are associated with a position to which the hiring manager has
been assigned
Required Permissions for the Interviewer
For our third set of required permissions, let's take a look at Melissa Lee's role as an interviewer.
Ben, her manager, likes Melissa to interview candidates for highly technical positions, but
doesn't want her speaking with folks who are applying for roles on the user interface team. As
a result, Melissa should be able to view only the candidates and job applications to which she's
assigned as an interviewer. No such restriction needs to exist on the positions that are out there,
but she shouldn't be able to view the minimum and maximum salary values for any of them.
Likewise, she shouldn't see the social security number of any candidate, since it's sensitive
information that has nothing to do with her job.
Melissa must be able to create and edit her reviews so that she can record her comments about
each candidate, but she shouldn't be able to see the reviews of other interviewers—reading
them might sway her opinion one way or the other. As with hiring managers and recruiters,
Melissa also shouldn't be allowed to delete any records to ensure that public records laws are
fulfilled.
Finally, the posting of jobs to employment websites has no bearing on Melissa's responsibilities,
so both the employment website and job posting records should be completely off-limits to
her.
Here's a summary of the required permissions we need to implement for an interviewer:
Table 23: Summary of Required Permissions: Interviewer
Position
Interviewer •
Candidate Job
Review
Application
Read
•
(No
min/max
pay)
Read*
(No
SSN)
•
Read*
•
•
•
Read**
Create
Edit**
Job Posting Employment
Website
-
-
* Only for those records that are associated with a position to which the interviewer has been
assigned
** Only for those records that the interviewer owns
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Required Permissions for the Standard Employee
Employees, such as Manny Damon on the Western Sales Team, are often the best resources
for recruiting new hires, even if they are not active hiring managers or interviewers. For this
reason, we need to make sure that employees like Manny can view open positions, but that
they can't see the values for the positions' minimum and maximum salary fields—otherwise
they might tip off friends to negotiate for a position's maximum salary value! Manny also
shouldn't be able to view any other records in our Recruiting app.
Here's a summary of the required permissions we need to implement for a standard employee:
Table 24: Summary of Required Permissions: Standard Employee
Position
Standard
Employee
•
Candidate Job
Review
Application
Read
(No
min/max
pay)
-
-
Job Posting Employment
Website
-
-
So Where Are We Now?
Now that we've gone through the required permissions for each of our four users, let's organize
our thoughts by summarizing them in the following table. In the rest of this chapter, we'll
figure out how we can use the platform to implement these rules in our Recruiting app.
Table 25: Summary of Required Permissions
Position
136
Candidate Job
Review
Application
Job Posting Employment
Website
Recruiter
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Delete
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Delete
Hiring
Manager
•
Read
•
Read*
(No
SSN)
•
Read
•
Read
•
Read*
•
Read
Securing and Sharing Data
Position
•
•
Candidate Job
Review
Application
Create
Edit*
Interviewer •
Read
•
(No
min/max
pay)
Standard
Employee
Read
(No
min/max
pay)
•
Read*
(No
SSN)
Job Posting Employment
Website
•
Edit
(No
lookup
fields)
•
•
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read*
•
•
•
Read**
Create
Edit**
-
-
-
-
-
-
Create*
Edit*
* Only for those records that are associated with a position to which the hiring
manager/interviewer has been assigned
** Only for those records that the interviewer owns
Tip: When implementing the security and sharing rules for your own organization,
it's often useful to create a required permissions table like this to organize your thoughts
and make sure you don't forget to restrict or grant access to a particular user. You'll
see that we're going to refer back to this table again and again as we go through this
chapter.
Data Access Concepts
Before we get started implementing our security and sharing rules, let's quickly take a look at
all the ways that we can control data on the platform:
Object-Level Security
The bluntest way that we can control data is by preventing a user from seeing, creating,
editing, or deleting any instance of a particular type of object, like a position or review.
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Object-level access allows us to hide whole tabs and objects from particular users, so they
don't even know that type of data exists.
On the platform, we set object-level access with object permissions in user profiles and
permission sets. We'll learn more about them in a little bit.
Field-Level Security
A variation on object-level access is field-level access, in which a user can be prevented
from seeing, editing, or deleting the value for a particular field on an object. Field-level
access allows us to hide sensitive information like the maximum salary for a position or a
candidate's social security number without having to hide the whole object.
On the platform, we set field-level access with field permissions, also in profiles and
permission sets. We'll also learn more about them shortly.
Record-Level Security
To control data with a little more finesse, we can allow particular users to view an object,
but then restrict the individual object records that they're allowed to see. For example,
record-level access allows an interviewer like Melissa Lee to see and edit her own reviews,
without exposing the reviews of everyone else on her team.
On the platform, we actually have several ways of setting record-level access rules:
•
•
•
•
138
Organization-wide defaults allow us to specify the baseline level of access that a user
has in your organization. For example, we can make it so that any user can see any
record of a particular object to which their object permissions give them access, but so
that they'll need extra permissions to actually edit one.
Role hierarchies allow us to make sure that a manager will always have access to the
same records as his or her subordinates.
Sharing rules allow us to make automatic exceptions to organization-wide defaults for
particular groups of users.
Manual sharing allows record owners to give read and edit permissions to folks who
might not have access to the record any other way.
Securing and Sharing Data
Figure 47: Controlling Data with the Force.com Platform
The combination of all of these sharing and security settings in the platform means that we
can easily specify user permissions for an organization of thousands of users without having to
manually configure the permissions for each individual. Pretty neat! Now let's get started
learning more about each of these methods for controlling data, and actually implementing
the security and sharing rules for our app.
Controlling Access to Objects
First let's configure access to our Recruiting app custom objects. As we mentioned previously,
we can control whether a user knows that a particular object exists in the app by setting
permissions in his or her profile and permission sets. But exactly what are profiles and permission
sets, and what do they control?
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Introducing Profiles
A profile is a collection of settings and permissions that determine what a user can do in the
platform, kind of like a group in a Windows network, where all of the members of the group
have the same folder permissions and access to the same software. Profiles control:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Object permissions—The objects the user can view, create, edit, and delete
Field permissions (also known as “field-level security”)—The object fields the user can
view and edit
User permissions—The specific functions that users can perform, like viewing the Setup
menu and customizing applications
Tab settings—The tabs the user can view in the app
App settings—The standard and custom apps the user can access
Apex class access—The Apex classes a user can execute
Visualforce page access—The Visualforce pages a user can execute
Page layouts—The page layouts a user sees
Record types—The record types available to the user
Login hours—The hours during which the user can log in to the app
Login IP ranges—The IP addresses from which the user can log in to the app
Profiles are typically defined by a user's job function (for example, system administrator or
sales representative), but you can have profiles for anything that makes sense for your
organization. A profile can be assigned to many users, but a user can be assigned to only one
profile at a time.
Standard Profiles
The platform provides the following set of standard profiles in every organization:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Read Only
Standard User
Marketing User
Contract Manager
Solution Manager
System Administrator
Each of these standard profiles includes a default set of permissions for all of the standard
objects available on the platform.
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When a custom object is created, most profiles (except those with “Modify All Data”) don't
give access to the object. You can find more detailed descriptions of all the standard profiles
in the online help, but the important thing to know is that you can never edit the object
permissions on a standard profile. If you have access to the Enterprise, Unlimited, or Developer
Editions of the platform, it’s a good idea to make copies of the standard profiles and then
customize the copies to fit the needs of your organization. You can also use permission sets to
grant additional permissions.
For our Recruiting app, we’ll make a copy of the standard profile and customize it (and as a
result, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions will be the only editions that the
Recruiting app will support). We’ll also use permission sets to grant additional permissions to
a smaller set of users.
Introducing Permission Sets
Like a profile, a permission set is a collection of settings and permissions that determine what
a user can do. Permission sets include some of the same permissions and settings you’ll find
in profiles:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Object permissions
Field permissions (also known as “field-level security”)
User permissions
Tab settings
App settings
Apex class access
Visualforce page access
So why profiles and permission sets?
The most significant difference between the two is that users can have only one profile, but
they can have many permission sets. This means you can use profiles to grant the minimum
permissions and settings that every type of user needs, then use permission sets to grant
additional permissions, without changing anyone’s profiles.
There are a couple of ways to use permission sets to your advantage.
•
To grant access to custom objects or entire apps.
Let’s say you have many users in your organization with the same fundamental job functions.
You can assign them all one profile that grants them all the access they need to do their
job. But suppose a few of those users are working on a special project and they need access
to an app that no one else uses. And suppose a few other users need access to that app, as
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well as another app that the first group doesn’t need. If we only had profiles, you’d have to
create more profiles that were customized to those few users’ needs, or take your chances
and add more access to the original profile, making the apps available to users that don’t
need it. Neither of these options is ideal, especially if your organization is growing and your
users’ needs change regularly. Permission sets make it easy to grant access to the various
apps and custom objects in your organization, and to take away access when it’s no longer
needed.
•
To grant permissions—temporarily or long term—to specific fields.
For example, let’s say you have a user, Dana, who needs temporary edit access to a field
while her co-worker is on vacation. You can create a permission set that grants access to
the field and assign the permission set to Dana. When Dana’s co-worker returns from
vacation and Dana no longer needs access to the field, you just remove the permission set
assignment from Dana’s user record.
Profiles and Permission Sets in Our Recruiting App
We've talked about four types of users: recruiters, hiring managers, standard employees, and
interviewers. Let's take a closer look.
Recruiters are pretty straightforward—they definitely represent a particular job function, and
they need access to different types of data than other users. They need their own profile.
A hiring manager, however, is not exactly a single type of position. For most organizations, a
hiring manager in the Sales department will almost certainly need access to a different type of
data than a hiring manager in Engineering. However, for our app, sales managers and software
managers still need the same types of access to recruiting data—reviews, candidates, positions,
job applications, job postings, and employment websites. If we incorporated our app into an
organization with other CRM functionality, the hiring manager permissions for
recruiting-related data might need to be shared by several types of users who may have different
profiles. In this case, we’ll make a hiring manager permission set that can be assigned to various
types of users.
Standard employees are pretty generic, and they don’t reflect a particular job function. Standard
employees can start with a profile that gives access to a small set of data, and then depending
on what their specialties are, we can create and assign permission sets to give them more access
as needed.
Finally, let's look at interviewers. When you think about it, just about anyone in an organization
might be called upon to perform an interview. Furthermore, a company may have a peak
recruiting season, when many employees will be interviewers for a limited amount of time.
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Ideally, permissions for interviewers could be easily granted and revoked as needed. It’s easy
to define permission sets based on a particular task—and even easier to assign and unassign
them, so let's define a permission set for interviewers.
Try It Out: Creating the Recruiter Profile
All right—we're finally ready to dig into the app and create our first profile! Let's start with
the Recruiter profile.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Profiles.
Figure 48: Standard Profiles
Here you should see the list of standard profiles that we talked about earlier. After we create
our custom profiles, they'll also show up in this list.
First, we can quickly tell which profiles we can play with by looking at the Custom column—if
it's checked, that means it's a custom profile and we can edit anything about it. If that column
is not checked, we can still click the Edit link; we just can't modify any of the permission
settings. (What does that leave for us to edit on a standard profile? Well, we can choose which
tabs should appear at the top of a user's page, and we can also select the apps that are available
in the Force.com app menu in the top-right corner of the page.)
2. Create a new profile named Recruiter based on the Standard User profile.
There are actually two ways of doing this—we can either click New, select an existing profile
to clone, name it, and click Save, or we can simply click Clone in the detail page of the profile
that we want to copy, name it, and click Save. Ultimately, it's the same number of clicks, so
choose the method you like best. Standard User is the profile that most closely resembles what
we want our new Recruiter profile to look like, so it's a good starting point.
3. In the new Recruiter profile's detail page, click Edit.
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The Recruiter edit page should look and function exactly like the Standard User profile edit
page except with one important difference: you have the ability to modify any of the permission
settings.
4. In the Custom App Settings area, make the Recruiting app visible to users assigned
to the Recruiter profile, as shown in the following screenshot.
Figure 49: Profile Custom App Settings Area
Tip: You can also give this profile access to any of the other available apps as well.
Every profile needs to have at least one visible app.
When an app is visible, a user can select it from the Force.com app menu at the top-right
corner of the page. Be aware, however, that even if an app is visible, the app's tabs won't show
up unless a profile has permissions to view the tabs and permission to view the associated
object. (We'll set both of those permissions lower down in the Profile edit page.)
5. Select Default next to the Recruiting app.
Making this selection means that the Recruiting app will be displayed when a user logs in.
You'll notice that when you select an app as the default, its Visible checkbox is automatically
selected, because it doesn't make sense for an app to be the default if it's not visible to the user.
6. In the Tab Settings area, select Default On for the Positions, Job Applications,
Candidates, and Employment Websites tabs.
Tip: You can choose whether you want other tabs to be displayed based on the
additional apps that you made visible in the last step.
For the purposes of our Recruiting app, all of our custom recruiting tabs are on by default. For
any other tabs that you select, you can choose which should be displayed on top of the user's
page (Default On), hidden from the user's page but available when he or she clicks the All
Tabs tab on the far right (Default Off), or completely hidden from the user (Tab Hidden).
Realize that even if you completely hide a tab, users can still see the records that would have
appeared in that tab in search results and in related lists. (To prevent a user from accessing
data, we have to set the proper restrictions in the Standard and Custom Object Permissions
areas lower down in the Profile edit page—we'll get there shortly!)
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The Overwrite users' personal tab customizations setting appears if you have
an organization that's currently in use and you want to make sure your existing users are viewing
the tabs that you've selected. You don't need to select this for our app because we're defining
a brand-new profile and no one has personalized his or her tab visibility settings yet. However,
if you do want to select this option at some point in the future, just make sure you're not going
to annoy your users by deleting all of their customizations!
Figure 50: Profile Tab Settings Area
Just below the Tab Settings area, the Administrative and General User Permissions areas of
the profile allow you to grant special access to features and functionality that don't map directly
to particular objects. None of these permissions affects our Recruiting app, but you can learn
more about them in the online help.
It's time to move on to the object-level permissions.
7. In the Custom Object Permissions area, specify the object-level permissions for our
Recruiter profile according to the following table.
Table 26: Summary of Required Permissions: Recruiter
Positions
Recruiter
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
View
All
Candidates Job
Reviews
Applications
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Job Posting Employment
Website
•
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Delete
View
All
•
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Delete
View
All
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Positions
Candidates Job
Reviews
Applications
Job Posting Employment
Website
•
Modify •
All
Modify
All
Tip: Depending on the apps that you made visible previously, you can also set
additional object permissions on standard or other custom objects.
Since there are no instances when a recruiter should be allowed to delete positions, candidates,
job applications, and reviews, we should make sure that the object-level permissions for deletion
are turned off for these objects. Also, make sure the “View All” and “Modify All” permissions
are only selected for job postings and employment websites. These are special kinds of object
permissions that we'll discuss later in this chapter.
By restricting the power to delete recruiting-related objects here, recruiters will never be able
to delete these objects. However, the fact that we're granting recruiters permission to create,
read, or edit our recruiting objects does not necessarily mean that recruiters will be allowed to
read or edit every recruiting object record. Why?
Here we see the result of two really important concepts in the platform:
•
•
The permissions on a record are always evaluated according to a combination of object-,
field-, and record-level permissions.
When object- versus record-level permissions conflict, the most restrictive settings win.
What this means is that even though we are granting this profile create, read, and edit
permissions on the recruiting objects, if the record-level permissions for an individual recruiting
record prove to be more restrictive, those will be the rules that will define what a recruiter can
access.
For example, our new profile gives a recruiter permission to create, edit, and view reviews.
However, if we set organization-wide defaults for reviews to Private (a record-level permission),
our recruiter will be allowed to edit and view only his own reviews, and not the reviews owned
by other users. We'll learn more about record-level permissions later and go through more
examples of how they work with the object-level ones, but for now, just understand that
object-level permissions are only one piece of the puzzle.
8. Click Save to create your profile and return to the profile detail page.
Congratulations! We're done with our first profile. As you can see, it really wasn't that hard,
because we'd already analyzed our required permissions and knew what objects recruiters will
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need access to. In the next section, let's quickly finish up our other two profiles and then move
on to field-level security.
Beyond the Basics
Did you know that you can use an improved user interface to manage profiles?
Say you manage a lot of profiles and you'd like a more a streamlined experience. With
the enhanced profile user interface, you can easily navigate, search, and modify profile
settings.
To find out more, see “Enhanced Profile User Interface Overview” in the Salesforce online
help.
Try It Out: Creating the Standard Employee Profile
Now that we've created our Recruiter profile, let's finish up with a profile for standard
employees. As we mentioned earlier, in your own company, you may want to create additional
profiles with basic access settings for the various core job functions, but for our purposes, these
will work just fine for now.
To refresh our memories, let's take a look at our required permissions summary table:
Table 27: Summary of Required Permissions: Standard Employee
Positions
Standard
Employee
•
Candidates Job
Reviews
Applications
Read
(No
min/max
pay)
-
-
Job
Postings
Employment
Websites
-
-
Standard employees don’t need much access, but we do want them to be able to view all the
open positions so they can help recruit new employees. Creating this profile will be easy. Go
ahead and follow the steps that we outlined in the previous section and specify the following.
•
•
Name the profile Standard Employee, and base it on the Standard User profile.
Enable the “Read” permission on the Positions object.
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Fantastic! We've just finished defining profiles for all the users in our Recruiting app. Next
we’ll create permission sets to grant additional permissions to the people that need them.
Try It Out: Creating the Hiring Manager Permission Set
We’ve created two profiles for our easy-to-define job functions. Now we need to grant additional
access for functions that may not be specific to any given job title.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Permission Sets.
On the Permission Sets page, click New.
In the Label field, enter Hiring Manager.
The API Name field is defaulted to Hiring_Manager. Let’s leave it as is.
When you assign permission sets to a user, you can only assign permission sets that have the
same user license as the user or permission sets with no associated license. You can’t change
the license later, so it’s important to choose the correct user license when you create a permission
set.
5. In the User License field, select Salesforce.
6. Click Save.
Figure 51: Permission Set Overview Page
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We’ve taken the initial step of creating a permission set. While you can clone permission sets,
you can also create one completely from scratch, and that’s what we did when we created this
one. At the moment, this permission set has no enabled settings or permissions—it’s a blank
slate. So let’s enable some permissions and settings. Since this permission set is for hiring
managers, we’ll start by making the Recruiting app visible.
7. Click Assigned Apps.
8. In the Assigned Apps page, click Edit.
9. Under Available Apps, select Recruiting and click Add to add it to the Enabled
Apps list.
Figure 52: Assigning the Recruiting App in the Hiring Manager Permission Set
10. Click Save.
Next we want to enable tab settings and permissions for our custom objects. Where are those
enabled and how do we get there? In permission sets, you have a few easy ways to move from
one page to another. Let’s take a look.
11. Next to Assigned Apps, click the down arrow to open the navigation menu, and
select Object Settings.
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Figure 53: Permission Set Navigation Menu
The Object Settings page shows an overview for all objects and tabs in your organization. It
includes a summary of tab settings, object permissions, and field permissions for every object
and tab. Let’s drill down to the Positions object.
12. In the list of objects, click Positions.
13. On the Positions page, click Edit.
You may notice that tab settings labels in permission sets are different from the labels in profiles.
They are configured a bit differently, but you’ll get the same results.
Table 28: Comparing Tab Settings in Permission Sets and Profiles
150
Enabled Settings in
Permission Sets
Enabled Setting in Profiles
Description
Available
Default Off
The tab is available on the All
Tabs page. Individual users
can customize their display to
make the tab visible in any
app.
Available and Visible
Default On
The tab is available on the All
Tabs page and appears in the
visible tabs for its associated
app. Individual users can
customize their display to hide
the tab or make it visible in
other apps.
Securing and Sharing Data
Enabled Settings in
Permission Sets
Enabled Setting in Profiles
Description
None
Tab Hidden
The tab isn’t available on the
All Tabs page or visible in any
apps.
14. Under Tab Settings, select Available and Visible.
15. Under Object Permissions, enable Read, Create, and Edit.
Now we’ll grant access to the fields in position records. We’ll learn lots more about field
permissions in Introducing Field-Level Security on page 156, but for now, we’ll enable the field
permissions we need.
16. Under Field Permissions, enable the Edit checkboxes for all the fields.
Tip: When you enable Edit for a field, Read is automatically enabled as
well.
You’ll probably notice that you can’t change the settings for some of the fields. These fields
have preset access because they are required or their data is automatically calculated. For
example, because Days Open is a formula field, it’s never editable, but you should make it
readable.
17. Enable Read for Days Open.
18. Click Save.
Now we need to specify access for our remaining objects. As we saw previously, you can use
the navigation menu to quickly jump from one page to another. On the Positions page, notice
that there are now two down arrows: one next to Object Settings, and another one next to
Positions. Whenever you’re in a specific object page, this second navigation menu is available.
Click the second down arrow and you’ll see all of the objects and tabs in your organization.
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Figure 54: Object Navigation Menu
But that’s not the only way to jump around in a permission set. Another option is the Find
Settings... box, which is available on every page in a permission set. Here you can enter three
or more consecutive letters of an object, setting, or permission name, then select the item you
want from the list that appears. Let’s try it.
19. Click in the
Find Settings... box and type job.
There are two objects with the string “job” and they both appear in the list.
20. Select Job Applications.
Figure 55: Using the Find Settings Box
Now that we know how to move around easily in a permission set, go ahead and add the rest
of the permissions and settings, according to this table.
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Table 29: Tab Settings and Object Permissions for Hiring Managers
Object Name
Tab Settings
Object Permissions
Field Permissions
Job Applications
•
•
Available
Visible
•
•
Read
Edit
•
•
Read on all
Edit on Cover
Letter and Status
Candidates
•
•
Available
Visible
•
Read
•
•
No access on SSN
Read on all others
Reviews
-
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
Read on
Candidate and
Position
Read and Edit on
Assessment
•
Job Postings
-
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
-
Employment
Websites
-
•
Read
-
Great! We’ve created our first permission set and added the settings we need for hiring
managers. Now we’ll create another permission set for a different job function, interviewing
candidates.
Try It Out: Creating the Interviewer Permission Set
Now we’re ready to create the Interviewer permission set.
Using the steps that we discussed in the last section, create a permission set with the following
settings:
•
•
•
Name this permission set Interviewer and assign the Salesforce user license.
Under Assigned Apps, make the Recruiting app visible.
Enable the following tab settings and object permissions:
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Table 30: Tab Settings and Object Permissions for Interviewers
Object Name
Tab Settings
Object Permissions Field Permissions
Positions
◊ Available
◊ Visible
◊ Read
◊ No access on Min
Pay and Max Pay
◊ Read on all
others
Candidates
◊ Available
◊ Visible
◊ Read
◊ No access on
SSN
◊ Read on all
others
Job Applications
◊ Available
◊ Visible
◊ Read
◊ Read on all
Reviews
-
◊ Read
◊ Create
◊ Edit
◊ Read on
Candidate and
Position
◊ Read and Edit
on Assessment
Let’s review the required permissions for hiring managers, interviewers, and standard employees.
Table 31: Summary of Required Permissions: Hiring Manager, Interviewer, and Standard
Employee
Positions
Hiring
Manager
•
•
•
Interviewer •
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Candidates Job
Reviews
Applications
Job
Postings
Employment
Websites
Read
Create
Edit*
•
Read*
(No
SSN)
•
•
Read
Edit
(No
lookup
fields)
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read* •
Create*
Edit*
Read
(No
•
Read*
(No
SSN)
•
Read*
•
Read**
-
-
Read
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Positions
Candidates Job
Reviews
Applications
min/max
pay)
Standard
Employee
•
Read
(No
min/max
pay)
•
•
-
-
Job
Postings
Employment
Websites
-
-
Create
Edit**
* Only for those records that are associated with a position to which the hiring
manager/interviewer has been assigned
** Only for those records that the interviewer owns
Great, but what about those asterisks? Do we need to take those into account when we set our
object permissions?
Not at all. Those asterisks represent record-level security settings that we're going to specify
shortly. The only things we need to care about here are the permissions that these users will
need to have access to at least some of the time—that's the whole point of object permissions.
However, we do need to make sure that sensitive data on these objects is protected from users
who don't need access, and then we need to drill down on the actual records that each user
should be allowed to view and edit.
Controlling Access to Fields
Now that we've restricted access to objects as a whole, it's time to use a finer-toothed comb to
manage the security of individual object fields. These are the settings that allow us to protect
sensitive fields such as a candidate's social security number without having to hide the fact that
the candidate object even exists.
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Introducing Field-Level Security
In the platform, we control access to individual fields with field-level security. Field-level security
controls whether a user can see, edit, and delete the value for a particular field on an object.
Unlike page layouts, which only control the visibility of fields on detail and edit pages, field-level
security controls the visibility of fields in any part of the app, including related lists, list views,
reports, and search results. Indeed, in order to be absolutely sure that a user can't access a
particular field, it's important to use the field-level security page for a given object to restrict
access to the field. There are simply no other shortcuts that will provide the same level of
protection for a particular field.
Field-Level Security in Our Recruiting App
Just to refresh our memories about what field-level security settings we need for our Recruiting
app, let's take another look at our required permissions in the following table. We'll keep them
organized by recruiter, hiring manager, and standard employee, because it turns out that
(surprise!) field-level security settings are closely related to profiles and permission sets:
Table 32: Revised Summary of Required Permissions
Position
Job Posting Employment
Website
Recruiter
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Delete
Hiring
Manager
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit*
•
Read*
(No
SSN)
•
•
Read
Edit
(No
lookup
fields)
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read* •
Create*
Edit*
Read
•
(No
min/max
pay)
Read*
(No
SSN)
•
Read*
•
•
•
Read**
Create
Edit**
-
-
Interviewer •
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Candidate Job
Review
Application
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Delete
Read
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Position
Standard
Employee
•
Candidate Job
Review
Application
Read
(No
min/max
pay)
-
-
Job Posting Employment
Website
-
-
* Only for those records that are associated with a position to which the hiring
manager/interviewer has been assigned
** Only for those records that the interviewer owns
For field-level security settings, we'll first zero in on those rules that include field restrictions
in parentheses, specifically:
•
•
•
On the Position object, hide minimum and maximum pay from standard employees
On the Candidate object, hide social security numbers from hiring managers and interviewers
On the Job Application object, make the Position and Candidate lookup fields read-only
for hiring managers
So let's get down to it!
Try It Out: Limiting Access to Fields in the Standard Employee Profile
Let's review our field-level security rules:
•
•
•
On Positions, hide minimum and maximum pay from standard employees and interviewers
On Candidates, hide social security numbers from interviewers and hiring managers
On Job Applications, make Candidate and Position lookup fields read only for hiring managers.
To define these rules, we’ll access field-level security settings in the Standard Employee profile.
You may be wondering: the last two rules are about interviewers and hiring managers, but
those functions are defined by permission sets. Why are we concerned with them right now?
Permissions are additive: you can never remove a user’s existing permissions by assigning a
permission set; you can only add permissions. If we want to limit access, we need to make sure
that the base profile for our users—as well as any of their permission sets—limits this type of
access. In the case of our organization, we know we’re going to assign the Interviewer and
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Hiring Manager permission sets to users with the Standard Employee profile, so we need to
restrict field permissions in this profile as well as in the permission sets.
So let’s set up field-level security in the Standard Employee profile, and later we’ll check the
field-level security for our permissions sets.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Profiles, and select the Standard
Employee profile.
Figure 56: Standard Employee Profile Detail Page
The first thing you'll notice about the Standard Employee profile's detail page is that it includes
several more areas than the edit page that we originally used to define the profile. These
additional areas include Page Layouts (which we learned about earlier), Field-Level Security,
Record Type Settings, Login Hours, and Login IP Ranges. Although we won't go into detail
in this book about how to use any areas other than Field-Level Security (and record types later
on), they're part of what makes a profile so powerful in our application. You can learn more
about them in the online help.
2. In the Field-Level Security area, click View next to the Position object.
3. Click Edit.
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Figure 57: Field-Level Security Edit Page
Here we see security settings for all of the fields on the Position object, including Min Pay
and Max Pay, the two fields that we want to restrict. You'll notice that some field-level security
settings on some fields cannot be modified—this is because either they are system-generated
fields or they act as lookup relationship fields (foreign keys) to other records.
Since the security settings checkboxes can be a little bit confusing, let's do a quick exercise to
map their values (Visible and Read-Only) to the three logical permission settings for a
field: “Hidden,” “Read Only,” and “Editable”:
Table 33: Field-Level Permission Mappings
Permission
Visible
Read-Only
Read Only
X
X
Editable
X
Hidden
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After doing this exercise, it's easy to see that most fields are editable, because their Visible
checkbox is the only one selected. To restrict a field from ever being viewed by a user, all we
have to do is deselect both checkboxes.
4. Next to the Max Pay field, deselect Visible.
5. Next to the Min Pay field, deselect Visible.
6. Click Save.
Now let’s take care of the remaining field-level security rules. Again, since we know that our
interviewers and hiring managers will be assigned the Standard Employee profile, we’ll ensure
that its field permissions are set correctly.
7. Click Back to Profile.
8. In the Field-Level Security area, click View next to the Candidate object.
9. Click Edit.
10. Next to the SSN field, deselect Visible.
11. Click Save.
12. Click Back to Profile.
13. In the Field-Level Security area, click View next to the Job Application object.
14. Click Edit.
15. Next to the Candidate and Position fields, select Read Only.
16. Click Save.
We're done setting field-level security for the Standard Employee profile. We didn’t have to
change anything in the Recruiter profile because, as we already determined in the planning
stage, recruiters can access all the fields we created in our objects.
Try It Out: Checking Field-Level Security in Permission Sets
But what about the permission sets we created?
Remember how we specified field permissions when we created the Hiring Manager and
Interview permission sets? Now that we know more about field-level security, let’s double-check
the most sensitive fields in our permission sets to make sure they are correct.
If any of these settings are incorrect, go ahead and edit them. Be sure to click Save each time
you go to a different page. First, let’s check field permissions in the Interviewer permission set.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Permission Sets, and select the
Interviewer permission set.
2. In the
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Find Settings... box, type pos, then select Positions.
Securing and Sharing Data
3. Next to the Max Pay and Min Pay fields, both Read and Edit should be disabled.
Now let’s check the Hiring Manager permission set.
4. Open the Hiring Manager permission set and navigate to the Positions object.
5. Next to the Max Pay and Min Pay fields, both Read and Edit should be enabled.
Finally, we want to make sure hiring managers can see which candidate and position are
associated with each job application, but prevent them from changing those lookup fields.
6. In the
Find Settings... box, type job, then select Job Applications.
7. Next to the Candidate and Position fields, Read should be enabled and Edit
should be disabled.
All done! We've just finished the second piece of our security and sharing puzzle by defining
field-level security for the sensitive fields in our Recruiting app. Now, for the final piece of the
puzzle, we need to specify the individual records to which each user needs access. We need to
protect our data without compromising any employee's ability to perform his or her job.
Controlling Access to Records
By setting object and field-level access permissions in our profiles and permission sets, we have
effectively defined all of the objects and fields that any one of our Recruiting app users can
access. In this section, we'll focus on setting permissions for the actual records themselves.
Should our users have open access to every record, or just a subset? If it's a subset, what rules
should determine whether the user can access them? We'll use a variety of platform security
and sharing tools to address these questions and make sure we get it right.
Introducing Organization-Wide Defaults
When dealing with record-level access settings, the first thing we need to do is to determine
the organization-wide defaults (commonly called “org-wide defaults”) for each object in our
Recruiting app. Also called a sharing model, org-wide defaults specify the baseline level of
access that the most restricted user should have. We'll use org-wide defaults to lock down our
data to this most restrictive level, and then we'll use our other record-level security and sharing
tools (role hierarchies, sharing rules, and manual sharing) to open up the data to other users
who need to access it.
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Org-Wide Defaults in Our Recruiting App
To determine the org-wide defaults that we'll need in our Recruiting app, we need to answer
the following questions for each object:
1. Who is the most restricted user of this object?
2. Is there ever going to be an instance of this object that this user shouldn't be allowed
to see?
3. Is there ever going to be an instance of this object that this user shouldn't be allowed
to edit?
Based on our answers to these questions, we can determine the sharing model that we need
for that object as illustrated in the following diagram.
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Figure 58: Determining the Sharing Model for an Object
For example, let's consider the Position object in our recruiting app. To refresh our memories,
here's our table of required permissions:
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Table 34: Revised Summary of Required Permissions
Position
Candidate Job
Review
Application
Job Posting Employment
Website
Recruiter
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Delete
Hiring
Manager
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit*
•
Read*
(No
SSN)
•
•
Read
Edit
(No
lookup
fields)
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
•
•
•
Read* •
Create*
Edit*
Interviewer •
Read
•
(No
min/max
pay)
Read*
(No
SSN)
•
Read*
•
•
•
Read**
Create
Edit**
-
-
Standard
Employee
Read
(No
min/max
pay)
-
-
•
-
-
•
•
•
•
Read
Create
Edit
Delete
Read
* Only for those records that are associated with a position to which the hiring
manager/interviewer has been assigned
** Only for those records that the interviewer owns
Now let's go through and answer our list of questions for the Position object:
Table 35: Determining Org-Wide Defaults for the Standard Employee Profile
164
Question
Answer
1. Who is the most restricted user of this
object?
A member of the Standard Employee profile.
All that they're allowed to do is view a
position.
Securing and Sharing Data
Question
Answer
2. Is there ever going to be an instance of this No. Although the values for the minimum
object that this user shouldn't be allowed to and maximum pay are hidden from standard
see?
employees, they're still allowed to view all
position records.
3. Is there ever going to be an instance of this Yes. Standard employees aren't allowed to edit
object that this user shouldn't be allowed to any position record.
edit?
According to our flowchart, answering “Yes” to question #3 means that the sharing model for
the Position object should be set to Public Read-Only.
The same is true for the Employment Website and Job Posting objects, except hiring managers
are the most restricted users instead of standard employees. (Standard employees have no
permissions on these objects, but of the users that do have permissions, hiring managers are
most restricted.) We want to allow hiring managers to view all employment website and job
posting records without being able to edit them, so the answer to the second question is “No”
while the answer to the third question is “Yes;” therefore, the sharing model for the Employment
Website and Job Posting objects should be Public Read-Only.
Going through the rest of our recruiting objects required permissions, we can easily figure out
their sharing models, too. The Standard Employee profile is the most restricted user for each
object, and there are going to be candidate, job application, and review records that particular
employees won't be able to view. Consequently, the sharing model for the Candidate, Job
Application, and Review objects should all be set to Private.
Try It Out: Setting Org-Wide Defaults
Now that we've figured out the org-wide defaults for each of our recruiting objects, let's go
ahead and implement them in our Recruiting app.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Security Controls > Sharing Settings. If you see an
introductory splash page, click Set Up Sharing at the bottom of the page to skip to
the actual tool.
The Sharing Settings page is where we control both org-wide defaults and sharing rules. We'll
talk more about this page when we talk about sharing rules a little further down. For now, let's
just edit our org-wide default settings.
2. In the Organization Wide Defaults area, click Edit.
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Figure 59: Org-Wide Defaults Edit Page
This page controls the org-wide defaults for every object in our organization. You'll notice that
some standard objects (like leads and calendars) use a different set of org-wide default values
than we have available for our custom recruiting objects. You can learn more about them in
the online help. For now, let's just set our recruiting objects to the org-wide defaults that we
decided on in the last section.
3. Next to Candidate and Job Application, select Private.
4. Next to Employment Website and Position, select Public Read Only.
Right about now, you're probably wondering why you can't set the org-wide defaults for the
Review and Job Posting objects. The reason is that those objects are on the detail side of
master-detail relationships, and, as mentioned in the last chapter, a detail record automatically
inherits the sharing setting of its parent. So in our app, the Review object is automatically set
to Private, and the Job Posting object is automatically set to Public Read Only.
You also might be wondering about the Grant Access Using Hierarchies column of
checkboxes. Leave these selected for now. We'll discuss hierarchies in the next section.
5. Click Save.
Easy! Now that we've locked down our data with org-wide defaults, users are currently allowed
to work on only candidate, job application, and review records that they own, and are allowed
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to view position, employment website, and job posting records that anyone owns. Because
those settings are way too restrictive for any user to get any benefit out of our app, now we
need to use role hierarchies, sharing rules, and manual sharing to open up candidate, job
application, and review record access to those employees who'll need it.
Introducing Role Hierarchies
The first way that we can share access to records is by defining a role hierarchy. Similar to an
org chart, a role hierarchy represents a level of data access that a user or group of users needs.
Users assigned to roles near the top of the hierarchy (normally the CEO, executives, and other
management) get to access the data of all the users who fall directly below them in the hierarchy.
The role hierarchy enables these behaviors:
•
•
A manager will always have access to the same data as his or her employees, regardless of
the org-wide default settings. For custom objects, you can override this behavior by
deselecting the Grant Access Using Hierarchies checkbox. However, we want our
role hierarchy to apply to all of our custom objects, so leave the checkboxes selected.
Users who tend to need access to the same types of records can be grouped together—we'll
use these groups later when we talk about sharing rules.
To illustrate, let's take a look at a portion of the role hierarchy for Universal Containers:
Figure 60: Universal Containers Role Hierarchy
Role hierarchies don't necessarily need to match your org chart exactly. Instead, each role in
the hierarchy should just represent a level of data access that a user or group of users needs.
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For example, suppose your organization employs a corporate lawyer who needs to access all of
the records in the app. One easy way to accomplish this is by assigning the lawyer to the CEO
role in your organization's role hierarchy. Since the CEO role is placed at the top of the
hierarchy, anyone assigned to that role automatically gets full access to any record in the
organization. It doesn't matter that technically the lawyer appears below the CEO in the regular
org chart.
Comparing Roles, Profiles, and Permission Sets
Although it's easy to confuse profiles and permission sets with roles, they actually control two
very different things.
As we learned earlier in this chapter, profiles and permission sets control a user's object- and
field-level access permissions. Indeed, a user can't be defined without being assigned to a
particular profile, since the profile specifies the most basic access for users.
Roles, on the other hand, primarily control a user's record-level access permissions through
role hierarchy and sharing rules. Although a role assignment isn't exactly required when we
define a user, it would be foolish of us not to assign a role since it makes it so much easier to
define our record-level permissions. Indeed, trying to define record-level permissions without
assigning a role to a user would be a lot like trying to travel from New York to San Francisco
by car when there's an airplane available—there's just a much more efficient way of doing it!
To help you remember which controls what, remember: Roles control Records.
Role Hierarchies in Our Recruiting App
Given the Universal Containers role hierarchy that's pictured in the Universal Containers Role
Hierarchy image, let's think about how implementing this hierarchy will open up certain kinds
of record-level permissions to various users of our Recruiting app. Remember, since defining
our org-wide defaults, our hiring managers are currently allowed to only view all position, job
posting, and employment website records, and to view and update other recruiting records that
they own. That doesn't make our app all that useful. However, once we implement our role
hierarchy, we'll automatically grant several kinds of record-level permissions to various users.
For example:
•
•
168
The CEO, Cynthia Capobianco, will be able to view and update every record that anyone
else in the organization can view and update.
The VP of Development, Andrew Goldberg, will be able to view and update any record
that his managers or his managers' employees can view or update.
Securing and Sharing Data
•
•
•
•
•
The VP of Human Resources, Megan Smith, will be able to view and update any record
that Phil Katz, her recruiting manager, or Mario Ruiz, Phil's recruiter, can view and update.
The Recruiting Manager, Phil Katz, will be able to view and update any record that is
owned by Mario Ruiz, his recruiter.
The Software Development manager, Ben Stuart, will be able to view and update any record
that is owned by Melissa Lee, Tom Zales, or Craig Kingman, his software engineers.
The director of QA, Clark Kentman, will be able to view and update any record that is
owned by Flash Stevenson or Harry Potterham, his QA Engineers.
The director of Product Management, Frank Linstrom, will be able to view and update
any record that is owned by Amy Lojack or Andy Macrola, his product managers.
As we can see, the role hierarchy is very powerful in opening up data for people high up in the
role hierarchy tree! However, let's look at some of the gaps that we still have in our record-level
permissions:
•
•
•
Megan Smith (and her whole recruiting team) won't be able to view any reviews that are
owned by members of Andrew Goldberg's Development team because she doesn't have a
direct line down to any Development roles in the role hierarchy.
Ben Stuart, the software development manager, also won't be able to see any reviews that
were written by members of the QA or Product Management groups, even if QA engineers
or product managers interviewed candidates for a software engineering position in his
group.
Melissa Lee, a software engineer, won't be able to see the records for candidates that she's
supposed to interview.
Clearly we'll need to use other record-level sharing methods to open up data between peers in
the same group, and also between groups that appear in different branches of the role hierarchy
(we'll get to those later in this chapter). However, the role hierarchy does give us a good start
toward opening up record access, so let's take a look now at how to define it.
Try It Out: Defining a Role Hierarchy
Implementing a role hierarchy in the platform is easy once you have an idea of what the
hierarchy should look like. It's best to start with your company's org chart and then consolidate
different job titles into single roles wherever possible. For example, if Ben Stuart's software
development group has a staff software engineer and a junior software engineer, these positions
can be consolidated into a single Software Engineer role in the hierarchy.
Once that's squared away, we can get started defining the role hierarchy itself. For our exercise,
we'll use the role hierarchy we talked about previously.
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1. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Roles. If you see an introductory
splash page called Understanding Roles, click Set Up Roles at the bottom of the
page to skip to the actual tool.
Figure 61: Empty Role Hierarchy Page in Tree View Mode
The default view for this page is the tree view, as indicated in the drop-down list on the far
right side of the Role Hierarchy title bar. When creating a role hierarchy, it's probably easiest
to stick with this or the list view, because they both make it easy to see how the roles all fit
together in the hierarchy. The sorted list view is best if you know the name of a role that you
want to find but aren't sure where it fits in the hierarchy, or if you don't want to click open all
the tree nodes. For our purposes, we'll stick with the tree view.
When you first start defining a role hierarchy, the tree view displays a single placeholder node
with the name of your organization. From this point, we need to add the name of the role that
is highest up in the hierarchy—in our case, the CEO.
Note: If you're building your Recruiting app with a free Developer Edition
organization, you may have a role hierarchy predefined as a sample. That's alright.
You can still follow along and create some more roles.
2. Just under Universal Containers, click Add Role.
Note: If the CEO role already exists, click Edit.
3. In the Label text box, enter CEO. The Role Name text box autopopulates with
CEO.
4. In the This role reports to text box, click the lookup icon
next to the name of your organization.
and click Select
By choosing the name of the organization in the This role reports to text box, we're
indicating that the CEO role is a top-level position in our role hierarchy and doesn't report to
anyone.
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5. In the Role Name as displayed on reports text box, enter CEO. This text
is used in reports to indicate the name of a role. Since you may not want a long role
name, like Vice President of Product Development, taking up too much space in
your report columns, it's advisable to use a shortened, yet easily identifiable,
abbreviation.
6. Leave any other options, such as Opportunity Access, set to their defaults. These
access options don't have anything to do with our Recruiting app, and only appear
if you have the org-wide defaults for a standard object set to a level more restrictive
than Public Read/Write.
7. Click Save.
Figure 62: CEO Role Detail Page
Now that we've created our first role, we can assign the appropriate user to it.
8. Click CEO to open the CEO role detail page.
9. In the CEO role detail page, click Assign Users to Role.
10. In the Available Users drop-down list, select All Unassigned.
11. Choose a user from the list (in our case, Cynthia Capobianco), and click Add to
move her to the Selected Users for CEO list.
12. Click Save.
If we return to the main Roles page by clicking Your Name > Setup > Manage Users >
Roles, we can now see our new CEO role in the hierarchy.
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Note: If you see the Sample Role Hierarchy image, click Set Up Roles.
13. Define the rest of the roles according to the Universal Containers Role Hierarchy
diagram.
Note: There's no need to assign users to every role at this point—we'll do
that later when we test out our app.
Tip: To speed up the process of adding a new role, click Add Role directly under the
name of the role to which the new role should report. When you do this, the This
role reports to text box is automatically filled in with the name of the appropriate
role.
Not too hard, right? With org-wide defaults and a role hierarchy in place, we're actually pretty
close to finishing up our record-level access permissions. All we have left to do is share
recruiting-related records between groups that appear in separate branches of the role hierarchy,
and between peers in a single group. Fortunately, we can accomplish both of those tasks with
a combination of sharing rules and manual sharing. We just need to figure out what's left that
needs to be shared, and with whom.
What's Left to be Shared?
So what is left to be shared? After reviewing our table of required permissions, it turns out it's
just a few more things (remember, since users always have access to the records that they own,
we need to worry only about the read and update permissions for our record-level access
settings):
•
•
Recruiters need read and update access on every position, candidate, job application, and
review record that exists in the app.
Hiring managers need:
◊ Read and update access on position and job posting records on which they're the hiring
manager
◊ Read access on candidate records for which they're the hiring manager
◊ Read and update access on every job application and review record
•
Interviewers need read access on the candidate and job application records for people they're
interviewing, and the ability to update their reviews.
That shouldn't be too hard! Let's go do it.
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Introducing Sharing Rules
First let's see what we can do with sharing rules. Sharing rules let us make automatic exceptions
to organization-wide defaults for particular groups of users. We've already defined several
specific groups with the roles that we created in the previous section, but we can also make up
other groups as needed.
The thing to remember with sharing rules is that, like role hierarchies, we can use them only
to open up record access to more users. Sharing rules and role hierarchies can never be stricter
than our org-wide default settings.
Sharing Rules in Our Recruiting App
Sharing rules work best when they're defined for a particular group of users that we can
determine or predict in advance, rather than a set of users that is frequently changing. For
example, in our Recruiting app, we need to share every position, candidate, job application,
and review with every recruiter. Since recruiters all belong to either the Recruiting Manager
or Recruiter roles in the role hierarchy, we can easily use a sharing rule to share those objects
with the Recruiting Manager role and its subordinates.
Alternatively, consider another use case from our Recruiting app: interviewers need read access
on the candidates and job applications for people they're interviewing. In this case, the set of
interviewers is a lot harder to predict in advance—hiring managers might use different sets of
interviewers depending on the position for which they're hiring, and the interviewers might
come from different groups in the role hierarchy. As a result, this use case probably shouldn't
be handled with sharing rules—the team of interviewers for any given manager is just too hard
to predict.
Let's go through the set of required permissions we still need to implement and pick out the
ones that would work best with sharing rules:
Use Case
Should we use a sharing rule?
Recruiters need read and update access on
Yes. As we discussed previously, it's easy to
every position, candidate, job application, and pick out the group of recruiters in our role
review record that exists in the app.
hierarchy.
Hiring managers need read and update access No. It's too hard to predict which positions
on position and job posting records on which will be assigned to which hiring manager.
they're the hiring manager.
We'll need to handle this use case some other
way.
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Use Case
Should we use a sharing rule?
Hiring managers need read access on
No. Again, it's too hard to predict which
candidate records on which they're the hiring positions will be assigned to which hiring
manager.
manager.
Hiring managers need read and update access Yes. Since we're not restricting which job
on every job application and review record. applications and reviews a hiring manager gets
to read and update, we can easily pick out all
of the hiring managers from our role hierarchy
and define a sharing rule for them.
Interviewers need read access on the candidate No. As we discussed previously, it's hard to
and job application records for people they're predict who will be a member of an interview
interviewing.
team for a particular position.
Great! Now that we know the required permissions we want to implement with sharing rules,
let's go ahead and define them.
Try It Out: Defining a Public Group
Before we dive head first into creating our sharing rules, we need to make sure that we have
the appropriate public groups set up. A public group is a collection of individual users, other
groups, individual roles, and/or roles with their subordinates that all have a function in common.
For example, users with the Recruiter profile as well as users in the SW Dev Manager role
both review job applications. Using a public group when defining a sharing rule makes the rule
easier to create and, more important, easier to understand later, especially if it's one of many
sharing rules that you're trying to maintain in a large organization. You'll need to create a
public group if you ever want to define a sharing rule that encompasses more than one or two
groups or roles, or any individual.
Looking at the required permissions that we want to implement, there are just two objects that
need a public group for their sharing rules: Job Application and Review. The good news is that
we can cover these objects in a single group because the Review object is on the detail side of
a master-detail relationship, so it inherits the sharing settings we apply to the Job Application
object. Since both recruiters and hiring managers need read and update access to job applications
and reviews, let's go ahead and make a public group called Reviewers that encompasses recruiters
and hiring managers.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Public Groups.
2. Click New.
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Figure 63: New Public Group Page
The New Public Group page allows you to choose other public groups, individual roles,
individual roles including the roles' subordinates, or individual users.
3. In the Label text box, enter Reviewers. Click in the Group Name text box to
populate it automatically. Group Name refers to the unique name used by the API
and managed packages.
4. In the Search drop-down list, choose Roles.
5. In the Available Members list, select SW Dev Manager, Director Product
Management, and Director QA, then click Add.
6. Go back up to the Search drop-down list, and this time choose Role and
Subordinates.
7. In the Available Members list, select Recruiting Manager, and click Add.
8. Click Save.
Easy! Now we're ready to define our sharing rules.
Try It Out: Defining Sharing Rules
Since we just defined our Reviewers public group, let's use it to define our sharing rule for
review records.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Security Controls > Sharing Settings.
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Remember this page? We were last here when we defined our org-wide defaults.
2. In the Manage sharing settings for drop-down list, choose Job Application.
Choosing an object in this drop-down list allows us to focus in on the org-wide defaults and
sharing rules for a single object at a time rather than looking at all of them in a long page—a
really useful thing if you've got a large organization with several custom objects.
If you had chosen Review instead of Job Application, you wouldn’t have the option of creating
sharing rules, since you can’t create sharing rules for a detail record in a master-detail
relationship. However, since you chose Job Application, a Sharing Rules related list appears.
We'll use that to create the sharing rules that will apply to both the Job Application and the
Review objects.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
In the Job Application Sharing Rules area, click New.
In the Label text box, enter Review Records.
Click the Rule Name text box to populate it automatically.
For the rule type, make sure Based on record owner is selected.
In the Job Application: owned by members of drop-down list, select Public
Groups.
8. Next to that drop-down list, choose All Internal Users.
Just as we talked about already, you can define a sharing rule only for a single public group,
role, or role with all of its subordinates. By default, the platform includes a default public group
that encompasses every user in your organization.
9. In the Share with drop-down list, select Public Groups.
10. Next to that drop-down list choose Reviewers.
11. In the Access Level drop-down list, select Read/Write.
12. Click Save.
13. Click OK in the dialog box that says this operation could take significant time.
And that's it! We just created a rule that shares reviews written and owned by any member of
the organization with all recruiters and hiring managers. Since reviewers and hiring managers
all need the power to read and update reviews, we handled everyone with a single sharing rule
and a public group.
To finish up, create the following owner-based sharing rules:
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Table 36: Additional Sharing Rules
Object
Rule Label Owned by...
Should be shared with... Access
Level
Candidate
Edit
The role and subordinates The role and subordinates Read/Write
Candidates of the Recruiting
of the Recruiting
Manager
Manager
Employment Edit
The role and subordinates Reviewers
Website
Employment of the Recruiting
Websites
Manager
Position
Edit
Positions
Read/Write
The role and subordinates The role and subordinates Read/Write
of the Recruiting
of the Recruiting
Manager
Manager
The sharing rule for the Employment Website object is necessary to let hiring managers post
jobs, even though they will never update employment website records directly (the org-wide
defaults prevent that). Without the rule, hiring managers can see employment website records
but can’t create job postings. This is because the Job Posting object is a junction object (as you
may recall from the last chapter), and the Employment Website object is one of the Job Posting
object's two master-detail relationships. Sharing access to a junction object record is determined
by a user's sharing access to both associated master records (in this case, the associated position
and employment website records) and the Sharing Setting option on the relationship field.
For example, if the sharing setting on both parents is Read/Write, then the user must have
Read/Write access to both parents in order to have Read/Write access to the junction object.
In the sharing rule for the Employment Website object, we opted to use the existing Reviewers
public group. Doing this saved us a few clicks without granting access to any users who shouldn't
be looking at employment website records.
Beyond the Basics
Did you know you can use criteria-based sharing rules to open up record access to users?
Say you want to share records based on field values in records instead of record owners.
You can set up sharing rules based on field value criteria and apply filter logic to open up
specific record access to users.
To find out more, see “Criteria-Based Sharing Rules Overview” in the Salesforce online
help.
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Introducing Manual Sharing
Now let's talk about what we have left to do to finish defining our sharing model. After
implementing our sharing rules, the following required permissions remain:
•
•
•
Hiring managers need read and update access on position records on which they're the hiring
manager.
Hiring managers need read access on candidate records on which they're the hiring manager.
Interviewers need read access on the candidate and job application records for people they're
interviewing.
We didn't implement those required permissions with sharing rules because it was too hard
for us to come up with a consistent group of users who would need access to a particular set
of records. Really, this is where the job of the recruiter comes into play. A recruiter like Mario
Ruiz owns the position, candidate, and job application records for jobs that he's trying to fill,
and he also knows the hiring manager and interviewers who should be assigned to them.
Fortunately, we have one final type of record-access setting that allows Mario to share specific
records with other specific users: manual sharing. With manual sharing, Mario can grant read
or read/write access on records that he owns to any other user, role, or public group. Although
it isn't automated like organization-wide defaults, role hierarchies, or sharing rules, manual
sharing gives Mario the flexibility to share particular records with the ever-changing groups
of interviewers and hiring managers with whom he has to deal every day.
Try It Out: Defining a Manual Sharing Rule
Let's pretend that we're a recruiter like Mario and we need to share a particular candidate
record that we own with another role, group, or user:
1. On the detail page for the candidate, click Sharing.
Figure 64: Sharing Detail Page
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Securing and Sharing Data
Since we own this candidate record, we get to see details about who else can see the record
and why. If we didn't own this record, there would be a message about not having sufficient
privileges.
Tip: If we wanted to view the names of each user who has access to the record rather
than just the names of the roles and public groups, we could click Expand List in this
page. Although the operation can take some time depending on the number of users
in our organization, it's helpful to determine whether we need to define a manual
sharing rule for a particular user or if he or she already has access.
2. Click Add.
3. In the Search drop-down list, choose whether we want to manually share the record
with a user, public group, role, or role and subordinates.
4. In the Available list, select the user, public group, or role that should have access
to the record, and click Add.
5. In the Access Level drop-down list, specify whether the user, public group, or
role should have read or read/write access to the record.
6. Click Save.
Not too hard! When we roll out our Recruiting app to users, we'll have to train our recruiters
to take these steps for the position, candidate, and job application records that their hiring
managers and interviewers need to access. Once this training is complete, we will have
implemented all of the required sharing and security settings that we discussed at the beginning
of the chapter—well done!
Displaying Field Values and Page Layouts According
to Profiles
Before we give our security and sharing model a thorough testing, let's leverage the work we've
done to further enhance our app's usability and, at the same time, give our data integrity a little
boost.
Both usability and data integrity are adversely affected by irrelevant data. The less irrelevant
data we display to users, the better off everyone will be. Not only can irrelevant data be confusing
and impede a user's efficiency, but it also makes he or she more prone to entering incorrect
values. By taking away unnecessary choices, we reduce the risk of making avoidable mistakes.
Although we've already put plenty of thought into our app's usability, there's always room for
improvement. We won't go into a detailed usability analysis here, but let's make minor
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modifications to get a feel for some of the ways you can improve the usability and data integrity
of your apps in the future.
The modifications we're going to make involve position records. Currently, each position
record displays the same data, even though there are a few items on the position record that
are of no use to recruiters who create positions for departments other than Development. For
example, a recruiter who is creating a position for a Sr. Financial Analyst would have no use
for the Required Programming Languages section.
By the same token, there are some options on position records that have nothing to do with
technical positions, such as the Human Resources and Warehousing values in the Functional
Area picklist. Wouldn't it be nice if we could create two types of position records: one with
IT-related data for IT positions, and another for non-IT personnel?
Fortunately, we can with record types! Record types allow you to specify categories of records
that display different picklist values and page layouts. You can also associate record types with
profiles, so you can specify the picklist values and page layouts that different types of users can
see in record detail pages.
To address the issues discussed above, we'll create two position record types. The first position
record type will be for IT positions and will include the Required Programming Languages
section of the page layout. Additionally, it will exclude all of the options in the Functional
Area picklist except for Information Technology and Miscellaneous. The second position
record type will be for all non-IT positions and will include all of the Functional Area
picklist values except for Information Technology, but will omit the Required Programming
Languages section.
Try It Out: Creating Record Types
Let's start by creating the position record type for standard, non-IT positions.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Position.
In the Record Types related list, click New.
In the Record Type Label field, enter Standard Position. When you move
your cursor, the value of the Record Type Name field changes to
Standard_Position.
5. In the Description field, enter Record type for all non-IT
positions.
6. Select the Active checkbox.
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The bottom of the screen lists all your profiles. Here is where we can determine which profiles
have access to this record type. All of them are selected by default.
7. Click Next.
8. Leave the Apply one layout to all profiles radio button selected, and
select Position Layout in the adjacent drop-down list.
9. Click Save.
The Standard Position record type detail page appears. The page lists the picklist fields found
on the record type's associated page layout, the Position Layout.
10. Click Edit next to the Functional Area field.
Since this is the record type for all non-IT positions, let's remove Information Technology
from the Functional Area picklist.
11. In the Selected Values box, select Information Technology and use the arrows to
move it to the Available Values box.
12. Leave the Default drop-down list set to None, and click Save.
You're done creating your first record type, but it's not quite configured the way we want it.
While it omits the Information Technology value in the Functional Area picklist, it still
displays the Required Programming Languages section. We'll fix this later when we modify
the page layouts for our record types, but first we have to create one more record type.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Position.
In the Record Types related list, click New.
In the Record Type Label field, enter IT Position. When you move your
cursor, the value of the Record Type Name field changes to IT_Position.
5. In the Description field, enter Record type for all IT positions.
6. Select the Active checkbox.
Once again, the bottom of the screen lists your org's profiles, although this time they are
deselected by default.
7. Next to the Recruiter and Standard Employee profiles, select the Enable for
Profile checkbox.
8. Click Next.
We are again given the option to apply different layouts to different profiles. We still need to
create the page layout for this record type, though, so we'll have to apply the page layouts later.
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9. Leave the Apply one layout to all profiles radio button selected, and
select Position Layout in the adjacent drop-down list.
10. Click Save.
The IT Position record type detail page appears.
11. Click Edit next to the Functional Area field.
Since this is the record type for all IT positions, let's remove all the options from the
Functional Area picklist except for Information Technology and Miscellaneous.
12. Use the arrows to move the values until the Selected Values box only contains
Information Technology and Miscellaneous.
13. In the Default drop-down list, select Information Technology.
14. Click Save.
Both record types are now in place, and both are omitting the picklist values they're supposed
to omit. It's time to configure the page layouts for these record types.
We'll need a separate page layout for each record type. Lucky for us, we already have one page
layout for the Position object (Position Layout), so we just need to create one more.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
Click Position.
In the Page Layouts related list, click New.
In the Existing Page Layout drop-down list, select Position Layout.
Selecting the existing page layout creates a copy on which we can base our new page layout.
This saves us from having to create the layout from scratch.
5. In the Page Layout Name field, enter IT Position Layout, and click Save.
We're done creating our new IT position page layout. Now, let's edit both our new and original
page layouts so they display relevant data. Since we're on the IT Position page layout, we'll
start with that one.
This page layout already includes the Required Programming Languages section, so we don't
need to add that; however, we do want to add the Record Type field to the page layout so
users will instantly be able to tell what type of position record they're editing.
6. Select the Fields category in the palette, then drag the Record Type field to just
below the Last Modified By field.
7. Click Save.
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Now, let's edit the Position Layout page layout. This is the layout we'll use for our Standard
Position record type, so we'll want to remove the Required Languages section.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. Click Position.
3. In the Page Layouts related list, click Edit next to Position Layout.
4. Click
in the upper right corner of the Required Languages section.
We'll want to add the Record Type field to this page layout as well.
5. Select the Fields category in the palette, then drag the Record Type field to just
below the Last Modified By field.
6. Click Save.
We're on the verge of finishing! There's just one more easy task to complete: assigning our
Position page layouts to our new record types.
Assigning page layouts is easy because you can make all of the assignments for an object on a
single page.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. Click Position.
3. In either the Page Layouts related list or Record Types related list, click Page Layout
Assignment.
4. Click Edit Assignment.
A table shows the Position page layout assignments for all of the different profile and position
record type combinations. In the table, select the profile and position record type combinations
you want to change. Use SHIFT+click to select a range of cells or CTRL+click to select multiple
cells at once. Use the drop-down list above the table to indicate the page layout to which you
want to reassign your selections.
5. Click the IT Position column heading. This selects all of the values in the IT Position
record type column.
6. Select IT Position Layout in the Page Layout To Use drop-down list.
7. Click Save.
Your record types are good to go!
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Putting It All Together
Congratulations! We've just implemented all of our required security and sharing settings, first
by defining object-level access with profiles and permission sets, then by securing field-level
access with field-level security, and finally by defining record-level access using org-wide
defaults, role hierarchies, sharing rules, and manual sharing.
We learned about the difference between object-, field-, and record-level security, and how
profiles, permission sets, and roles work together to first determine the objects and tabs that
a user can possibly use, and then the specific records that the user can actually access and edit.
We also learned ways to set up other profile-based features like record types to improve both
our data integrity and our app's usability.
Let's now try it out for ourselves. To do so, we'll first have to define a number of users, and
then we can play around with creating records and seeing who has access to what.
Try It Out: Creating Users
To really put our Recruiting app through its paces, we'll first need to define users and assign
a couple of them to some of the recruiting records that we imported earlier.
Note: If you're implementing the Recruiting app in a Developer Edition organization,
you'll have only a few additional users to play with besides the System Administrator
user. You can still try out all of the use cases that we describe here, but you'll have to
update the user's profile, permission sets, and role for whatever use case you're working
on.
Table 37: Recruiting App Users
User
Title
Role
User
License
Profile
Phil Katz Recruiting Recruiting Salesforce Recruiter
Manager Manager
Permission Owner of
Set
•
•
•
184
DBA position
Mary Jane,
candidate for
DBA
Job Application
linking the DBA
position with
Mary Jane
Securing and Sharing Data
User
Title
Role
User
License
Profile
Mario
Ruiz
Senior
Recruiter Salesforce Recruiter
Recruiter
Permission Owner of
Set
•
•
•
Ben
Stuart
Software SW Dev
Development Manager
Manager
Melissa
Lee
Staff
SW
Salesforce Standard Interviewer
Software Engineer
Employee
Engineer
Documentation
Writer position
George Schnell,
candidate for
Documentation
Writer
Job Application
linking the
Documentation
Writer position
with George
Schnell
Salesforce Standard Hiring
Employee Manager
Let's walk through the creation of Phil Katz. Then you can finish the other users on your own:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Users.
2. Click New User.
3. Fill out the fields in the User edit page according to Recruiting App Users.
Because we're defining this user to test the security and sharing settings of our app, enter a real
email address that you have access to in the Email field and then a “fake” email address in the
Username field (for example, [email protected]). We'll use the “fake” value in the
Username field to log in to the app as Phil Katz, but we'll get Phil's automatically generated
password at the real email account that you specified. Without that password, we'd never be
able to log in! (For a real user, both Email and Username should generally have the same
value.)
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Figure 65: New User Edit Page
Tip: When creating a new user, you are also required to create the user's community
nickname. The community nickname is used to identify the user in the Ideas app,
which is a community of users who post, vote for, and comment on ideas. Consider
it an online suggestion box that includes discussions and popularity rankings for any
subject. The community nickname can contain up to 40 alphanumeric characters. For
more information, see the Salesforce online help.
4. Click Save.
Now that we've created the Phil Katz user, let's give him ownership of the DBA position and
its associated job application and candidate records.
5. Click the Positions tab.
6. From the View drop-down list, select All and click Go.
Tip: If you want to see more than just the Position Title field in this view, click
Edit next to the View drop-down list and add additional fields in the Select Fields to
Display section.
7. Click DBA.
8. Next to the Owner field, click Change.
9. Click the lookup icon
and choose Phil Katz.
10. Click Save.
11. In the Job Applications related list, click the name of the listed job application and
repeat Steps 8-10.
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12. Click the ID of the associated candidate on the Job Application detail page and
repeat Steps 8-10.
Note: When you imported records from Candidate, Job Application, and Position
CSV files, you were probably logged in as a user other than a Recruiting Manager or
subordinate. We created sharing rules that share the records that are owned by the
role and subordinates of the Recruiting Manager, so now you should transfer ownership
of the rest of these records to a Recruiting Manager or subordinate (Phil Katz or Mario
Ruiz).
Now create the other users in Recruiting App Users on page 184 and assign them ownership
of the records listed in the table.
For the users with permission sets, such as Ben Stuart, we need to take a few additional steps
to assign their permission sets.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Users.
2. Click Ben Stuart’s name.
3. In the user detail page, scroll to the Permission Set Assignments related list and click
Edit Assignments.
4. In the Available Permission Sets box, select Hiring Manager and use the arrows to
move it to the Enabled Permission Sets box.
5. Click Save.
Repeat these steps for Melissa Lee, giving her the Interviewer permission set.
Try It Out: Verifying that Everything Works
Now that we've got data assigned to actual users, let's go through our Recruiting app and see
how the security and sharing permissions that we defined in this chapter play out:
1. First log in as Mario Ruiz—verify that he can see and edit all positions, all candidates,
and all job applications. Verify that the New buttons are there for all objects in the
Recruiting app. Verify that he can create positions using either position record type.
2. Log in as Melissa Lee—verify that she can view positions but that there's no New
button. Verify that she can't see any candidates, job applications, reviews, or
employment websites.
3. Log in as Ben Stuart—verify that he can view positions and that there's a New
button. Verify that he can view but not edit employment websites. Verify that he
can't see any candidates. Verify that he can view job applications, but not edit their
lookup fields. Verify that he can view reviews and that there's a New button. (What
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do reviews look like? Can he see the names of the candidates and job applications
on them?)
4. Log in again as Mario Ruiz—have him manually share read/write access on the
Documentation Writer position with Ben. Have him manually share read access on
the candidate with Melissa and Ben. Have him manually share read/write access on
the job application with Melissa and Ben.
5. Log in again as Melissa Lee—verify that she can now see the candidate and job
application that Mario just shared with her but that she can't see the candidate's
social security number. Have her create a review for that candidate.
6. Log in again as Ben Stuart—verify that he can edit the Documentation Writer
position. Verify that he can read and update Melissa's review. Verify that he can
update the job application Status to Extend an Offer.
How did we do? If all of these use cases worked correctly, you've just successfully set up security
and sharing for our Recruiting app! If a use case didn’t work, check the role, profile, permission
set, and sharing rules of each user against the information in the Recruiting App Users table.
There is one critical security-related issue that we have yet to address: who will be responsible
for overseeing the operation of the Recruiting app and its related data when the app goes live?
Delegating Data Administration
As with nearly all Force.com apps, our Recruiting app doesn’t require tedious ongoing
administration or a watchful eye monitoring its daily operation. Once the app is deployed, it
just works! But from time to time, a decision or issue arises that requires human intervention,
and some basic manual administration is required, like:
•
•
•
•
A hiring manager is retiring and has forty open positions that need to be transferred to
another manager
A current Recruiting app user needs immediate access to private data owned by another
user who happens to be on vacation
Duplicate records have piled up in the Recruiting app and need to be removed
A new employee just got hired and needs access to the Recruiting app
To handle these situations, someone might need to override the security and sharing
configurations we just created. Who should have such powers within our app, and how can
these powers be granted?
Obviously, your company's primary Salesforce administrator can handle just about any issue
that users may encounter in Salesforce. Primary administrators are assigned to the System
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Administrator profile, which automatically grants several global administrative permissions,
including:
•
•
•
•
“View All Data”—View all data owned by other users in your organization
“Modify All Data”—Modify all data owned by other users in your organization, mass
update and mass delete records, and undelete records that other users deleted
“Customize Application”—Customize just about anything in Salesforce, from page layouts
to the data model
“Manage Users”—Add and remove users, reset passwords, grant permissions, and more
For smaller companies, it makes sense to have a single administrator be the “go-to” person for
all Salesforce issues. But for medium to large companies, assigning all Salesforce responsibilities
to one person is not practical, especially when you consider that a company can run its entire
business in the cloud using a different Force.com app to suit each of its business needs. This
could add up to dozens of apps and hundreds or thousands of users! Your primary Salesforce
administrator will likely go insane unless other folks can help with the administration. At the
same time, every administrative privilege you grant increases the risk of exposing your company's
sensitive data, so you need precise control over the amount of access you enable.
To preserve both your administrator's sanity and your company's security, the Force.com
platform provides two ways to quickly delegate restricted data administration access: object-level
permissions and delegated administration groups.
Overriding Sharing with Object Permissions
Believe it or not, we already delegated a few administrative responsibilities a few pages ago
when we created the Recruiter permission set. If you go back to that section, you'll see that we
selected the “View All” and “Modify All' object permissions for job postings and employment
websites. As you might expect, “View All” lets users view all of the records of that object, while
“Modify All” lets users read, edit, and delete all of the records of that object. So how does
selecting these permissions differ from just selecting the “Create,” “Read,” “Edit,” and “Delete”
permissions individually? And how do “View All” and “Modify All” help you delegate
administration?
The keyword here is “all.” When you grant “View All” or “Modify All” for an object on a profile
or permission set, you grant any associated users access to all records of that object regardless
of the sharing and security settings. In essence, the “View All” and “Modify All” permissions
ignore the sharing model, role hierarchy, and sharing rules that the “Create,” “Read,” “Edit,”
and “Delete” permissions respect. Furthermore, “Modify All” also gives a user the ability to
mass transfer, mass update, and mass delete records of that specific object, and approve such
records even if the user is not a designated approver. These tasks are typically reserved for
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administrators, but because “View All” and “Modify All” let us selectively override the system,
responsibilities that are usually reserved for the administrator can be delegated to other users
in a highly controlled fashion.
Note: We'll learn more about approving records in the next chapter. Other
administrative actions, such as mass updates, are covered in the Salesforce online help.
You may wonder if the “View All” and “Modify All” object permissions are similar to the “View
All Data” and “Modify All Data” global permissions. It’s true that they all ignore the sharing
model, hierarchy, and sharing rules, but bear in mind that object permissions only apply to
records of a specific object, whereas global permissions apply to records of every object in your
organization. As a rule of thumb, when global administration permissions are too permissive
for a particular user, use the object permissions instead to control data access on an
object-by-object basis.
Because we already applied object permissions when we created the Recruiter permission set,
there's no need to walk through the process again here; however, you can probably imagine
other ways in which the “View All” and “Modify All” permissions might be useful for this app.
For example, as we discussed before, certain laws may require your company to keep all position,
candidate, and job application records for a specific amount of time. This law is why we opted
not to give recruiters the ability to delete those records. When that legal time limit expires,
though, your company may want to hire a contractor who specializes in data cleansing to
remove old recruiting data from the system. By creating a permission set with the “Modify
All” object permission on positions, candidates, and job applications, you can quickly give the
contractor the permissions needed to get the job done without exposing the rest of your
company's data.
Delegated Administration Groups
We just saw how the “View All” and “Modify All” object permissions can be used to take a
considerable load off of the primary administrator's shoulders; however, there are still a few
other administrative responsibilities that you might want to delegate but can't with object
permissions. For example, you might not want to burden the primary administrator with the
tasks of manually adding every new employee to Salesforce or resetting a user's password every
time it's forgotten. Also, as time passes, your company may need a new field or two added to
review records, or a new record type for positions. Sometimes, it's more efficient to delegate
basic administrative tasks like these to members of a group so the primary administrator can
focus on other things.
A delegated administration group is a group of non-administrator users with limited administrative
privileges. These privileges can include:
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•
•
•
•
Creating and editing users and resetting passwords for users in specified roles and all
subordinate roles
Assigning users to specified profiles
Logging in as a user who has granted login access to an administrator
Managing custom objects created by the primary administrator
Let's define a delegated administration group in our Recruiting app that enables its members
to manage our Recruiting app's users and make adjustments to the app's custom objects without
having access to all of the other data in Salesforce.
Try It Out: Defining the Recruiting Manager Administration Group
We'll start by creating the delegated administration group:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Click Your Name > Setup > Security Controls > Delegated Administration.
Click New.
In the Delegated Group Name text box, enter Recruiting App Admins.
In the Delegated Group detail page, click Edit.
Select the Enable Group for Login Access checkbox.
The Enable Group for Login Access option allows the delegated administrators in
this group to log in as a user who has explicitly granted login access to administrators for a
specific period of time. This can be useful for troubleshooting problems that might arise for
the user.
6. Click Save.
In the Delegated Group detail page, we can use the Delegated Administrators related list to
specify the users to include in this group.
7. Click Add in the Delegated Administrators related list.
8. In the first empty text box, enter Phil Katz, the Recruiting Manager at Universal
Containers.
Note: Members of delegated administrator groups must have the “View
Setup and Configuration” permission.
Each delegated administration group can have up to five members, but we're only going to
include our Recruiting Manager in this group, due to the focus of our app.
9. Click Save.
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We're back on the Delegated Group detail page. The User Administration related list lets us
specify the kinds of users this group can manage.
10. Click Add in the User Administration related list.
Instead of selecting individual users to manage, we'll select them by their roles. For each role
we select, its subordinate roles are automatically selected too. (Flip back to the Universal
Containers role hierarchy on page 167 if you can't remember which roles are subordinate.) We
don't want to let members of this group administer the Salesforce accounts of executives at
Universal Containers, but the group should be able to administer the Recruiting app for
recruiters, directors, managers, and their subordinates.
11. In the Roles and Subordinates boxes, enter:
•
•
•
•
Recruiter
Director Product Management
Director QA
SW Dev Manager
12. Click Save.
The Assignable Profiles related list lets us specify the profiles this group can assign to the users
they manage. Note that delegated administrators can’t modify these profiles; they can only
assign users to them.
13. Click Add in the Assignable Profiles related list.
14. In the Assignable Profiles boxes, enter Recruiter and Standard Employee.
15. Click Save.
The Custom Object Administration related list lets us specify the custom objects that delegated
administrators of this group can administer. The delegated administrators can manage just
about every aspect of the custom object, such as modifying page layouts, adding fields, and
even deleting the object; however, they can’t set permissions for the custom object, manage
workflow and sharing for the object, and modify relationships to other objects.
16. Click Add in the Custom Object Administration related list.
Let's give the members of this delegated administrator group (in this case, Phil) the ability to
modify the Position object. That way, if position records need another field or hiring managers
request another record type in the future, Phil can handle it. (Of course, we'll also want to
warn Phil that he should be careful not to delete the Position object altogether—custom object
administrative rights give him that power as well!)
17. In the first empty text box, enter Position.
18. Click Save.
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That wraps up the configuration of our delegated administration group! Our Recruiting app
now has a delegated administrator who can provide our primary Salesforce administrator with
some relief.
Try It Out: Verifying that Delegated Administration Works
To see what a delegated Recruiting App administrator can and can't do, log in as Phil Katz.
1. Click Phil Katz > Setup > Manage Users > Users.
Notice that the Edit link appears next to any user assigned to a role or subordinate role for
which our delegate administrator group can manage users. The Edit link does not appear to
users assigned to other roles, such as Cynthia Capobianco, the CEO.
You'll also see the New User, Reset Password(s), and Add Multiple Users buttons are now
available to Phil. Let's see what happens if Phil adds a new user.
2. Click New User.
The User Edit page appears. At first glance, this page looks just like the User Edit page we
saw when we added users while logged in as the system administrator. If you look closely at
the options available in the Role and Profile drop-down lists, though, you'll notice a
difference—the options are limited to what we specified when we created our delegated
administration group. For example, Phil can't create a user with an executive role, nor can he
assign a user to any profile other than Recruiter or Standard Employee.
We don't need to create any more users right now, so just click Cancel.
The last thing to verify is Phil's ability to modify the Position object.
3. Click Phil Katz > Setup > Create > Objects.
We see that the Edit and Del links are available next to the Position object. This means that
Phil now has the ability to both edit and delete the Position object. Our testing is complete!
Beyond the Basics
Did you know that you can set up single sign-on between your organization and other
authorized Web resources?
Say you want your employees to only have to remember one password when they sign on
to the recruiting app, as well as your company website. You can work with an identity
provider, exchange information with them, then configure Salesforce for single sign-on.
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To find out more, see “About Single Sign-on” in the Salesforce online help.
Summing Up
This chapter has covered quite a bit of ground! We discussed the differences between object-,
field-, and record-level security. We learned how profiles and roles work together to first
determine the objects and tabs that a user can possibly use, and then the specific records that
the user can actually access and edit. We also discovered ways to set up other profile-based
features like record types to improve both our data integrity and our app's usability. Finally,
we tested everything, and delegated the administration of our Recruiting app in an efficient
and secure way. Now that we've got security squared away, let's go incorporate some business
logic into our app with workflow rules.
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Chapter 8
Collaborating with Chatter
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
•
•
Introducing Chatter
Tracking Fields on Your
Objects
Following Records
Starting a Group or Two
Summing Up
In the last chapter, we established a security and sharing
model to determine who gets to see which data in the
expanded Recruiting app. We've seen how easy it is to
restrict access to fields and records using the Force.com
platform. Now that our application is secure, let's make it
easier for recruiters, interviewers, and hiring managers to
collaborate on the hiring process. With Chatter, we provide
them a fun, fast, and effective way to get and share
information.
In this chapter, we'll introduce some of Chatter's basic
features—like feed tracking and following records—and
show how Chatter makes collaboration a piece of cake.
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Introducing Chatter
Chatter makes your app collaborative like never before. Once you enable Chatter for your
organization, you can turn on feeds for most standard objects and all custom objects, allowing
you to see real-time updates whenever anything changes. Users can post to feeds, comment
on other posts, share files and links, work together on documents, follow people and records,
and more. With feed tracking, users can even follow specific fields of a record. When a value
for a specific field changes, Chatter posts an update to the feed, instantly alerting everyone
following that record. With @mentions, users can mention a person's name to make sure that
person sees their update. And with hashtags, users can add topics to posts and comments so
other people can find their updates more easily.
Chatter users have their own personal profile feeds, where they can post updates and see updates
from the people and records they're following. Users can also form public or private groups for
more focused collaboration. Each group has its own feed, where the group members can share
information, ask questions, and upload files for collaboration. Chatter makes it easy to connect
with the people and information you care about most.
For more information, see the “Chatter Overview” topic in the Salesforce online help.
Tracking Fields on Your Objects
Chatter can track field changes for most of your records and objects, including your custom
objects, and automatically push that information to the record's feed. Tracking fields keeps
you up to date with the latest changes on objects and records that interest you. Simply enable
feed tracking on the object, then choose the fields to track.
Try It Out: Enabling Feed Tracking on Positions and Job Applications
The recruiters at Universal Containers want to know when a position's status or location
changes. Hiring managers want to know when a job application is submitted. Let's track these
fields for them in Chatter.
To enable Chatter for your organization:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter > Settings.
2. Click Edit.
3. Select the Enable checkbox.
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4. Click Save.
Figure 66: Chatter Settings Dialog
Now, let's track changes to the Status and Location fields for positions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter > Feed Tracking.
Select the Position object.
Select the Enable Feed Tracking checkbox.
Select the Status and Location fields. If either of these fields changes for a
position, that position's feed is updated, alerting the recruiters following it.
5. Click Save.
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Figure 67: Chatter Feed Tracking for Positions
Similarly, the hiring manager wants to be notified when a Job Application's Status changes.
Let's track that field:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter > Feed Tracking.
Select the Job Application object.
Select the Enable Feed Tracking checkbox.
Select the Status field. When the value changes—like from New to Review
Resume—the Job Application feed is updated, and hiring managers following that
application are notified.
5. Click Save.
Look at What We've Done
We chose to track updates to the Status and Location fields on the Position object. If
people want to see field updates for a position, they can view the feed on that record's detail
page. For example, when the recruiter helping to staff the Technical Publications department
looks at the Documentation Writer record, she'll see that the location has changed to San
Francisco, CA.
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Figure 68: Chatter Location Field Update in a Position Feed
Feed tracking is great, but who wants to keep going to the record detail page to see updates?
Next, we'll show how easy it is to follow records, which brings the updates to you.
Following Records
Chatter lets you follow the users, groups, documents, and records that you're interested in.
Updates on the people and information you care about are posted to your personal feed. You
can also enable email alerts for actions, like someone commenting on your post, as well as get
daily or weekly digests with posts and comments from your personal feed and groups.
Try It Out: Following a Job Application Record
For our Recruiting app, we know that hiring managers want to keep track of job applications
for their open positions. All they have to do is follow those records.
To try it yourself, just open the detail page for a job application and click Follow. It's that
simple!
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Figure 69: Following a Job Application Record
All tracked field updates, as well as other users' posts and comments on the records you're
following, are posted to your personal feed. Use Chatter to connect the right people to the
right records, and start collaborating in real time on the hiring process.
Beyond the Basics
Did you know you can use Chatter to collaborate outside of your browser?
Say you want to keep an eye on Chatter updates, but you can't log in through a browser.
For example, you're at the airport with your cell phone but don’t have a laptop, or perhaps
you're creating a slide deck on your laptop and there's not enough screen room for your
browser. In these cases, it helps to have a Chatter client app installed.
Chatter client apps let you access Chatter data through mediums other than a Web
browser. For example, the Chatter mobile app lets you access Chatter from your iPhone,
iPad, iTouch, Blackberry, or Android device. Download it for free from the Apple App
Store, BlackBerry App World, or Android Market.
Professionals who use Chatter extensively should also download Chatter Desktop—a
Chatter client app that integrates your computer with Chatter. Chatter Desktop makes
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collaboration easier than ever. Want alerts when people you're following post something
new? Just install Chatter Desktop and watch it display pop-up notifications for each
update. Need to share a file with your coworkers? Just drag it to the Chatter Desktop
interface.
To install Chatter Desktop, simply log in to Salesforce and click Your Name > Setup
> Desktop Integration > Chatter Desktop.
Starting a Group or Two
Now that you’ve enabled Chatter, encourage people to collaborate in by creating public and
private focus groups around common interests. For example, you can create groups for the
sales, marketing, product development teams, and so on.
Groups are a great way for the group members to share information and files, and ask questions.
Instead of sending out a mass email, group members can post questions on the group’s page.
This way, when a question is answered, it’s answered for all group members. In this way, groups
give instant access to subject matter experts.
Try It Out: Creating a Group
Chatter is all about sharing information and collaboration. Now that you’ve turned on feeds,
one of the best ways to get people to collaborate is to create groups around common interests.
For example, you could start a private group for the recruiters, so they can collaborate on
recruiting efforts and share information within the group in a secure way. Let’s create a private
collaboration group for the recruiters.
1. In Chatter, click Groups > New Group.
2. Use a descriptive name for your group, for example “Recruiting Team”. You also
have the option to add a short description of the group.
3. Select Private if you want to create a group for just the recruiters. If you don’t make
the group private, any Chatter user in your organization can join the group. Similarly,
because customers are users from outside your company, you probably don’t want to
allow customers to join this particular group. However, if it makes sense to allow
customers at a later point, you can always do so by changing the group’s settings.
4. Click Save.
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Figure 70: Creating a Private Collaboration Group
You’ve created the group page. Now you can simply add or invite members to the group, in
this case recruiters, and maybe upload a snazzy picture for the group.
Summing Up
We've added Chatter right into our Recruiting app, but we've barely scratched the surface.
With Chatter, you give your users the power to stay on top of everything that's happening in
your company, and you enable them to easily collaborate and share information. And because
it's part of the Force.com platform, you can incorporate real-time feed updates, user profiles,
groups, and more into all of your custom applications.
If you dig a little further, you can learn how to programatically add posts and comments, add
feeds to custom pages, and even expose Chatter actions for integration with external systems.
These advanced subjects are beyond the scope of this book, but you can find out more on the
Chatter Developer Resource page at developer.force.com/chatter.
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Chapter 9
Using Custom Workflow and Approval
Processes
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Introducing Workflow
Workflow in Our
Recruiting App
Creating Workflow Rules
That Assign Tasks
Creating a Workflow Rule
That Updates Fields
Creating a Workflow Rule
That Sends Email Alerts
Introducing Approvals
Summing Up
Robust application? Check. Secure data access? Check. Fast,
fun, and collaborative? Check! Our hiring team at Universal
Containers has never been more productive. The last chapter
demonstrated how easy it is to collaborate in real time with
Chatter. Now it's time to find ways to make our app more
powerful.
Up to this point, we've created little more than a glorified
database—it holds the information we need and lets us
search for records based on various criteria, but it doesn't
help our recruiters and hiring managers do their jobs more
effectively. There's no automation that lets a recruiter know
when the status of a candidate has changed or when a new
position has been entered into the system. Chatter will let
them know about the records they're following, but we want
to build automation into our app to keep the processes
moving forward.
Once again, the Force.com platform helps us out with more
built-in functionality. In this case, the tools that we'll use to
solve our process automation problem are called workflow
and approval processes. We'll take a look at the various ways
that we can use workflow first, and then we'll tackle an
approval process at the end of the chapter.
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Introducing Workflow
Workflow is a Force.com platform business-logic engine that allows us to automatically send
email alerts, assign tasks, or update field values based on rules that we define. Any time that
changes to a record meet the conditions in a workflow rule, the platform automatically performs
any actions associated with the rule.
For example, let's say Ben Stuart, a software development manager, has decided to extend an
offer to Ethan Tran, a bright young candidate who's interested in the Software Engineer
position. At Universal Containers, it's a recruiter's job to extend offers, but in this case, Mario
Ruiz, the recruiter responsible for the Software Engineer position, doesn't know whether or
not Ben has made a decision unless Ben emails or calls him directly.
Instead of relying on Ben to remember to tell Mario, we can set up a simple workflow that
triggers the assignment of the appropriate task whenever the status on a job application record
is set to Extend an Offer or Rejected. As soon as Ben changes the status of the candidate's job
application, workflow creates the appropriate task and sends Mario a notification email, as
shown in the following diagram.
Figure 71: Automatically Assigning a Task to a Recruiter Using Workflow
Pretty powerful, isn't it? In general, if we can come up with a standard rule that specifies when
a particular event should happen, we can make it happen automatically with workflow. Workflow
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is one of the secret ingredients that's going to transform our Recruiting app from a glorified
database into a fully functional tool that everyone finds useful.
Now that we've got a general idea of what workflow's all about, let's take a closer look at the
individual components that make up workflow: rules, tasks, field updates, and alerts.
Introducing Workflow Rules
In general, a workflow rule is the main container for a set of workflow instructions. It includes
the criteria for when the workflow should be activated, as well as the particular tasks, alerts,
and field updates that should take place when the criteria for that rule are met.
Every workflow rule must be based on a single object you choose when you define the rule.
This object influences the fields that are available for setting workflow activation criteria.
For example, if we define a workflow rule for the Job Application object, we'll be able to set
workflow activation criteria based on the values of fields like Job Application Number
and Status. We can also set workflow activation criteria based on standard fields, like Record
Owner or Created Date, as well as fields based on the currently active user when a rule is
evaluated, such as their Role or Time Zone.
We'll look at all the ways that we can set workflow activation criteria when we get to building
our own workflow rules a little later. For now, just understand that the platform makes it very
easy to create detailed workflow rules that target specific situations.
Introducing Workflow Actions: Tasks, Field Updates, and Alerts
When a workflow rule is triggered, the following types of actions can occur:
Workflow Tasks
A workflow task assigns a task to a user according to a particular template.
Just as in Microsoft Outlook, tasks include information about something that needs to be
done by a certain time, such as making a telephone call or returning a library book. Assigned
tasks appear in a user's My Tasks related list on their Home tab and generate reminder
messages that pop up when a user logs in.
When we define a workflow task, we provide default values for the Assignee, Subject,
Status, Priority, and Due Date fields for tasks that are generated by an associated
workflow rule. We can also make sure that a notification email is sent to the assignee when
a task is automatically generated.
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Workflow Field Updates
A workflow field update changes the value of a particular field on the record that initially
triggered the workflow rule.
Workflow Email Alerts
A workflow email alert sends an email according to a specified email template. Unlike
workflow tasks, which can only be assigned to users of the app, workflow alerts can be sent
to any user or contact, as long as they have a valid email address.
Note: A fourth type of action, a workflow outbound message, sends data to an external
Web service, such as another application in the cloud. Outbound messages are used
primarily with application programming interfaces, so we won't be using them in this
chapter.
A workflow rule can include any combination of these actions when the rule is triggered. For
example, one rule might send out an alert and update two fields on a particular record. The
action that one workflow rule takes can also trigger the execution of another workflow rule.
Workflow in Our Recruiting App
Now that we've oriented ourselves to the different components involved with workflow, let's
take a look at our Recruiting app and see how we can use workflow to help us build out the
requirements that we talked about in About the Sample Recruiting App on page 19. Then
we'll spend time implementing the rules that we come up with here.
We've already talked about one instance where workflow will give us a big advantage:
automatically assigning a task to a recruiter when the status of a job application record changes
to Reject or Extend an Offer. This will be a great start, but what else can we do?
If we look back at our last chapter on security and sharing, recall that we wanted to grant both
recruiters and hiring managers permission to create new positions, but that ultimately we always
wanted a recruiter to own those records because filling them is the recruiter's job responsibility.
We hinted in the security and sharing chapter that we could accomplish this with workflow,
and indeed we can! We'll simply need to use a workflow field update to change the record
owner of a position record to a recruiter if it was originally created by a hiring manager. To
prevent a single recruiter from getting overloaded with all these additional positions, we'll also
use another platform feature, queues, to divvy up the orphaned position records fairly. We'll
place the record in a queue of other position records without owners, and then let individual
recruiters claim the positions they want.
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For a third way of using workflow, let's think about how position availability is advertised
throughout Universal Containers. Like many organizations, Universal Containers prefers to
fill positions with employee referrals, but employees often aren't aware of which positions are
currently open. We can use a workflow alert to automatically send email to every employee
whenever a new position opens up. This way employees learn about positions as they become
available and can immediately think of friends and family members who might be interested.
Sound good? While there are probably many more ways to use workflow to build a killer
on-demand Recruiting app in the cloud, let's stick with these three for now since they'll give
us a good example of each of the three types of workflow actions that are available. To
summarize what we'll be building:
1. A workflow task that assigns a task to a recruiter when the status of a job application
changes to Rejected or Extend an Offer
2. A workflow field update that reassigns ownership of a position that's created by a
hiring manager to a queue of position records without owners, so that individual
recruiters can claim ownership of the positions they want
3. A workflow alert that sends an email to every employee when a new position is
created
Now let's get started!
Creating Workflow Rules That Assign Tasks
For our first use of workflow, we want to create two rules: one that assigns a “Send Rejection
Letter” task to the relevant recruiter whenever the Status field of a job application record is
set to Rejected, and one that assigns an “Extend Offer” task to the relevant recruiter whenever
the Status field of a job application record is set to “Extend an Offer.” Let's start with the
“Send Rejection Letter” workflow rule.
Try It Out: Creating the “Send Rejection Letter” Workflow Rule
To make this rule entirely functional, we'll need to define both a workflow rule, which specifies
the criteria for when the rule should be executed, and a workflow task that includes the “Send
Rejection Letter” task template. Although we can define workflow components in any order,
let's start with defining the workflow rule itself. It'll save us a couple of clicks a little later when
we define the rule's associated workflow task.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Workflow & Approvals > Workflow Rules.
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2. If you see an introductory splash page, simply click Continue.
3. Click New Rule.
The first thing we need to do is select the object that will be associated with our workflow rule.
As we talked about earlier, every workflow rule must be associated with a single object to
determine the fields that we can use to set criteria. Since we need to trigger this workflow rule
when the Status field of a job application record is set to “Reject,” we need to select Job
Application here:
4. In the Select object drop-down list, choose Job Application, and click Next.
Now it's time to set our workflow rule details:
5. In the Rule Name text box, enter Send Rejection Letter.
6. In the Description text box, enter Send a rejection letter when a
hiring manager changes the status of a job application to
Rejected.
Now use the Evaluation Criteria area to specify when this rule should be evaluated. The options
are as follows:
Evaluate the rule
when a record is:
Description
created
Evaluate the rule criteria each time a record is created. If the
rule criteria is met, run the rule. Ignore all updates to existing
records.
With this option, the rule never runs more than once per record.
created, and every
time it’s edited
Evaluate the rule criteria each time a record is created or
updated. If the rule criteria is met, run the rule.
With this option, the rule repeatedly runs every time a record
is edited, as long as the record meets the rule criteria.
Note: You can't add time-dependent actions to the
rule if you select this option.
created, and any time (Default) Evaluate the rule criteria each time a record is created
it’s edited to
or updated.
subsequently meet
• For a new record, run the rule if the rule criteria is met.
criteria
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Evaluate the rule
when a record is:
Description
•
For an updated record, run the rule only if the record is
changed from not meeting the rule criteria to meeting the
rule criteria.
With this option, the rule can run multiple times per record,
but it won’t run when the record edits are unrelated to the rule
criteria.
For example, suppose that for an opportunity record to meet
the rule criteria, the opportunity probability must be greater
than 50%. If you create an opportunity with a probability of
75%, the workflow rule runs. If you edit that opportunity by
changing the probability to 25%, the edit doesn’t cause the rule
to run. If you then edit that opportunity by changing the
probability from 25% to 75%, the edit causes the rule to run.
With this last edit, the rule runs because the record is changed
from not meeting the rule criteria to meeting the rule criteria.
Since we don't want to assign duplicate tasks to a recruiter every time the record is saved, we'll
keep the default option.
7. Under “Evaluate the rule when a record is:,” select created, and any time
it’s edited to subsequently meet criteria.
To finish up defining the rule, we need to specify the conditions that will trigger execution of
the rule's associated actions. We can do this by defining a set of criteria that trigger the workflow
rule when met, or we can create a formula that triggers the workflow rule if it evaluates to
True. While creating a formula provides more flexibility, setting the criteria is easier. For this
rule, we can achieve our objective by setting the criteria, so let's do that.
Every workflow rule requires at least one row of filter criteria, but we can set as many filters
as we want using additional rows.
8. In the first row of Rule Criteria filters:
•
•
•
Set the Field column to Status.
Set the Operator column to equals.
Set the Value column to Rejected.
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9. Click Save & Next.
Figure 72: Creating a New Workflow Rule
At this point, we've just defined our “Send Rejection Letter” workflow rule. If we canceled out
of the workflow wizard and clicked Your Name > Setup > Create > Workflow & Approvals
> Workflow Rules, we'd see it in the list view. However, because workflow rules aren't all that
useful without an associated action, the workflow wizard takes us directly to a screen where
we can define the “Send Rejection Letter” workflow task. Let's work through that now.
Try It Out: Creating the “Send Rejection Letter” Workflow Task
The Specify Workflow Actions step of the workflow wizard allows you to specify the workflow
tasks, field updates, and alerts that should occur when the condition of our workflow rule is
met.
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Figure 73: Specifying Workflow Actions
You can either define actions that occur immediately after the condition is met, or you can
define actions that occur before or after a certain amount of time has elapsed (for example,
seven days before the value of the Hire By field, or three days after the workflow rule is
triggered). We'll talk more about these time-dependent workflow actions a little later. For now,
we just need to define a single workflow task that executes as soon as our rule criteria is met:
1. In the Immediate Workflow Actions area, click Add Workflow Action and select
New Task.
Did you notice that the Object field is already filled in with Job Application? Here's where
we saved ourselves a couple of clicks—if we'd started building our workflow task before our
workflow rule, we would have needed to specify the object with which the task would be
associated. That's because, like workflow rules, workflow actions need to be associated with a
single object.
In this case, we got to skip a page because the object with which a workflow action is associated
must match the object of a workflow rule that uses it. For example, if we had a workflow rule
associated with the Candidate object, any task, field update, or alert that's triggered by our
candidate workflow rule must also be associated with the Candidate object. Because we started
building our “Send Rejection Letter” workflow task in the wizard right after defining our “Send
Rejection Letter” workflow rule, the platform knew that the object associated with our task
had to match the rule that we'd already built. That's why our new workflow task is already
associated with the Job Application object.
The rest of the fields on this edit page make up the template for any “Send Rejection Letter”
tasks that our workflow rule will generate.
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2. Next to the Assigned To field, click the lookup icon (
).
Here we can choose the assignee of the task either by specifying a particular user, role, or the
owner of the job application record that triggered the workflow rule in the first place. Since
recruiters always own the job application records of the positions that they're responsible for,
and recruiters are responsible for sending rejection letters at Universal Containers, let's select
the record owner:
3. In the Type drop-down list, choose Owner.
4. Click Job Application Owner.
Warning: If you thought that choosing the Recruiter role for the Assigned To field
might have been another valid option, be careful. If the assignee of a workflow task is
a role that contains more than one assigned user, the person who triggered the rule
will become the task assignee instead. For this reason, you never want to assign
workflow tasks to roles unless you're sure that only one user will ever be assigned to
them at a time.
The rest of the workflow task fields are easy:
5. In the Subject text box, enter Send Rejection Letter.
6. In the Due Date drop-down lists, choose Rule Trigger Date plus 2 days.
This Due Date setting will give our recruiters two days to notify the candidate after they're
first assigned the task.
7. In the Status drop-down list, choose Not Started.
8. In the Priority drop-down list, choose High.
The Notify Assignee checkbox allows us to send an email to the assignee as soon as the
task is created by the workflow rule. This ensures that the assignee knows about the task without
having to log in to the application on a regular basis, so let's select it.
9. Select the Notify Assignee checkbox.
10. Click Save.
11. Click Done.
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Figure 74: Creating the “Send Rejection Letter” Workflow Task
At this point, we finally get to see the detail page for the workflow rule that we just created.
It includes the workflow rule criteria and a list of the associated actions. The only thing that
remains to be done is to activate the rule.
12. Click Activate.
All done! We've just created our first workflow rule and task. You'll find that the remaining
workflow actions all operate in a very similar way, so we'll speed through the rest of them,
focusing just on the fields and options that are unique to each. First, let's finish up our second
workflow rule that assigns a task by quickly creating the “Extend an Offer” workflow rule.
Try It Out: Creating the “Extend an Offer” Workflow Rule and Task
To wrap up our first use case, we need to create another workflow rule for when the status of
a job application is set to Extend an Offer. This rule and task are almost identical to the “Send
Rejection Letter” workflow rule and task, so we'll just list the values that you'll need in the
following two tables.
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Table 38: Values for Creating the “Extend an Offer” Workflow Rule
Field
Value
Object
Job Application
Name
Extend an Offer
Description
Make an offer when a hiring manager changes the status of a job
application to Extend Offer.
Evaluate the rule when a created, and any time it’s edited to subsequently meet criteria
record is:
Filter Criteria
Status equals Extend an Offer
Table 39: Values for Creating the “Extend an Offer” Workflow Task
Field
Value
Assigned To
Job Application Owner
Subject
Extend an Offer
Due Date
Rule Trigger Date plus 1 days
Status
Not Started
Priority
High
Notify Assignee?
Yes
All done! Make sure the “Extend an Offer” rule is also activated, and let's go try out one of
our new workflow rules.
Look at What We've Done
Let's try out our new “Send Rejection Letter” workflow rule and see what happens:
1. Click the Job Applications tab, and select a job application record.
2. Click Edit, and change Status to Rejected.
3. Click Save.
The Send Rejection Letter task automatically appears in the Open Activities related list on
the Job Application detail page, as shown in the following screenshot.
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Figure 75: Open Activities Related List on Job Application Detail Page
Pretty neat, don't you think? Not only that, but if you check in the recruiter's email inbox, he
should have received an automatically-generated email notification that looks like the following:
Caroline Roth has assigned a new task to you: Send Rejection Letter
Job Application: JA-00007 Due Date: 2/11/2007
For more details on this task, click on the link below:
https://na1.salesforce.com/00Tx04123s5k1
The link in the email message takes the recruiter directly to the task detail page, where he or
she can locate the contact information of the candidate and update the task status after the
task is completed. The task also shows up in the My Tasks area on the recruiter's Home tab,
and a reminder message will pop up in another day if the recruiter hasn't yet changed the task's
status to “Completed.” Suddenly, our Recruiting app has become a lot more interactive and
powerful!
Creating a Workflow Rule That Updates Fields
For our next use case, we want to create a workflow rule that ensures the owner of a new
position record is always a recruiter. To do this, we're going to define a workflow field update
that reassigns ownership of a position that's created by a hiring manager to a queue of position
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records without owners. Once a position record is in that queue, individual recruiters can claim
ownership of the positions they want. But before we jump ahead of ourselves, let's stop a
moment. Just what, exactly, is a queue?
Introducing Queues
Much like a collection of items in a lost and found drawer, a queue is a collection of records
that don't have an owner. Users who have access to the queue can examine every record that's
in it and claim ownership of the ones they want.
Queues are traditionally used in sales and support organizations to distribute new leads and
support cases to the employees who have the most availability. Because the platform natively
supports queues for Leads, Cases, and any custom object, we can create a queue for the
Recruiting app's Position object.
Try It Out: Creating a Queue for Positions
To define a queue, we simply need to know the types of records that can be placed in the queue
(in our case, Positions), and the users who are allowed to pull records out of it (in our case,
Recruiters). Once we know those two things, defining the queue itself is just a matter of a few
simple clicks:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Queues.
Click New.
In the Label text box, enter Unclaimed Positions Queue.
In the Queue Email text box, enter an email address for an individual or a
distribution list, such as [email protected].
When you click in the Queue Email text box, the Queue Name text box is
automatically populated.
5. Select Send Email to Members.
Notice here that if [email protected] was a real email distribution
list that went to all recruiters, we wouldn't need to select Send Email to Members. We
do it here only because [email protected] is a fake email address
and can't be used for testing later. The following table outlines the options you have for notifying
queue members when new records are added to the queue:
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Table 40: Options to Specify How Queue Members are Notified of New Records
Queue Email Not Specified Queue Email Specified
Send Email to Members
Checkbox Not Selected
Because a queue email is not Only the specified queue
specified, individual queue
email address is notified.
members are always notified,
regardless of the Send Email
to Members checkbox.
Send Email to Members
Checkbox Selected
Because a queue email is not
specified, individual queue
members are always notified,
regardless of the Send Email
to Members checkbox.
The specified queue email
address and individual queue
members are notified.
Note that if an individual
queue member also receives
emails sent to the specified
queue email address, they'll
receive duplicate notifications.
6. In the Supported Objects section, move Position into the Selected Objects list.
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Figure 76: Defining a Queue
As you can see, a single queue can handle multiple objects—the platform allows you to do this
so that you don't have to define multiple queues for the same group of users.
7. In the Queue Members section, select Roles and Subordinates from the
Search drop-down list.
8. Move Role and Subordinates: Recruiting Manager to the Selected
Members list.
9. Click Save.
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Perfect! We've just defined a new queue that can act as a temporary owner for all of the position
records that are created by hiring managers. Whenever a position is placed in the queue, all
recruiters are notified, and the appropriate person can claim ownership. All we need to do now
is define the workflow rule that places those position records into the queue.
Try It Out: Creating a Workflow Rule That Updates Fields
Now that we've got our queue ready to go, we can go ahead and define our workflow rule:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Workflow & Approvals > Workflow Rules.
Click New Rule.
In the Select object drop-down list, choose Position, and click Next.
In the Rule Name text box, enter Assign Position to Recruiter.
In the Description text box, enter Reassign position records to a
recruiter if they were created by another type of employee.
While we know that recruiters should almost always own position records, we don't want to
impede the organization if there's a special case in which a non-recruiter should own the record
instead. Let's choose to evaluate this rule only when a record is created so that if an exception
needs to be made, the workflow won't supersede any changes that were made by a recruiter.
6. In the Evaluate the rule when a record is: field, select created.
Finally, we need to make sure that this rule is initiated whenever a position record is created
by someone who isn't a recruiter or a recruiting manager. We can specify this filter criteria in
a single row by using a comma in the Value column as follows:
7. In the Rule Criteria section:
•
•
•
Set the Field column to Current User: Role.
Set the Operator column to not equal to.
Set the Value column to Recruiter, Recruiting Manager.
8. Click Save & Next.
Now let's create the field update action for this workflow rule:
9. In the Immediate Workflow Actions area, click Add Workflow Action, and select
New Field Update.
10. In the Name text box, enter Reassign Position to Queue.
11. In the Description text box, enter Assign the Position to the
Unclaimed Positions Queue.
12. In the Field to Update drop-down list, choose Owner.
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Once you make a selection in this drop-down list, new options appear just below depending
on the selection that you made.
13. In the Owner drop-down list, choose Queue.
14. Click the lookup icon ( ), and select Unclaimed Positions Queue.
15. Select Notify Assignee.
16. Click Save.
Not too hard! Before we leave this workflow rule behind, though, let's give it a second workflow
action—one that ensures that no positions will languish in the queue without being claimed
by a recruiter. This time, we'll use a time-dependent workflow action.
Introducing Time-Dependent Workflow Actions
As we mentioned earlier, time-dependent workflow actions are actions that occur before or
after a certain amount of time has elapsed (for example, seven days before the value of the
Hire By field, or three days after the workflow rule is triggered). We can use time-dependent
workflow actions to fire tasks, field updates, and email alerts while the condition of a workflow
rule remains true.
For example, the goal of reassigning position records to the Unclaimed Positions queue is to
have the appropriate recruiter take ownership. However, there might be situations in which a
position is placed in the queue and no recruiter claims it. Rather than leaving the position to
languish unclaimed in the queue, we can define a time-dependent workflow action that alerts
the recruiting manager if no recruiter claims a position record within a certain number of days.
Because this action only takes place while the workflow condition remains true (that is, while
the position is owned by a non-recruiter), the manager will only be alerted when necessary.
Neat, huh? Let's see how time-dependent actions are defined.
Try It Out: Creating the “Notify Recruiting Manager” Time-Dependent
Workflow Task
At this point, we should still be on the Edit Workflow Rule page for our Assign Position to
Recruiter Queue workflow rule. If not, you can return there by clicking Your Name > Setup
> Create > Workflow & Approvals > Workflow Rules, clicking Assign Position to Recruiter,
and then clicking Edit in the Workflow Actions area.
Before we can define a time-dependent workflow task, we first must specify a time trigger.
Time triggers define when the time-dependent workflow actions should fire.
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1. Click Add Time Trigger.
In this case, we want our recruiting manager to be notified three days after a position has been
assigned to the Unclaimed Positions queue.
2. Use the text box and drop-down lists to specify 3 Days After Rule Trigger
Date.
3. Click Save.
Figure 77: The Time Trigger Edit Page
Our time trigger is now listed in the Time-Dependent Workflow Actions area. The Add
Workflow Action drop-down button is now active, and we can define our workflow task as
usual.
4. In the Time-Dependent Workflow Actions area, click Add Workflow Action and
select New Task.
5. In the Assigned To field, select the Recruiting Manager role.
Note: Remember, workflow tasks should only be assigned to a role if you're confident
that only one user will ever be assigned to that role at a time. If the role contains
multiple users, the owner of the workflow rule is assigned the task.
6. In the Subject field, enter Assign Unclaimed Position Record to
Recruiter. When you move your mouse from the Subject field, the Unique
Name field should be
Assign_Unclaimed_Position_Record_to_Recruiter.
7. Set the Due Date field to Rule Trigger Date plus 4 days.
Since this workflow action won't fire until three days after the original Rule Trigger Date,
making the Due Date four days after the Rule Trigger Date gives the recruiting manager one
additional day to assign the position to a recruiter.
8. Set the Status to Not Started.
9. Set the Priority to High.
10. Select Notify Assignee.
11. Click Save.
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12. Click Done.
Almost done! At this point, all we need to do is activate our workflow rule. However, if you
click the Activate button now, an error message appears saying that the Default Workflow
User must be set before activating the rule. What's that?
The default workflow user is the user who should be assigned as the owner of a workflow action
if the user who originally triggered the rule is no longer active. If your organization uses
time-dependent actions in workflow rules, you must designate a default workflow user. Salesforce
displays this username in the Created By field for tasks, the Sending User field for email,
and the Last Modified By field for field updates. Salesforce does not display this username
for outbound messages. If a problem occurs with a pending action, the default workflow user
receives an email notification. To set the default workflow user:
13. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Workflow & Approvals > Settings.
Note: If you click Activate without previously setting the default workflow user and
then click OK in the error dialog, you're sent directly to the Workflow & Approvals
Settings page.
14. Set the Default Workflow User field to any user in your organization. In most
cases, it's best to choose a system administrator.
15. Click Save.
Now we can activate the workflow rule:
Note: If you reached the Workflow & Approvals Settings page by clicking Activate
and then OK in the error dialog, clicking Save also automatically activates your
workflow rule.
16. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Workflow & Approvals > Workflow Rules.
17. Click Activate next to the Assign Position to Recruiter workflow rule.
Look At What We've Done
Great! We've now got a workflow rule that moves position records created by non-recruiters
to a queue of unclaimed positions, and if not claimed by a recruiter in three days, assigns a task
to the recruiting manager.
To try it out, simply make sure that you're logged in as a hiring manager (such as Ben Stuart)
and create a new position. As soon as you return to the detail page for the position, you'll see
that the Unclaimed Positions Queue has automatically been assigned as the record owner, and
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that any user assigned to the Recruiter or Recruiting Manager role will have received an email
notification.
To actually view the contents of the queue, click the Positions tab, and choose Unclaimed
Positions Queue from the View drop-down list. Any recruiter or recruiting manager can
click the Accept button on this page and take ownership of the new position.
Although our Assign Unclaimed Position Record to Recruiter workflow task won't be activated
for another three days, we can see that it's currently scheduled to fire by checking out the
workflow queue. This queue lists all of the time-dependent workflow actions that are scheduled
for the future. To view it:
1. Log back in to your organization as an administrator.
2. Click Your Name > Setup > Monitoring > Time-Based Workflow.
3. Click Search.
Figure 78: The Monitor the Workflow Queue Page
As soon as a recruiter takes ownership of the new position record, this task is deleted from the
workflow queue. Pretty slick, isn't it?
Now let's build one final workflow rule so we can see how to create a workflow email alert.
Creating a Workflow Rule That Sends Email Alerts
For our final workflow use case, let's create a workflow rule and email alert that sends a
notification whenever a new position is created. We want all the employees at Universal
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Containers to know when there are new positions available so they have the best opportunity
to bring in referrals.
For this workflow rule, there's a step that we'll need to handle first: we need to design a template
for what the email alert should look like.
Introducing Email Templates
Just as the platform includes built-in tools for setting security permissions, tracking events and
tasks, and building business logic with workflow, it also provides a built-in tool for writing
emails to users and contacts in your organization. Email templates allow you to create form
emails that communicate a standard message, such as a welcome letter to new employees or
an acknowledgement that a customer service request has been received.
To personalize the content of an email template, we can use merge fields to incorporate values
from records that are stored in the system. For example, if we wanted to address an email
recipient by their first name, we could write an email template as follows:
Dear {!Contact.FirstName},
...
In this example, {!Contact.FirstName} is a merge field that brings in the first name of
the contact to whom the email is addressed, so an email to John Smiley would read:
Dear John,
...
For our workflow alert, we can build an email template to notify users of new positions that
have been added to the system. We can use merge fields to include information from the
position record, such as its title and the required skills. Let's go do that now, and then we can
get back to finishing up our final workflow rule.
Try It Out: Building an Email Template
To build a new email template, we have to go to the Administration Setup area:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Communication Templates > Email Templates.
Here you should see a list of all the email templates that have already been defined for your
organization, including several sample templates from salesforce.com.
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2. Click New Template.
We can choose to create a text, HTML, or custom email template. HTML and custom email
templates are the same except that HTML templates allow you to specify a letterhead to give
your email the same look and feel as other emails from the same source.
Note: A fourth option, Visualforce, lets developers create email templates using
salesforce.com's tag-based markup language. We'll touch on Visualforce in Chapter
10.
To keep things simple, we'll just stick with a plain text email for now.
3. Select Text, and click Next.
Figure 79: Defining an Email Template
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The New Template page allows us to define the email template itself. The area near the top
is where we'll generate the merge field codes for the fields in the email template below it, so
let's skip past it for now and start with the Folder drop-down list.
4. In the Folder drop-down list, choose Unfiled Public Email Templates.
The Unfiled Public Email Templates folder is a standard, public folder available in every
organization. By keeping the email template in a public folder, it'll be available to other users
who have permission to view and edit email templates.
5. Select the Available For Use checkbox.
This option will make our email template available when we create our workflow alert.
6. In the Email Template Name text box, enter Recruiting App: New
Position Alert.
Tip: To help keep your email templates organized, it's a good idea to preface any
template name with the name of the app that uses it. Or, even better, you can create
a public email template folder with the name of the app, such as Recruiting App
Templates, and file all the relevant email templates in it.
7. In the Encoding text box, accept the default of General US & Western Europe
(ISO-8859-1, ISO-Latin-1).
8. In the Description text box, enter Send update email to all
Universal Containers employees.
Now we get to the heart of our email template—the email's subject and body text.
9. In the Subject text box, enter New Open Position Alert:.
We want to put the title of the new position in the subject of our email, so we'll need to use
our first merge field here, just after the colon in our subject. To get the proper code, we'll have
to go back to the merge field area near the top of the page.
10. In the Select Field Type drop-down list, choose Position Fields.
Although there are many objects to choose from in the Select Field Type drop-down list,
because we're creating an email template for a workflow rule, we're limited to the fields for the
object that will be associated with that workflow—in our case, Position. That's because the
workflow rule that uses this email template won't know about any individual records other
than the position record that triggered the rule's execution. If we put in fields from another
object, they'd be left blank in our email, because there wouldn't be a record from which to pull
the values.
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Now let's grab the field we want.
11. In the Select Field drop-down list, choose Position Title.
In the Copy Merge Field Value text box, a merge field code appears for Position Title.
We can cut and paste it to the end of our subject line so the subject now looks like this: New
Open Position Alert: {!Position__c.Name}. When an email is generated from this
template, {!Position__c.Name} will be replaced with the relevant position title.
Easy, right? Now let's finish the remainder of our email.
12. In the text area just below the Subject text box, enter the following text:
There's a new position open at Universal Containers!
Title: {!Position__c.Name}
Functional Area: {!Position__c.Functional_Area__c}
Location: {!Position__c.Location__c}
Job Description
{!Position__c.Job_Description__c}
Responsibilities
{!Position__c.Responsibilities__c}
Skills Required
{!Position__c.Skills_Required__c}
Educational Requirements
{!Position__c.Educational_Requirements__c}
If you know of anyone great who might be able to fill this role, please
contact the hiring manager, {!Position__c.Hiring_Manager__c}.
Thanks!
13. Click Save.
That's it for our email template. Now that it's done, we're ready to create our New Position
workflow rule and alert.
Try It Out: Creating the New Position Workflow Rule and Alert
Now that we've built our email template, we're ready to build the workflow rule and email alert
that use it. By now this procedure should be very familiar to you:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Workflow & Approvals > Workflow Rules.
2. Click New Rule.
3. In the Select object drop-down list, choose Position and click Next.
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4. In the Rule Name text box, enter Email New Position Alert.
5. In the Description text box, enter Send an email to everyone
whenever a position record is opened.
We only want this rule to execute when a position record's status changes to Open - Approved.
6. In the Evaluate the rule when a record is: field, select created, and any time
it’s edited to subsequently meet criteria.
7. In the first row of rule criteria:
•
•
•
Set the Field to Status.
Set the Operator to equals.
Set the Value to Open - Approved. Although New Position is the default
value of the Status picklist, we only want to publicize those positions that have
been approved for hire by an executive.
8. Click Save & Next.
Now let's create the email alert for this workflow rule:
9. In the Immediate Workflow Actions area, click Add Workflow Action, and select
New Email Alert.
10. In the Description text box, enter Email New Position Alert.
11. Next to the Email Template field, click the lookup icon (
App: New Position Alert.
), and select Recruiting
We want to send this email to everyone at Universal Containers, but for this workflow rule
there's no obvious way of doing that. We can work around this by relying on our role hierarchy
and sending the email to everyone in the CEO role and its subordinates.
12. In the Recipient Type Search field, choose Role and Subordinates.
13. In the Available Recipients list, select Role and Subordinates: CEO and
click Add.
14. Click Save.
15. Click Done.
16. Click Activate.
And that's all there is to it! To test out this workflow rule, all you need to do is create a new
position record with a status of Open - Approved. Within a few seconds, all users within your
organization will receive an email letting them know that a position has just been created. Go
ahead—try it!
Beyond the Basics
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Using Custom Workflow and Approval Processes
Did you know you can use the Developer Console to troubleshoot Apex, workflow rules,
and validation logic?
Say you want to debug a workflow rule that isn't working correctly. You can use the
console to step through the execution log of everything that occurred during the request,
line by line, until you find the problem.
To open the Developer Console, click Your Name > Developer Console. To find out
more, click Help in the Developer Console.
Introducing Approvals
Now that we've just made a handful of workflow rules, let's take a look at another business
logic tool that the platform provides: approval processes.
Approval processes allow you to specify a sequence of steps that are required to approve a new
record. Each step allows one or more designated approvers to accept or reject a record. The
steps can apply to all records included in the process, or just to records that meet certain
requirements. Like workflow, approval processes also allow you to specify actions—like sending
an email alert, updating a field value, or assigning a task—that should occur whenever a record
is approved, rejected, first submitted for approval, or recalled.
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Figure 80: Approval Processes Consist of Steps and Actions
For example, suppose your organization has a three-tier process for approving expenses:
submitted expenses that are less than $50 are automatically approved, those over $50 must be
approved by a manager, and those over $5,000 must also be approved by a Vice President. For
this example, you can define an approval process that specifies the following:
•
•
•
230
If an expense record is submitted for approval, lock the record so that users cannot edit it
and change the status to “Submitted.”
If the amount is $50 or less, automatically approve the request.
If the amount is greater than $50, send an approval request to the direct manager.
Using Custom Workflow and Approval Processes
•
•
•
If the amount is greater than $5,000 and the first approval request is approved, send an
approval request to the Vice President.
If all approval requests are approved, change the status to “Approved” and unlock the record.
If any approval requests are rejected, change the status to “Rejected” and unlock the record.
For our recruiting app, we're going to define a similar approval process to submit new positions
for approval. We want to make sure that a manager approves any position that his or her
employee creates, and that any position with a minimum salary of more than $150,000 is
approved by the CEO. Let's get started.
Planning for Approval Processes
In most cases you'll find that you have to do a little advance planning before implementing an
approval process on your own. The Getting Started with Approval Processes checklist available
from the Tips and User Guides area of the online help outlines the things that you should
think about and the components you should build before diving in.
For this approval process, the only preliminary step we need to do is define an email template
that can be used to notify the designated approver that he or she has a pending approval request.
Beyond the Basics
Did you know you can use Chatter for your approval notifications instead of email?
If your organization has both Approvals and Chatter enabled, you can turn on Approvals
in Chatter, which lets your users receive approval requests as posts in their Chatter feed.
You can also customize the way the approval request post displays in Chatter by creating
unique post templates and associating them with your approval processes.
For more information about how this works, see “About Approvals in Chatter” in the
Salesforce online help.
Try It Out: Creating an Email Template for Approvals
Since we've already talked about email templates in Introducing Email Templates, we'll simply
include the values that we want to use for the template in the following table. You can build
it from Your Name > Setup > Communication Templates > Email Templates.
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Table 41: The “Recruiting App: New Position Requires Approval” Email Template
Parameter
Value
Template Type
Text
Available For Use
Selected
Email Template
Name
Recruiting App: New Position Requires Approval
Encoding
General US & Western Europe (ISO-8859-1, ISO-LATIN-1)
Description
Send notification email to designated approver
when new position record requires approval.
Subject
New Position Requires Approval
Email Body
A new position record has been submitted for
your approval. Please visit the link below and
either approve or reject it.
{!Position__c.Link}
Thanks!
Try It Out: Creating an Approval Process
Now that we've finished our preparation, we're ready to define the approval process itself. The
approval process definition acts as a framework for the approval steps and actions that we'll
define later:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Workflow & Approvals > Approval
Processes.
2. From the Manage Approval Processes For drop-down list, choose Position.
There are two different wizards that we can use to create a new approval process: a Jump Start
Wizard and the Standard Setup Wizard. The Jump Start Wizard sets several default values
for us and only requires input for the most crucial fields: the approval assignment email template,
filter criteria to enter the approval process, and the designated approvers. The Standard Setup
Wizard, on the other hand, allows us to configure every possible option for our approval process.
We'll stick with it for now so we can take a look at all of the options that are available.
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3. From the Create New Approval Process drop-down button, choose Use Standard
Setup Wizard.
4. In the Process Name field, enter Approve New Position.
5. In the Description field, enter Ensure that a manager approves any
position that his or her employee creates, and that any
position with a minimum salary of more than $150,000 is
approved by the CEO.
6. Click Next.
After entering the name and description, our next step is to specify the conditions that should
be used to determine which positions need approval. As with workflow rules, we can do this
by either defining a set of criteria or creating a formula. Let's define the criteria so that all
positions created by a user other than the CEO must be approved by at least a direct manager.
7. In the first row of filter criteria, select Current User: Role not equal to
CEO.
8. Click Next.
9. From the Next Automated Approver Determined By drop-down list, select
Manager.
The Manager field is a standard field on the User object that designates the user's manager.
The field establishes a hierarchical relationship between users, which prevents you from selecting
a user that directly or indirectly reports to his or herself. This manager will be the designated
approver for the first step of our approval process.
Alternatively, you could have selected the Create New Hierarchical Relationship
Field option in the drop-down list to define a new custom hierarchical relationship lookup
field on the fly. The hierarchical relationship field type is specifically designed for the User
object, and mimics the behavior of the standard Manager field by associating one user with
another without indirectly associating that user to him or herself. For this approval process,
though, the standard Manager field is perfect, so let's move on.
Figure 81: Specifying the Approver Field
10. Select the Use Approver Field of Position Owner checkbox.
The Use Approver Field of Position Owner checkbox becomes editable when you
select Manager in the Next Automated Approver Determined By drop-down list.
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When you select this checkbox, the approval request is routed to the user specified in the
Manager field on the record owner's user record. If you don't select this checkbox, the approval
request is routed to the manager of the user submitting the record. In our case, we want to
obtain approval from the position owner's manager, so select this checkbox.
11. In the Record Editability Properties area, choose Administrators ONLY can
edit records during the approval process.
Record editability allows you to specify whether a record that's been submitted for approval
can be edited by the approver before being approved. Since we don't want managers to change
the positions that a hiring manager or recruiter creates without alerting the owner, we'll only
let administrators perform edits while a record is in our approval process.
12. Click Next.
13. In the Approval Assignment Email Template lookup field, select Recruiting
App: New Position Requires Approval.
14. Click Next.
Our next step in defining the approval process is specifying which fields should be displayed
on the Approver page layout, which the approver sees when he or she approves or rejects a
record. Each approval process has its own page layout, and, unlike other page layouts, the
Approver page layout can only be configured from within its approval process.
We can display any Position object fields on the Approver page layout, but since we've restricted
the editability of the position record while it's in the approval process, these fields can't be
edited by the approver until the record is approved or rejected.
15. Move the following fields from Available Fields to Selected Fields:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
234
Position Title
Owner
Hiring Manager
Type
Location
Hire By
Job Description
Min Pay
Max Pay
Using Custom Workflow and Approval Processes
Figure 82: Defining the Record Approval Page Layout
On this page we can also specify whether approval history information should be displayed on
the Approver page layout. This information shows whether this record was submitted for
approval in the past, who were the designated approvers, and whether it was approved or
rejected.
16. Select Display approval history information in addition to the
fields selected above.
Finally, before leaving this page, we can specify security settings to determine whether an
approver can approve or reject records from a wireless-enabled mobile device. Unless it's a
mandatory requirement for your approvers, it's better not to choose this option because it
prevents a user from manually selecting an appropriate approver for a record. We'll leave the
default choice selected for now.
17. Click Next.
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The last page of the New Approval Process wizard allows us to choose who should be allowed
to submit position records for approval. Again, we'll just leave the default Position Owner
selected, because there's no reason for another user to have this power.
The last two options on this page allow us to place the Approval History related list on all
Position page layouts and give users the ability to recall pending approval requests after they've
submitted them. The Approval History related list is the same history related list that we
included on the Approver page layout, so we'll also include it on the Position detail page. From
this related list users can also click the Recall Approval Request button to withdraw their
pending approval requests. If we didn't enable this last option, only administrators would have
access to the Recall Approval Request button.
18. Select Add Approval History Related List to All Position Page
Layouts.
19. Select Allow submitters to recall approval requests.
20. Click Save.
Phew! We've finished defining the framework for our approval process, but we won't be able
to activate it until we've given it some steps and some actions to fire when records are actually
approved or rejected. Let's move on to those now.
21. Select Yes, I'd like to create an approval step now.
22. Click Go!
Try It Out: Creating Approval Steps
As we said earlier, every approval process consists of a set of steps that are required to approve
the creation of a new record, and each step allows one or more designated approvers to accept
or reject the submitted record. In other words, every round of “signatures” that you need to
get a record approved must have a corresponding step in the approval process. An approval
step consists of:
•
•
•
•
•
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One or more designated approvers
Optional filter criteria, so that only records that meet certain conditions will require approval
at that step
Optional step approval actions that execute regardless of the outcome of the whole approval
process
Optional step rejection actions that execute regardless of the outcome of the whole approval
process
Optional step recall actions that execute if the record is recalled
Using Custom Workflow and Approval Processes
For our New Position approval process, we'll need to define two steps—one that requires
approval from the record submitter's manager for all new position records, and one that requires
additional approval from the CEO for position records with minimum salaries in excess of
$150,000. Let's define the first step for all new position records now.
Because we selected Yes, I'd like to create an approval step now at the end
of the Standard Approval Process wizard in the last section, we're already at the beginning of
the New Approval Step wizard. If we weren't, we could return to the same wizard with the
following steps:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Workflow & Approvals > Approval
Processes.
2. In the Inactive Approval Processes related list, click Approve New Position.
3. In the Approval Steps related list, click New Approval Step.
In this first step, we want the approval request to go to the Position owner's manager:
4. In the Name field, enter Manager Approval.
5. In the Description field, enter Every new position record must be
approved by the Position owner's manager.
6. In the Step Number field, enter 1.
The Step Number field specifies the order in which multiple steps should be processed. By
assigning this as Step 1, it will be the first to execute when the approval process is triggered.
7. Click Next.
The Specify Step Criteria area allows us to define the criteria or create a formula that filters
the records that require approval during this step. Because we've already filtered out position
records that are owned by the CEO from the whole approval process, this step does not need
any additional filtering.
8. Click Next.
Finally, we have to select the assigned approver for this step, and specify whether his or her
delegate is allowed to approve the request as well. Because this is the Manager Approval step,
it clearly makes sense to accept the default option of Automatically assign using the
custom field selected earlier. (Manager). However, because position records
aren't particularly sensitive, it's okay for managers to assign delegated approvers. So managers
who go on vacation, or who receive large quantities of approval requests, can share their work
with another employee.
9. Select The approver's delegate may also approve this request.
10. Click Save.
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Having completed our first approval step, we're faced with another choice to create optional
approval or rejection actions for this step, or to return to the approval process detail page.
While we ultimately need to specify final approval and rejection actions that occur when the
approval process ends one way or the other, there's nothing in particular that needs to happen
after this first step that we can't specify elsewhere. Let's return to the detail page for our approval
process and define our second approval step for positions with minimum salaries of more than
$150,000.
11. Select No, I'll do this later. Take me to the approval process
detail page to review what I've just created.
12. Click Go!.
13. In the Approval Steps related list, click New Approval Step.
Once again we're back in the New Approval Step wizard, but this time it includes a summary
of the previous step that we created. This helps us to remember where we are in our approval
process.
Figure 83: Defining a Second Approval Step
14. In the Name field, enter CEO Approval.
15. In the Description field, enter Every new position record with a
minimum salary over $150,000 must be approved by the CEO.
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Using Custom Workflow and Approval Processes
16. In the Step Number field, enter 2.
17. Click Next.
For this approval step, we only want to send positions with a minimum salary over $150,000
to the CEO. Additionally, we want to exclude any records that the CEO has already approved
(for example, because one of the CEO's direct reports created the record).
18. Select the Enter this step if the following radio button, then choose
criteria are met from the drop-down list.
19. In the first row of filters, enter Min Pay greater or equal 150000.
Tip: As a short cut, you can specify 150,000 as 150k.
20. In the second row of filters, enter Current User: Manager not equal to
Cynthia Capobianco (the acting CEO in Universal Containers Role Hierarchy
on page 167).
21. Click Next.
Finally, we need to select the approver (the CEO), and specify what should happen if he or
she rejects this request.
22. Select the Automatically assign to approver(s) radio button.
23. In the drop-down list below the radio button, select User, click the lookup icon
(
), and choose the name of the CEO in your organization (Cynthia Capobianco).
We're keeping this approval process fairly simple, but if we wanted to, we could use the Add
Row and Remove Row links to send the approval request to multiple approvers in this step.
We could also select Related Users in the first drop-down list in the row to add an approver
who is listed in fields on the submitted record. For example, since this is an approval process
for Position records, we could add the position's hiring manager to the list of approvers.
24. Below the Add Row and Remove Row links, select Approve or reject based
on the FIRST response.
If this step was requesting approval from multiple users, the radio buttons below the Add Row
and Remove Row links would determine whether the approve request needed unanimous
approval, or if the record would be approved or rejected based on the first user to respond to
the request.
25. Select The approver's delegate may also approve this request.
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The next section allows us to specify what to do with the record if it's rejected at this step.
Because the position record is locked from editing during the approval process, it makes the
most sense to perform the final rejection.
26. Select Perform all rejection actions for this step AND all final
rejection actions. (Final Rejection).
27. Click Save.
Once again, we're faced with a choice to define approval or rejection actions for this particular
step. Let's circumvent those, and return to the approval process detail page to define our initial
submission, final approval, and final rejection actions for the whole process.
28. Select No, I'll do this later. Take me to the approval process
detail page to review what I've just created.
29. Click Go!
Try It Out: Creating Approval Actions
Now that we've finished defining our approval process steps, we're nearly done. All that remains
is to specify the approval actions that should occur whenever a record is initially submitted, or
when it's finally approved or rejected.
Just like workflow actions, approval actions allow you to create and assign tasks, update fields,
and send email updates and outbound messages. They can either be associated with the approval
process as a whole or with individual approval steps.
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Figure 84: The Approval Process Detail Page
Because defining an approval action is almost identical to the way we created workflow actions,
we'll quickly step through the process of updating the Status field to Pending Approval when
a position is initially submitted and then leave our other approval actions as exercises:
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1. If you're not on the approval process detail page already, click Your Name > Setup
> Create > Workflow & Approvals > Approval Processes, and then click Approve
New Position.
2. In the Initial Submission Actions related list, click Add New, and select Field Update.
Does the New Field Update Action page look familiar? That's because we've seen it before—all
approval tasks, field updates, email alerts, and outbound messages use the same editing interface
as workflow actions. In fact, every workflow and approval action that you create can be used
interchangeably on both workflow and approval processes.
3. In the Name field, enter Set Status to Pending Approval.
4. In the Description field, enter While a position is in an approval
process, its status should be set to Pending Approval.
5. In the Field to Update drop-down list, select Status.
6. In the Picklist Options area, select A specific value and choose Pending
Approval from the list.
7. Click Save.
Now, to finish up the rest of the approval process, define the remaining approval actions on
your own according to the values in the following table.
Table 42: Additional Approval Actions
Category
Type
Values
Final Approval
Actions
Field Update
Name: Set Status to Open Approved
Field to Update: Status
A specific value: Open - Approved
Final Rejection
Actions
Field Update
Name: Set Status to Closed - Not Approved
Field to Update: Status
A specific value: Closed - Not Approved
Final Rejection
Actions
Field Update
Name: Set Close Date to Today
Field to Update: Close Date
Use a formula to set the new value: TODAY()
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Try It Out: Activating Our Approval Process
We're all done with defining our Approve New Position approval process, but in order to test
it one final step remains: we've got to activate it. Before we do so, however, be careful! Once
an approval process has been activated, its approval steps can no longer be edited, even if you
deactivate it. The only way to make changes is to clone the existing approval process and make
edits in the cloned one.
Once you're ready to test the approval process:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Workflow & Approvals > Approval
Processes to return to the approval process list page.
2. Click Activate next to the Approve New Position approval process.
The Approve New Position approval process automatically moves to the Active list, and a new
field is displayed: Process Order. This field is important if we're trying to use more than
one approval process at a time because it tells us the order in which each approval process will
be evaluated.
Look At What We've Done
As we've seen, approval processes are inherently complex and take a bit of work to set up. You
have to walk through multiple screens and set several parameters, making it difficult to visualize
and understand the approval process holistically.
Fortunately, the Force.com platform has a Process Visualizer that renders each approval process
as a flowchart. The flowchart contains all of the critical details for each approval process,
including the steps necessary for a record to be approved, the designated approvers for each
step, the criteria used to trigger the approval process, and the actions that take place when a
record is approved, rejected, recalled, or first submitted for approval.
To access the Process Visualizer, click the View Diagram button at the top of any approval
process detail page.
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Figure 85: The Process Visualizer
Now let's test our approval process:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Users and edit the user record for
your Recruiting Manager to fill in the Manager field so the approval chain is properly
set up. For example, set Phil Katz’s manager to Amy Lojack (the Product Manager).
2. Log in to your app as a Recruiting Manager (for example, Phil Katz) and create a
new position.
Notice that after clicking Save, the detail page displays a Submit for Approval button in the
new Approval History related list.
Figure 86: The Submit for Approval Button
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Using Custom Workflow and Approval Processes
3. Click Submit for Approval and then click OK.
Clicking the Submit for Approval button causes several things to happen. First, the record is
locked from editing, as shown by the lock icon at the top of the page. Additionally, two new
entries appear in the Approval History related list showing who submitted the record and the
current approval assignment. Finally, the manager of the position owner receives an email
reporting that there's a new position to approve.
Figure 87: A Submitted Position Record
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Chapter 9: Using Custom Workflow and Approval Processes
When the manager next logs in and visits the record, an Approve/Reject button is visible on
the Approval History related list. He or she can click this button to see the approval request
and approve or reject the record, with comments.
4. Log in as the direct manager who is responsible for approving the request.
5. Click Approve/Reject in the Approval History related list on the record, enter any
optional comments, and then click Approve.
Tip: To make accepting and rejecting approval requests more convenient, consider
adding the Items to Approve related list to the default Home page layout:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Home > Home Page Layouts.
Click Edit next to the Dashboard Home Page Default or DE Default.
Select Items to Approve and click Next.
Arrange the Items to Approve component on the page layout by moving
it up and down the Wide (Right) Column list as desired.
5. Click Save.
Figure 88: The Approval Request Page
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If the approver accepts the record, it progresses to the next step of the approval process (if its
Min Pay field is greater than $150,000 and the CEO still hasn't approved it), or else the
position's Status field is set to Open - Approved. The record details remain locked to protect
them from being changed, but recruiters can still associate the position with job applications,
tasks, or other activities. If the record is rejected, its status is set to Closed - Not Approved,
the Close Date field is set to today's date, and the record is unlocked in case it just needs a
simple edit before it reenters the approval process. With just a few minutes of work, we've built
an effective business process that will make all of Universal Containers' users more effective.
Summing Up
Check out our Recruiting app now! By leveraging the platform's built-in workflow and approval
process tools, we've transformed our app from a glorified database into a fully functional
application that provides real value to its users.
Next we'll tackle something that provides real value to our executive users: reports and
dashboards that give our users a complete analytical picture of how the recruiting program at
Universal Containers is going.
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Analyzing Data with Reports and
Dashboards
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
•
Introducing Reports
Introducing Dashboards
Introducing Custom
Report Types
Look At What We've
Done
We've come a long way with our Recruiting app—not only
do we have custom objects to store our data, we also defined
security and sharing rules to protect that data, while making
it easier for the hiring team to collaborate. And we added
automation by implementing several business processes with
workflow and approvals. We've built a functional application
in the cloud, and we haven't even written a single line of
code!
Now it's time to turn our attention to the needs of the
Universal Containers managers and executive staff. Because
they need to keep track of many different aspects of the
business, we need a way to give them a bird's-eye view of
the company's recruiting activity without forcing them to
delve into piles and piles of data. To do this, we'll create a
set of custom reports for our Recruiting app and then build
a dashboard that allows users to view summaries of key
Recruiting app statistics every time they log in.
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Introducing Reports
We can help users monitor and analyze the data that's being generated in their organization
by building reports. Reports are summaries of the data that's stored in an app. They consist
primarily of a table of data, but can also include data filters, groupings, and a customized graph.
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Analyzing Data with Reports and Dashboards
Figure 89: A Sample Report
While a comprehensive set of reports is included with every organization to provide information
about standard objects such as contacts and accounts, we can also build custom reports that
highlight interesting metrics about the data stored in our custom objects.
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For example, an executive at Universal Containers might have the following questions about
recruiting:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
On average, how many days does it take for each recruiter to fill a position?
Which functional areas have the most open positions?
Which positions have been open for more than 90 days?
Which positions are getting the most candidates?
Which employees conduct the most interviews?
What does the job application pipeline look like for each open position?
Who have we hired in the last 90 days?
We can answer all of these questions and more by creating custom reports in the Reports tab
of the app. Although this tab isn't visible by default in our Recruiting app, any user can click
the arrow tab on the right side of the tab bar to display all available tabs, and then navigate to
the reports area by clicking Reports.
Report Formats
The platform supports four different report formats, each with varying degrees of functionality
and complexity.
•
Tabular reports are the simplest and fastest way to look at your data. Similar to a spreadsheet,
they consist simply of an ordered set of fields in columns, with each matching record listed
in a row. While easy to set up, they can't be used to create groups of data or graphs.
Consequently, they're best used just for tasks like generating a mailing list.
Tip: Use tabular reports when you want a simple list or a list of items with a grand
total.
•
Summary reports are similar to tabular reports, but also allow users to group rows of data,
view subtotals, and create charts. For example, in the sample Employee Interviewer reports
that appear in the following screenshot, the summary report groups the rows of reviews by
the possible values of the Owner Name field, allowing us to see at a glance subtotals of
how many times the two interviewers have talked to candidates and entered reviews for
them.
While a little more time-consuming to set up, summary reports give us many more options
for manipulating and organizing the data, and, unlike tabular reports, they can be used in
dashboards. Summary reports are the workhorses of reporting—you'll find that most of
your reports tend to be of this format.
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Analyzing Data with Reports and Dashboards
Tip: Use summary reports when you want subtotals based on the value of a
particular field or when you want to create a hierarchically grouped report, such as
sales organized by year and then by quarter.
•
Matrix reports allow you to group records both by row and by column. For example, in the
following sample Employee Interviewer reports, the matrix report groups the review rows
by the possible values of the Owner Name field, and also breaks out the possible values of
the Position field into columns. Consequently, the report gives us summarized information
such as the number of times an interviewer has interviewed candidates and entered reviews
for a particular position. These reports are the most time-consuming to set up, but they
also provide the most detailed view of our data. Like summary reports, matrix reports can
have graphs and be used in dashboards.
Tip: Use matrix reports when you want to see data by two different dimensions
that aren't related, such as date and product.
•
Joined reports let you create different views of data from multiple report types. In a joined
report, data is organized in blocks. Each block acts like a “sub-report,” with its own fields,
columns, sorting, and filtering. You can add a chart to a joined report. For example, in the
following sample, the joined report pulls data from two report types related to the Positions
object. Together, the report shows applications received from job ads posted for each
position.
Tip: Use joined reports to group and show data from multiple report types in
different views.
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Analyzing Data with Reports and Dashboards
Figure 90: Tabular, Summary, Matrix, and Joined Reports Offer Different Options for
Viewing Data
Setting Up the Recruiting App for Reports
Before we get started building reports, we first need to take care of a couple tasks that will
make our reports easy to find in the Recruiting app. We need to add the Reports tab to the
default tab display along with our Positions, Candidates, and Job Applications tabs. We'll also
need to create a folder for storing all the reports that we create. While both of these tasks are
purely optional, they'll go a long way towards improving the experience of our Recruiting app
users.
Try It Out: Adding the Reports Tab
First we'll start by adding the Reports tab to the set of default tabs that are displayed for every
Recruiting app user. To do so, we need to revisit the Recruiting app that we created way back
in Building a Simple App on page 31:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Apps.
Click Edit next to the Recruiting app.
In the Choose the Tabs section, add Reports to the Selected Tabs list.
Optionally, select Overwrite users' personal custom app
customizations.
If you choose this option, the Reports tab is automatically added to the tab bar by
default for all users. If you've already deployed your app and you'd rather not overwrite
existing users' changes, leave this option unchecked. Users can manually add the
Reports tab to their personal tab bar by clicking the + tab.
5. Click Save.
Perfect! Now let's visit the Reports tab to perform our next task: creating a folder for Recruiting
reports.
Try It Out: Creating a Recruiting Reports Folder
On the Reports tab, you see recently viewed reports and dashboards organized in report or
dashboard folders. You can quickly browse the Folders pane or search what you’re looking for.
To see all items, or only reports for example, you can filter the list view. Every organization,
by default, has standard folders, some that contain report templates.
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Unfiled Public Reports is a standard folder all users can access. As an administrator,
you can store reports in that folder to share with everyone in your organization. You can make
any other folder public, by sharing it with all users. Personal folders (also standard folders)
such as Personal Custom Reports and Personal Dashboards are an exception. They
contain reports or dashboards private to each user and can’t be accessed by others.
Figure 91: The Reports Tab and Folders
To let users access your reports, make the folder that stores the reports accessible to them.
Let's create a folder to organize reports that your users can find easily.
1. In the Reports tab, click
next to the Folders pane and choose New Report
Folder.
2. In the Report Folder Label field, enter Recruiting Reports. The Folder
Unique Name field autopopulates with Recruiting_Reports. Leave this default
value.
3. In the Public Folder Access drop-down list, choose Read Only.
By choosing Read Only for this folder, only administrator users can modify the reports the
folder contains, or save new reports to it. However, because all users can create their own
reports, this won't hinder your users from modifying a report that we create and saving it to a
personal folder of their own.
4. Select This folder is accessible only by the following users.
5. In the Search drop-down list, select Roles and Subordinates and then add Role and
Subordinates: CEO to the Shared To list. This allows all users in your company to
view this folder and the reports in it.
6. Click Save.
Great—we're now ready to create our first report.
Creating a Summary Report
To get started, we'll create a summary report that answers the question, “Which functional
areas have the most new or open positions and in what region?” This report will include the
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title, hiring manager, location, and status of each position, as well as a pie chart that presents
the data visually. As we do this, we'll skip over some of the more complicated reporting options
so we can quickly create a report that fits our requirements. Our second example will then
define a more complex matrix report that shows off some of the more advanced reporting
features.
Because this report is going to use so many different reporting features, we'll break down the
procedure into three parts:
1. Creating a summary report
2. Adding columns and filters
3. Adding a chart
Try It Out: Creating a Summary Report
To create our summary report, we'll start by opening the report builder, a powerful visual editor
for reports:
1. On the Reports tab, click New Report.
The first step in creating a report is choosing the right report type. A report type defines the
set of records and fields available to a report based on the relationships between a primary
object and its related objects. Reports display only records that meet the criteria defined in the
report type. Your administrators may have set up custom report types for you, or you can select
from the available standard report types.
To help with navigation in this screen, all objects and relationships are grouped in categories
like Accounts & Contacts or Customer Support Reports. The custom objects and relationships
that we built for our Recruiting app can be found in Other Reports.
Note: The Other Reports category contains all reports based on custom objects. If
you've built a custom object that's related to a standard object, such as Account or
Contact, you'll also be able to report on your custom object in the standard object's
category.
2. From the Create New Report page, select the Other Reports category.
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Objects that have a many-to-one relationship with another object, like Job Applications and
Positions, can either be selected on their own or in the context of their relationship with the
other object. For example, if we select Job Applications with Position, our report will count
job application records, but can filter, group, or display fields from the related position records
as well. This will come in handy a little later when we build reports that count job application
records. But because we need to count position records in our report and positions aren't on
the many side of a relationship, we'll stick with a standalone positions report for now.
3. Select Positions.
4. Click Create.
Figure 92: Custom Report in Report Builder
Now that we've chosen the report type, we can customize the report. Note that we can't go
back and change the report type. To do that, you have to start with a whole new report. The
report builder's Preview pane displays a limited set of data; we can also run the report at any
time to see if we have the results we're looking for. For example, let's see what a baseline
positions report looks like without any customizations.
5. Click Run Report.
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Figure 93: A Positions Report with No Customizations
Note: The Show drop-down list defaults to My Positions. If you are logged in as a
user who does not own any positions, select All Positions before you click Run Report.
The report will then display all the positions to which you have access.
As you can see, without specifying any details, we already have a list of position records with
a Grand Total at the bottom. This is the equivalent of what we might see if we were creating
a tabular report without additional columns. Now let's take this basic report to the next level.
6. Click Customize to return to the report builder.
When creating a new report, we first need to choose the format of the report that we want to
create. The default is tabular. Because we want to group rows of open positions by functional
area, we'll create a summary report.
7. Click Tabular Format and select Summary to change the format.
Now we want to group our rows of data by the Functional Area field.
8. Find Functional Area in the Fields pane and drag it to the grouping drop zone
in the Preview pane. When you have lots of fields, using Quick Find is usually fastest.
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Figure 94: Adding a Grouping for a Report
Say we want to see positions also grouped by region. While the Location field gives us city
and state, we want to group data geographically by regions, like USA, UK, and Asia Pacific.
By categorizing the location field into buckets, we get a field that can be used for the grouping.
9. Drag Location from the Field pane into the preview after Position Title.
10. Click
on Location, and select Bucket this Field.
11. Type Region in the Bucket Field Name.
12. Click New Bucket, type USA, and press Enter.
13. Select these values:
•
•
•
•
San Francisco, CA
Austin, TX
Boulder, CO
New York, NY
14. Click Move To, and from its drop-down select USA.
15. Click New Bucket, type UK, and press Enter.
16. Move London, England into the UK category.
17. Move the remaining items into an Asia Pacific bucket.
When done, locations are categorized regionally, and you have a bucket field called
Region.
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18. From the Fields pane, drag the Region bucket field and drop it into the grouping
zone in the preview.
We're closer now! Our report still only lists position titles, but now they're grouped by functional
areas and by region. Also, each grouping has a record count subtotal in parentheses. These
counts will be the basis of the pie chart that we'll add later.
Try It Out: Adding Columns and Filters
Now, lets select and order the fields shown, and set the filters that restrict the set of records
included in the report.
In addition to Position Title and Location, we also want to display the Hiring
Manager and Status fields for each record. To select multiple fields or columns, press CTRL
(Windows) or Command (Mac).
1. In report builder, drag the following fields into the preview:
•
•
Hiring Manager
Status
You can also double-click fields to add them to the end of the report.
2. Reorder columns by dragging them.
Figure 95: Adding a Column Using Drag-and-Drop
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We're even closer to our goal. However, the Status field shows us that the report includes
some position records that have already been filled. Since we only want to view the new and
open ones, we need to set some filters. Filters define the set of records to be included in the
report; for example, you can include only records created this month or only records that belong
to a certain user. With standard filters, you can quickly filter by record owner or date field.
With field filters, you can filter on any field in the report. Because we want to view open
positions across the entire organization and not just positions that we own (by default, all
custom reports include “My” records only), we need to set two filters:
3. In the Show drop-down, select All Positions.
4. Click Add > Field Filter.
5. Define a filter for Status equals New Position, Pending Approval,
Open - Approved.
Tip: Notice that whenever you choose a checkbox field or a picklist field, like Status,
in your filter, a lookup icon ( ) shows up next to the filter row. Click the icon to view
valid values for that field and quickly insert the ones by which you want to filter.
Using this filter of Status equals New Position, Pending Approval, Open
- Approved means that our report will include only those position records with one of these
three statuses. Note that the comma between the three Status values is treated as an OR
function, so this one filter is the same as using these three filters:
•
•
•
Status equals New Position, OR
Status equals Pending Approval, OR
Status equals Open - Approved
Beyond the Basics
Did you know you can filter on a bucket field?
Say you want to view data for non-UK regions. You can add a filter for the bucket field,
Region that you created to group data in the last exercise. You can filter bucket fields
like any other field in the report. You would set the filter in this example as: Region
does not contain UK.
As you add more filters, by default, they’re applied cumulatively on the report using the
AND function. That means, only data that meets all the filter conditions is displayed.
But you can control how filters behave by using Filter Logic from the Add drop-down.
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Try It Out: Adding a Pie Chart
The final step is to display a chart with the report. In our case, we want a pie chart.
1. Click Add Chart and choose the pie chart type.
The chart builder automatically knows that we want the values to be the record count, and the
wedges to be the different functional areas. That's because chart values correlate to a report's
summary fields, and pie chart wedges correlate to a report's groupings. Since we have a second
grouping by Region, we can choose a different field to display in the wedges. But we’ll keep
the default selections.
Now let's finish up our chart and generate our final report:
2. Click OK.
Figure 96: Summary Report Showing Open Positions by Region and Functional Area
When the report is run, you have several options for viewing data.
•
•
Group, summarize data by a different field. For example instead of Functional Area,
you can summarize by Hiring Manager.
Export data into an Excel spreadsheet or CSV (comma separated values) format.
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•
•
Clear any filters applied.
Refine results with standard filters such as date or range.
Because our report meets all of our criteria, let's save it to the Recruiting Reports folder.
3. Near the top of the report, click Save.
4. In the Report Name field, enter Open Positions by Functional Area
and Region.
5. In the Report Description field, enter Which functional areas have
the most new or open positions by region?
6. In the Report Unique Name field, enter
Open_Positions_by_Functional_Area if that's not already the value.
7. From the Report Folder drop-down list, select Recruiting Reports.
8. Click Save.
Now if we view the Recruiting Reports folder, we can see our new summary report. Next, we'll
make a matrix report that takes advantage of some of the more advanced reporting features.
Creating a Matrix Report
For our next report, we'll answer the question, “On average, how many days does it take each
recruiter to fill a position with or without required travel?” This report will use a matrix format
to highlight the difference that mandatory travel makes in how long it takes for positions to
be filled. Looking at data only for this year and the last, the report will include:
•
•
•
•
Record counts for each position a recruiter owns
A custom summary formula for the percentage of a recruiter's positions that require travel
A time-based filter that restricts the data only to positions that were created this year or
last
A color-coded field summary for the average number of days positions remain open:
◊ Averages of less than 30 days are color-coded green
◊ Averages of between 30 and 60 days are color-coded yellow
◊ Averages of more than 60 days are color-coded red
Because this report is going to use so many different reporting features, we'll break down the
procedure into four parts:
1. Creating a matrix report
2. Adding custom summary fields
3. Adding columns and filters
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4. Adding a chart and conditional highlighting
Try It Out: Creating a Matrix Report
To create the matrix report, we'll use the report builder again, this time highlighting steps that
are different from how we defined the summary report.
1. In the Reports tab, click New Report.
Once again, we'll be creating a report that counts position records.
2. From the list, click the “+” to expand Other Reports.
3. Select Positions, and click Create.
Because we want to directly compare individual recruiter performance for positions that do
and do not require travel, we'll use a matrix report. That way we can group the rows of positions
by recruiter, and columns of positions by whether or not they require travel.
4. From the Format drop-down, select Matrix.
Figure 97: Specifying Groupings in a Matrix Report
Now let's group by both rows and columns. Notice the two sets of drop zones for matrix reports.
5. From the Fields pane, drag Position: Owner Name to the row grouping drop
zone.
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6. Now, drag Travel Required to the column grouping drop zone.
Our report now breaks out the possible values for the Travel Required field in the columns
dimension. Recruiters are also broken out in the row dimension, but because all custom reports
query just the report creator's data by default (that is, “My” records only), only one recruiter is
listed in the report so far. Let's keep going.
Try It Out: Adding Summary Fields
In the next step, we want to specify which numerical or checkbox field values to include in our
report, and how each of them should be summarized in subtotals and grand totals. Though
record count is always summarized as a sum total, we can summarize other numerical and
checkbox fields in different ways.
For example, it doesn't make sense to sum the values of the Days Open column—the resulting
total wouldn't provide much value. However, if we calculate the average for Days Open, we'd
know roughly how long positions stay open.
For our report, we need to include three different types of summaries: record count, average
days open, and a formula that calculates the percentage of records requiring travel. While the
first two are standard summary fields, the third will require a visit to the Custom Summary
Formula editor. Let's start with the first two. By default, the report already adds Record
Count, so let's add the average for the number of days a position stays open.
1. Find the Days Open field and drop it into the matrix.
2. In the Summarize dialog, select Average.
Now, let's create that formula to calculate the percentage of records requiring travel.
3. Double-click Add Formula. You'll see the Custom Summary Formula editor.
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Figure 98: The Custom Summary Formula Builder
The formula editor lets us define a new formula based on the summarizable fields in the report.
In our case, we want to include a summary that shows the percentage of position records that
require travel in any given segment. To make this calculation we need to divide the sum of
records that require travel by the sum of all records:
4. In the Column Name field, enter Travel Required Percentage.
5. In the Description field, enter The percentage of total position
records that require travel.
6. In the Format drop-down list, choose Percent.
7. In the Decimal Places drop-down list, choose 0.
8. For Where will this formula be displayed?, choose At all summary
levels.
Now, let's write our formula. Similar to other formula editors in the platform, this provides
tools to make make it easier.
9. In the Formula section, click Summary Fields and select Travel Required, then
select Sum.
The formula editor displays the following API representation of those values:
Position__c.Travel_Required__c:SUM
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10. Click the Operators drop-down and select Divide.
11. Click Summary Field and select Record Count.
The final formula looks like this:
Position__c.Travel_Required__c:SUM / RowCount
We can quickly verify that the formula is correct by checking its syntax before saving.
12. Click Check Syntax.
13. Click OK.
Try It Out: Adding Columns and Filters
In the next steps, we'll select report columns, then define our filters. Because we're already
familiar with adding columns, let's zip through that step first.
Note: Before you can add fields to a matrix report, make sure to select Show > Details.
If details aren't shown, you can only add summary fields.
1. Add the following report columns by double-clicking them:
•
•
•
Position: Position Title
Functional Area
Status
Days Open and Travel Required should already be part of your report.
For our report, we want to define three filters: one to include all positions, one to include only
those positions created in the last year, and one to include those with a Status of Open Approved or Closed - Filled.
2. In the Show drop-down list, choose All Positions.
3. In the Date Field filter select Position: Created Date.
Notice that all other date fields defined on the Position object are also available in the Date
Field filter, including Close Date, Hire By, and Open Date.
4. For Range, choose Current and Previous CY (meaning this and last calendar
year). The start and end dates are populated automatically.
Now let's add a field filter based on the status:
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5. Click Add.
6. Create the following filters:
Status equals Open - Approved, Closed - Filled
7. Click OK.
Beyond the Basics
Use cross filters to filter on related report objects.
Cross filters let you filter on a report’s related objects using a straightforward WITH or
WITHOUT condition. For example, you only want to see data for positions that have
job applications. You can add a Cross Filter from the Add drop-down on the Fields pane
like this: Positions with Job Applications. You can sub-filter the Job
Applications object to refine results further.
Figure 99: Adding a Cross Filter
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Try It Out: Adding a Chart and Conditional Highlighting
We're almost done. Now, in addition to creating a horizontal bar chart that shows the average
number of days open, recruiters, and whether the position requires travel, we also want to
conditionally highlight data to help us quickly analyze which recruiters are performing well
and which need to work on filling their positions faster.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Click Add Chart.
Select the Vertical Bar Chart type.
In the Y-Axis drop-down list, choose Average Days Open.
In the X-Axis drop-down list, choose Position: Owner Name.
In the Group-By drop-down list, choose Travel Required and keep the
side-by-side grouping format.
6. Leave the Plot additional values checkbox empty.
A combination chart plots multiple sets of data on a single chart. Each set of data is based on a
different field, so values are easy to compare. You can also combine certain chart types to
present data in different ways in a single chart. The report we're building doesn't need a
combination chart, but they are useful when comparing data, charting trends, and so forth.
7. Click the Formatting tab.
8. In the Chart Title field, enter Avg Days to Hire With and Without
Travel.
9. Click OK.
All three of our summary fields are available to highlight, but we just want to emphasize one:
Average Days Open. That's because we want to highlight which recruiters are closing
positions in less than 30 days, less than 60 days, or more than 60 days.
10. Click the Show drop-down list and select Conditional Highlighting.
11. In the first row, set Select Field to Average Days Open.
12. In the first color picker, select a shade of green. This is the low color.
13. In the first text field, enter 30. This is the low breakpoint.
14. In the second text field, enter 60. This is the high breakpoint.
15. In the third color picker, select a shade of red. This is the high color.
16. Click OK.
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17. Click Run Report.
Our report shows at a glance how well our recruiters fill positions and how long, on average,
positions stay open. Conditional highlighting shows which positions are taking longer to
fill—generally those requiring travel. Let's quickly save this report before moving on.
18. Near the top of the report, click Save.
19. In the Report Name field, enter Avg Days to Hire With and Without
Travel.
The Report Unique Name field is automatically populated.
20. In the Report Description field, enter On average, how many days
does it take each recruiter to fill a position with or
without required travel?
21. From the Report Folder drop-down list, select Recruiting Reports.
22. Click Save.
As we've seen, custom reports can provide a lot of interesting data, giving insight into the
challenges that an organization faces. However, unless a user visits these reports often, much
of their benefit remains untapped. How can we give users a way of keeping tabs on the
information in reports without wasting their time? The answer, as we'll see next, lies with
dashboards.
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Introducing Dashboards
A dashboard shows data from source reports as visual components, which can be charts, gauges,
tables, metrics, or Visualforce pages. The components provide a snapshot of key metrics and
performance indicators for your organization. Each dashboard can have up to 20 components.
Users can view any dashboard available in a public folder in their organization, such as Company
Dashboards, and can select a favorite, whose first three components display on the Home tab.
To put it mildly, users love the summarized views they get with dashboards, and no good
Force.com app is complete without at least one.
Figure 100: A Sample Recruiting Dashboard
Try It Out: Creating Additional Reports
We'll be creating a small-scale recruiting dashboard in this chapter, but before we do, let's use
our new report-building skills to create a few more reports. Because we're already familiar with
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how report builder works, we'll just outline the specifics of a few reports in the following
table—you can either create them on your own, or just familiarize yourself with the options.
Tip: Want to click along with our dashboard instructions but don't want to spend
your time creating all these new reports? Just create the Positions Open Longer Than
90 Days report in the first row. However, if you're interested in recreating the sample
dashboard displayed here, you'll need to create the other four as well.
Table 43: Additional Recruiting Report Specifications
Report Name Question
Report Type
Positions Open Which positions have been Positions
Longer Than open for more than 90
90 Days
days?
Options
Format: Summary Report
Summarize information by:
Location and then by Functional
Area
Columns: Position: Position
Title, Position: Owner Name,
Status, Open Date, Hire By,
Days Open
Filters: All Positions; Days Open
greater or equal 90
Chart Type: Pie
Chart Wedges: Functional Area
Chart Title: Positions Open
Longer Than 90 Days
Job
Which positions are
Applications by getting the most
Functional
candidates?
Area
Job
Applications
with Position
Format: Summary Report
Summarize information by:
Position: Functional Area and
then by Position: Position Title
Columns: Job Application
Number, Job Application Status
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Report Name Question
Report Type
Options
Filters: All job applications;
Position: Status equals Open Approved
Chart Type: Vertical Column
X-Axis: Position: Functional
Area
Chart Title: Job Applications by
Functional Area
Employee
Interviewers
Which employees conduct Job
the most interviews?
Applications
with Reviews
Format: Summary Report
Summarize information by:
Review: Created By
Columns: Job Application: Job
Application Number, Job
Application: Position, Job
Application: Status, Review:
Created Date
Filters: All job applications
Chart Type: Pie
Chart Title: Employee
Interviewers
Recruiter
Status
What does the job
Job
application pipeline look Applications
like for each recruiter and with Position
open position?
Format: Matrix Report
Subtotal Rows by: Position:
Owner Name and then by
Position: Position Title
Subtotal Columns by: Job
Application Status
Columns: Job Application: Job
Application Number, Position:
Position Title
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Report Name Question
Report Type
Options
Filters: All job applications; Job
Application: Last Modified Date
Last 120 Days; Position: Status
equals Open - Approved, Closed
- Filled
Positions Hired Who have we hired in the Positions
in Last 90 Days last 90 days?
Format: Summary Report
Summarize information by:
Functional Area
Columns: Position: Position
Title, Position: Owner Name,
Hiring Manager, Job Level,
Location, Close Date
Filters: All positions; Close Date
Last 90 Days; Status equals
Closed - Filled
Try It Out: Creating a Dashboard
Now that we've got a set of reports to reference, we're ready to create a small Recruiting
dashboard. To do so, we'll be working in the Reports tab
First we need to create a folder to hold our dashboards. We’ll use the same steps that we used
to create a folder to hold our reports.
1. In the Reports tab, click
next to the Folders pane and choose New
Dashboard Folder.
2. In the Dashboard Folder Label field, enter Recruiting Dashboards.
The Folder Unique Name field autopopulates with Recruiting_Dashboards.
3. In the Public Folder Access drop-down list, choose Read Only.
4. Leave This folder is accessible by all users selected.
5. Click Save.
Now we’ll create a dashboard.
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1. On the Reports & Dashboards page, click New Dashboard.
Figure 101: The Dashboard Edit Page
Once we specify the dashboard properties, we can add components.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Click Dashboard Properties.
In the Title field, enter Recruiting Dashboard.
The Dashboard Unique Name field autopopulates with Recruiting_Dashboard.
Select the Recruiting Dashboards folder to save it in.
Click OK.
For the dashboard description—the editable field near the top of the page—enter
A snapshot of open positions, job applications, frequent
interviewers, and recruiter performance.
Each dashboard has a running user, whose security settings determine which data to display
in a dashboard. All users with access to the folder see the same data, regardless of their own
personal security settings.
The running user's security settings only apply to the dashboard view. Once a user drills down
into a source report or detail page off the dashboard, the user will view the data based on his
or her normal security settings.
For example, suppose a system administrator with the “Modify All Data” permission is the
running user for our recruiting dashboard. In this case, every recruiting-related record is counted
in all of the report totals on our dashboard, including users who'd normally be restricted from
viewing certain records (like those assigned to the Standard Employee profile). Although those
users would be able to see the summary data for all records in the dashboard, if they navigated
to the source reports, they'd see just the records they have access to.
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When you're designing a dashboard, keep the dashboard's audience in mind. Ask whether any
of the information is sensitive and how much you want them to see. If you do give a user access
to dashboards that include more data than he or she normally has permission to view, be sure
to communicate that they might see different values when they click through the dashboard
to view the associated reports. And if you need to restrict a dashboard from certain users, just
save it to a restricted-access folder.
Beyond the Basics
Did you know you can set up a dynamic dashboard that shows users data according to their
own security settings?
Say you want to show the same set of dashboard components to different sets of users,
each with a different level of visibility. You'd potentially have to set up dozens of
dashboards with the right running user for each, and store them in separate folders. With
dynamic dashboards, administrators can accomplish the same thing without having to
create and maintain all those extra dashboards and folders. A single dynamic dashboard
can display a standard set of metrics across all levels of your organization.
To find out more, see “Dynamic Dashboards Overview” in the Salesforce online help.
For our recruiting dashboard, the data that we'll be showing in the dashboard isn't particularly
sensitive. Consequently, we'll choose a system administrator as the running user, and save the
dashboard to a public folder.
8. In the View dashboard as field in the upper right of the screen, enter the name
of a user with system administrator privileges. This sets the running user for the
dashboard.
We now have an empty dashboard that's ready to be filled with components.
Adding Dashboard Components
We haven't yet defined any components, but it's easy to add and reorder them in dashboard
builder.
Components come in five varieties:
Icon
Type
Description
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Charts
Displays a bar, column, line, pie, donut, or funnel
chart—or any chart contained in a report.
Tables
Displays a table that contains values and totals from
columns in the report.
Metrics
Displays the grand total from a report, along with
a label that you enter.
Gauges
Shows the grand total of a report as a point on a
“fuel-tank” type of scale.
Visualforce Displays any Visualforce dashboard component in
Pages
your organization.
Try It Out: Adding a Chart Component
Let's start by adding a chart that shows the number of open positions by functional area:
1. Drag a pie chart component onto the left column of your dashboard.
2. Click “Edit Title” and enter Open Positions by Functional Area.
3. Click the Data Sources tab and find and select the Open Positions by Functional
Area report.
4. Drag the report and drop it onto the pie chart component.
Tip: Click on the pie to open the component editor. On the Component
Data tab, notice that Values and Wedges for the pie are autofilled. This
is because record count and the Functional Area field are used in the
source report chart. On the other hand, if the source report didn’t have a
chart, Values and Wedges would automatically pick up record count and
the first grouping in the report.
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Figure 102: The Dashboard Component Edit Page
Ta-da! We now have a pie chart in our dashboard! If a user clicks on the chart, they're taken
to the report from which the chart was generated.
Try It Out: Adding a Gauge Component
Now let's create a gauge component that shows us how we're doing with positions that have
been open for longer than 90 days:
1. Drag a gauge component onto the middle column of your dashboard.
2. Click “Edit Title” and enter Positions Open Longer Than 90 Days.
3. Click the Data Sources tab and find and select the Positions Open Longer Than 90
Days report.
4. Drag the report and drop it onto the gauge component.
Now, let's change how our gauge looks. Just like the conditional highlighting in our matrix
report, this gauge can display different colors depending on the total count of positions that
have been open too long. We want a green color if there are fewer than two positions, yellow
if there are between two and five, and red if the value is over five.
5. Click on the gauge to open the component editor.
6. Click the Formatting tab and set the following fields:
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•
•
•
•
•
•
For Minimum, enter 0.
For Low Range Color, pick a shade of green.
For Breakpoint 1, enter 2.
For Breakpoint 2, enter 5.
For High Range Color, pick a shade of red.
For Maximum, enter 10.
7. Click OK.
Perfect! Our recruiting dashboard now contains two components.
Try It Out: Adding a Table Component
Now let's create a table component that shows us the average number of days it takes a recruiter
to fill a position with or without travel:
1. Drag a table component onto the right column of your dashboard.
2. Click “Edit Title” and enter Recruiter Performance.
3. Click the Data Sources tab and find and select the Avg Days to Hire With and
Without Travel report.
4. Drag the report and drop it onto the gauge component.
5. Click on the table to open the component editor.
6. Click the Formatting tab.
Make sure the Show Chatter Photos option is selected. This displays each recruiter’s
Chatter profile picture in the table.
Just like its underlying source report, we can add conditional highlighting to our table
component to highlight recruiter performance levels. We want a green color if the recruiter
needs fewer than 45 days, yellow if he or she needs between 45 and 75 days, and red if the
value is over 75.
7. Set the following fields for conditional highlighting:
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•
•
•
•
For Low Range Color, pick a shade of green.
For Breakpoint 1, enter 45.
For Breakpoint 2, enter 75.
For High Range Color, pick a shade of red.
8. Click OK.
Figure 103: Table Component
Try It Out: Adding a Metric Component
Finally, let's create a metric component that shows us the average number of days it takes all
recruiters to fill a position:
1. Drag a metric component onto the right column of your dashboard and drop it below
the table we just created.
2. Click the Data Sources tab and find and select the Avg Days to Hire With and
Without Travel report.
3. Drag the report and drop it onto the metric.
Because metric components consist of a single value, they don't need a title. Instead, we give
them a label much like any other field that you see in the platform:
4. In the label field, enter Average Days to Hire.
Note: Did you notice that we're using the same report that we used for our table?
This metric is just another visualization of the data in that report.
5. Click on the metric to open the component editor.
6. Click the Component Data tab. Notice that the metric value is autopopulated with
the column summary total used in the chart of the source matrix report.
Finally, let's add more conditional highlighting to showcase values:
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7. Click the Formatting tab and set the following fields:
•
•
•
•
For Low Range Color, pick a shade of green.
For Breakpoint 1, enter 45.
For Breakpoint 2, enter 75.
For High Range Color, pick a shade of red.
8. Click OK.
Beyond the Basics
Did you know you can filter components across the dashboard for multiple views of data?
Dashboard filters give you the flexibility of directly manipulating dashboard information
on the fly instead of filtering each underlying report. Click Add Filter in the dashboard
builder to create a dashboard filter and its values. A dashboard can have up to three filters.
In this dashboard, for example, you can create a filter called Function on the Functional
Area field. When viewing the dashboard, users can pick different filter values like Finance
or Human Resources to see data for each job function across the dashboard. To learn
more, search “Adding Dashboard Filters” in the online help.
Figure 104: Adding a Dashboard Filter
We've now got a simple, four-component dashboard for our Recruiting app! (Your dashboard
might look slightly different.) Let's save our dashboard:
9. Click Close, then click Save & Close. You can also click Save if you want to update
the title or description, or change the folder.
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Figure 105: Four Components on the Recruiting Dashboard
If you click the Home tab, you can add the dashboard's first row to your home page. Be sure
to add the dashboard section to your home page layout and then follow these steps:
1. On the Home tab, click Customize Page in the upper right corner of the Dashboard
component.
2. Select Recruiting Dashboard from the Dashboard Snapshot drop-down
list.
3. Click Save.
And because we saved the dashboard in a public folder, any user can add it to his or her Home
tab, too.
As you can see, once we created the reports for our Recruiting app, adding them to a dashboard
was a piece of cake. It's so easy, that we'll leave the remainder of the components as an exercise
for you to try on your own—see how close you can come to recreating A Sample Recruiting
Dashboard on page 272.
Refreshing Dashboards
Dashboards reflect a snapshot of your data at a specific time. On the Home tab, that time is
indicated in the upper left corner on the Dashboard component; on the Reports tab, it's
indicated in the upper right corner. You can refresh your dashboards on either tab by clicking
Refresh.
If you are using Enterprise or Unlimited Edition, you can schedule dashboards to refresh
automatically at specific times, and upon completion, receive an email notification that includes
the refreshed dashboard.
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Scheduling a dashboard refresh is easy. On the Reports tab, simply click the down arrow on
the Refresh button and select Schedule Refresh..., then, indicate who should receive the
notification email and the time you want the refresh to occur.
Introducing Custom Report Types
While dashboards are an excellent way of rendering data, many users will need information
that's more granular and unique to their job function, so they'll need to create their own reports.
You'll want to control which data they can access for their reports, and make it easy for them
to create reports that are useful. You can do both of these by creating custom report types.
Custom report types define the criteria from which your users can run and create reports. When
you create a report type, you specify the objects, relationships, and fields that users can select
for their reports.
How are custom report types useful in our Recruiting app? Well, our recruiters will appreciate
it if we give them an easy way to scan for positions to which candidates have applied. In addition,
the recruiters will probably want to see which of those job applications have reviews. That way,
they'll know if any positions are on the verge of closing.
Creating Report Types
We've spent most of this chapter on the Reports tabs. Now it's time to return to the Your
Name > Setup menu.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Report Types.
2. If you see an introductory splash page, just click Continue.
3. Click New Custom Report Type.
The custom report type that we're creating will include data from three different objects:
Position, Job Application, and Review. Positions will be the focus of the recruiters, though,
so let's make Position the primary object in this report type.
4. In the Primary Object drop-down list, select Positions.
Next, we'll give this report type an intuitive name and categorize it so it's easy for users to find
it. We'll also enter a description so users who select the report type will know its function.
5. In the Report Type Label field, enter Positions with Reviewed Job
Applications.
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6. In the Report Type Name field, enter Positions_with_Reviewed_Job
Applications if it is not there already.
7. In the Description field, enter Which positions have job applications
that have been reviewed?
8. In the Store in Category drop-down list, select Other Reports.
When creating a report type, set its status to In Development if you want to test it before
making it available to all your users; however, the report type we're creating does not require
much testing, so let's deploy it:
9. Select Deployed.
10. Click Next.
The platform uses a graphical hierarchy and set diagrams (also called Venn diagrams) to let us
easily specify which related records from other objects we want to include in the report results.
11. Click the white box under box A (Positions). Box B appears.
12. On box B, select Job Applications from the drop-down list, and leave Each "A"
record must have at least one related "B" record selected.
Figure 106: Report Type Hierarchy and Set Diagram for Positions and Job Applications
By leaving this option selected, we've indicated that we want this report type to only include
position records for which there are job applications. Notice how the set diagrams on the right
change to reflect our selection.
13. Click the white box under box B (Job Applications). Box C appears.
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14. On box C, select Reviews from the drop-down list, and leave Each "B" record
must have at least one related "C" record selected.
Figure 107: Report Type Hierarchy and Set Diagram for Positions, Job Applications,
and Reviews
We've further narrowed the scope of our report to only include job applications that have
reviews.
15. Click Save.
Our custom report type is nearly finished. In fact, we could technically say it's done now, but
there's something we can do to make it even more convenient for our users: we can reorganize
how the fields display in the Fields pane of the report builder.
This report type incorporates three objects (Position, Job Application, and Review), each
containing many fields. A user creating a report using this custom report type will likely be
overwhelmed by all of those fields, so let's remove the ones they won't need, and move the
important ones to the top. We can also specify which ones are selected by default.
16. On the Custom Report Type detail page, scroll down to the Fields Available for
Reports related list and click Edit Layout.
The page that appears is similar to the page layout editor we used in Enhancing the App on
page 55. You can reorder fields by dragging them, create and delete sections, and so forth.
You can also double-click the fields to change their label and specify whether they should be
checked by default.
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Important: If a field isn't in a section, it won't be available to users when they generate
reports from this report type.
Let's reorganize the page as follows:
17. Create a new section called Position, Job Application, and Review
Fields.
18. In the Positions section, change the label of the following fields by double-clicking
the field name and editing it in the dialog that opens:
•
•
•
Created By to Position Created By
Created Date to Position Created Date
Status to Position Status
19. In the Job Applications section, change the label of the following fields by
double-clicking the field name and editing it in the dialog that opens:
•
•
•
Created By to Job Application Created By
Created Date to Job Application Created Date
Status to Job Application Status
20. In the Reviews section, change the label of the following fields by double-clicking
the field name and editing it in the dialog that opens:
•
•
Created By to Review Created By
Created Date to Review Created Date
21. Move the following fields from the Positions section into the Position, Job
Application, and Review Fields section:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Position Title
Created By
Created Date
Days Open
Functional Area
Hire By
Hiring Manager
Open Date
Status
Travel Required
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22. Move the following fields from the Job Applications section into the Position, Job
Application, and Review Fields section:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Job Application Number
Average Rating
Created By
Created Date
Number of Reviews
Status
Notice that we didn't include the Candidate field. We left it out because this report type is
available to all users, including hiring managers. As mentioned in the previous chapter, a hiring
manager might try to poach candidates that apply for other jobs, so it's best not to reveal
candidate names in reports.
23. Move the following fields from the Reviews section into the Position, Job Application,
and Review Fields section:
•
•
•
•
Review Number
Created By
Created Date
Rating
24. Make the following fields checked by default:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Days Open
Hiring Manager
Job Application Number
Open Date
Position Title
Review Number
25. Delete the individual Positions, Job Applications, and Reviews sections.
26. Click Save.
Your custom report type is ready! To try it out, go to the Reports tab, click New Report, and
select the Other Reports report type category. The Positions with Reviewed Job Applications
report type is in the list below.
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Look At What We've Done
Check out our Recruiting app now! We've met almost all of the requirements we talked about
at the beginning of the book, but we're not there yet. In the next chapter, we're going to move
beyond the platform's point-and-click tools, like security and workflow, and introduce
Visualforce, the SOAP API, and public sites. These features provide the key to incorporating
functionality from all over the Web and will help us create a truly powerful application in the
cloud. In fact, once you've mastered the tools available in the platform, these tools will be the
way that you can let your creativity soar—the functionality of any app you build on the platform
will be limited only by the Web itself!
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Development
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
•
•
Introducing Mash-Ups
and Web Services
Introducing Visualforce
Implementing the
Candidate Map
Implementing the Mass
Update Status Button
Taking Your App Public
with Sites
Up to this point, we've built a compelling app using various
parts of the platform. We've created a data model to store
our recruiting information, put workflow and approval logic
in place to help manage the data, and built reports and a
dashboard to help share the data. The fact that we were able
to quickly put all of these pieces together without writing
any code is a testament to the power of the Force.com
platform.
A tremendous amount of research and thought has gone
into the design of the platform. Salesforce.com has strived
to anticipate the various business application needs of 21st
century companies, and has addressed many of those needs
with simple yet powerful declarative, point-and-click tools
that nontechnical users can use to achieve unique business
goals. However, it is impossible for one company to provide
a single solution that's a perfect fit for everyone. That's why
salesforce.com has made it easy for developers to write code
that builds upon the Force.com platform's point-and-click
functionality. Once you learn how to program for the
Force.com platform, you'll find that you can create apps for
the Cloud that do just about anything you can dream up.
The sky's the limit!
“Programming-phobia” is common for people without
computer science backgrounds, and it's likely that many
readers will want to put this book down as soon as they see
the words “code” and “variable.” Relax! When you read this
chapter, you'll discover just how fun and easy programming
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for the Force.com platform can be. Also, bear in mind that
the intent of this chapter isn't to make you a programmer
(although it's a great place to start). Instead, this chapter
will just give you a taste of what it's like to enhance your app
with some very simple programming. If you don't feel like
typing any code yourself, just copy and paste the code
samples from the files included in the
RecruitingApp-7_0.zip file, which you downloaded
while reading the Expanding the Simple App Using
Relationships chapter.
With the sample code and a few mouse clicks, we'll be able
to swiftly enhance our app by adding the following features:
•
•
•
Candidate Map—An interactive map that shows the
locations of the candidates that have applied for a
particular position
Mass Update Status—The ability to update the Status
field on multiple job applications at the same time
Public Careers Site—A public Web site that anyone on
the Internet can access to see what positions are open at
Universal Containers
Let's begin!
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Introducing Mash-Ups and Web Services
If we revisit the requirements of our Recruiting app, we'll see that we still need to implement
an interactive map that shows the locations of the candidates that have applied for a particular
position. Clearly no such functionality is available by default in the platform, and we certainly
don't have time to build our own mapping engine. Is this type of functionality even possible?
Of course it's possible! Because the Force.com platform runs on the Web, we can leverage the
power of other websites to implement features that would never be available just through our
platform alone. This means that with a little code, we can mash up our own recruiting data
with an interactive map website, such as Yahoo! maps, and place this functionality in our own
app.
To implement a mash-up, we'll first need to understand a little about the technology that
makes it possible: Web services. A Web service is the mechanism by which two applications
that run on different platforms, that were written in different languages, and that are
geographically remote from each other, can exchange data using the Internet. Web services
makes data exchange between two such applications as straightforward as two processes
exchanging data on a single computer.
The way that data is exchanged between two Web services is similar to the way data is exchanged
between a Web browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer and a Web server. Just as a Web
browser uses a common network protocol (HTTP over TCP/IP) to download HTML files
hosted on a Web server, a Web service can also use this same network protocol to download
data from another Web service. The key difference is the actual data that is sent and
received—Web services use XML instead of HTML.
The online world has a vast array of Web services, many of which are free. For our Candidate
Map feature, we'll utilize the free Yahoo! Maps Web Services, which let you easily embed
interactive maps in your apps. If we can find a way to pass candidate addresses from our app
to the Yahoo! Maps Web Services, Yahoo! will take care of all the mapping functionality,
saving us from worrying about how our app will render an interactive map. We'll just need to
figure out how to pull that rendered map into our app.
Note: The Force.com platform also has its own powerful Web services API, which
includes the SOAP API. With the SOAP API, you can customize and integrate your
Salesforce organization using the language and platform of your choice. The SOAP
API defines a Web service that enables full, reliable access to all of the data in your
organization, including the ability to read, create, update, and delete records.
Because the SOAP API is only used behind the scenes for our Candidate Map feature,
this book does not go into detail about it; however, you can learn about it in the Web
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Services API Developer's Guide, at
www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/index.htm.
Introducing Visualforce
So how do we pass our candidate's addresses to the Yahoo! Maps Web Services? And after
Yahoo! Maps Web Services renders an interactive map that plots those addresses, how do we
pull that map into our app?
These requirements may seem intimidating, but they're actually quite easy to meet, thanks to
Visualforce. Visualforce is a powerful and flexible framework for customizing your app's user
interface far beyond what's available using the platform's point-and-click tools. It's the most
efficient way to combine data from multiple Force.com objects, blend data from Web services
into your apps, or customize the logic that dictates the behavior of your app's user interface.
When you use Visualforce, you'll see your productivity increase, and you'll find that you can
create just about any type of browser-based user interface you can imagine.
The Visualforce framework consists of a tag-based markup language, similar to HTML. In
the Visualforce markup language, each Visualforce tag corresponds to a user interface
component. Need a related list? Simply add the <apex:relatedList> component tag.
Want to display a record's details? Just use the <apex:detail> tag.
The following graphic shows a few of the most commonly used Visualforce tags and how they
correspond to user interface components. Over 125 tags exist, ranging from large components,
such as a detail section of a standard page, to small components, like a single field or link. You
can learn about them all in the Visualforce Developer's Guide, at
www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/index.htm.
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Figure 108: Sample Visualforce Components and Their Corresponding Tags
The behavior of Visualforce components can either be controlled by the same logic that is used
in standard Salesforce pages, or you can associate your own logic written in Apex. Apex is
salesforce.com's programming language that runs in the cloud on Force.com servers.
Don't panic! You won't need to learn how to write Apex to create any of the features described
in this book. Visualforce comes with a rich component library that allows you to quickly build
pages without having to code a lot of functionality yourself. And because Visualforce markup
is ultimately rendered into HTML, you can use Visualforce tags alongside standard HTML,
JavaScript, Flash, AJAX, or any other code that executes within an HTML page. This means
that we can create our Candidate Map by simply creating a Visualforce page that uses some
basic Visualforce markup and JavaScript to pass our candidate addresses to Yahoo! Maps Web
services.
Note: To learn more about Apex, see the Force.com Apex Code Developer's
Guide, at
www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/index.htm.
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Introducing Visualforce Development Mode
Creating Visualforce pages is quick and easy, and there are two ways to do it: through the setup
area by clicking Your Name > Setup > Develop > Pages, or by enabling Visualforce
development mode and navigating to a “blank” page.
In this book, we'll use Visualforce development mode to create and edit our Visualforce pages
because it has several features that are quite handy. One of those is the special development
footer on every Visualforce page. The footer lets you access a page markup editor that includes
tools you can use to search for values, jump to a certain line in your code, and undo and redo
changes. The page editor also offers highlighting and auto-suggest for component tags and
attributes, and has a link to the component reference documentation, which includes descriptions
and examples for every Visualforce component.
While you're in Visualforce development mode, you can create a new page just by entering a
unique URL in your browser's address bar. And as you add code to your Visualforce page,
you'll be able to save it and see your changes instantly rendered in your browser!
Figure 109: Visualforce Development Mode
Try It Out: Enabling Visualforce Development Mode
Enable Visualforce development mode as follows:
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1. Click Your Name > Setup > My Personal Information > Personal Information,
and click Edit.
2. Select the Development Mode checkbox.
3. Click Save.
Implementing the Candidate Map
Now that we've been introduced to Web services and Visualforce, we're ready to implement
the mash-up piece for our Recruiting app: the Candidate Map. Our requirements state that
we need to generate a map for all the candidates that have applied for a particular position so
that we can better understand potential relocation costs associated with a new hire. Since
Universal Containers has offices all over the country, this map will also help us assign candidates
to an office if a particular position is open in more than one location.
Try It Out: Creating a Visualforce Page
Now that we're in development mode, let's create a Visualforce page called CandidateMap by
simply modifying the URL in our browser.
Salesforce URLs typically look something like this: https://na1.salesforce.com/001/o.
You can create a new Visualforce page by removing everything to the right of the
salesforce.com/ part of the URL and replacing it with apex/ followed by the name of
the page you want to create.
1. In the address bar of your browser, replace everything to the right of
salesforce.com/ with apex/CandidateMap.
Warning: Don't change anything to the left of salesforce.com/, as
this information is specific to the instance of the Force.com platform that
you're using, and changing it will prevent you from creating the Visualforce
page.
The resulting URL should look something like this:
https://na1.salesforce.com/apex/CandidateMap. Note that your URL may have
an instance name other than na1 preceding the salesforce.com/ part. That's okay.
2. Press Enter.
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The following Visualforce error page appears indicating that the page doesn't exist yet. Again,
that's okay—this gives us a chance to exercise one of the other handy features of development
mode, the quick fix. A quick fix is a way of creating something on the fly, right when we need
it. In this case, even though the CandidateMap page doesn't exist yet, development mode gives
us a quick fix link to create it on the fly. Clicking the link is the equivalent of going to the
setup area, navigating to the Visualforce page section, clicking New, entering the name of the
page, and clicking Save.
Figure 110: Visualforce Error Page
3. Click the Create Page CandidateMap link.
Figure 111: CandidateMap Visualforce Page
Congratulations! You've created your first Visualforce page! Now it's time to add some
Visualforce markup so it displays our candidate map.
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Try It Out: Writing Visualforce Markup
In the footer at the bottom of your new Visualforce page, click CandidateMap to display the
Visualforce development mode page editor. This editor displays all the markup for the page
you're currently viewing.
Figure 112: Visualforce Development Mode
You'll notice that the page editor has the following default content:
<apex:page >
<!-- Begin Default Content REMOVE THIS -->
<h1>Congratulations</h1>
This is your new Page: CandidateMap
<!-- End Default Content REMOVE THIS -->
</apex:page>
The default content contains the Visualforce component tag <apex:page> on the first line
and the closing tag, </apex:page>, on the last line. Just like elements in other markup
languages, Visualforce component tags have a start tag, such as <apex:page>, and an end
tag that is identical to the start tag except that it has a forward slash, such as </apex:page>.
The <apex:page> tag represents a single Visualforce page. All of the other content you want
displayed on a page must be wrapped inside the start and end <apex:page> tags. As discussed
earlier, content can be other Visualforce tags, plain text, merge fields, HTML, JavaScript, and
so forth. For example, in the default content there are comments marked by the <! and >
symbols, the HTML <h1> header tag, and plain text.
Let's change the look and feel of the page so it matches the style of the Position object, the
object that's most closely tied to our candidate map. We can do this just by setting an attribute
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on the <apex:page> tag. As with HTML tags, attributes on Visualforce tags configure the
style or behavior of what the tag represents.
The attribute we need to set is standardcontroller. In Visualforce, controllers determine
the style of the page, how the page acts when a user clicks a button, and the data that should
be displayed in a page. Simply by setting the value of the standardcontroller attribute
to the Position object, we're configuring our page to look and behave like the position pages,
and display position data.
1. Place your cursor just inside the closing bracket of the <apex:page> tag, press the
spacebar, and type standardcontroller="Position__c". The result should
look like this:
<apex:page standardcontroller="Position__c">
Tip: You can develop your own controllers, but the Force.com platform
also includes a standard controller for every object, including custom objects
that you create. It's another one of the benefits of Force.com!
Note that the format for setting an attribute is the name of the attribute followed by the equals
sign (=), then the value of the attribute enclosed in quotes. Also, remember that the unique
API names of custom objects have two underscores (__) and the letter c at the end.
Let's save our work so we can see our changes applied.
2. Click the save icon (
) on the page editor, or press CTRL+S.
When you save your markup, the Force.com platform checks to make sure it's valid and lets
you know if there are errors. If the markup is valid, the new version of your Visualforce page
is saved and rendered in your browser.
Can you see how your page is different from before? Setting the standardcontroller
attribute changed the look and feel of the default Visualforce page so that the Positions tab is
selected.
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Figure 113: Before and After Setting the standardcontroller Attribute
Next, let's remove the default HTML on our Visualforce page and replace it with something
relevant to our Candidate Map, such as a brief description of the page just in case the purpose
of the map isn't immediately obvious to users.
3. Delete the following markup:
<!-- Begin Default Content REMOVE THIS -->
<h1>Congratulations</h1>
This is your new Page: CandidateMap
<!-- End Default Content REMOVE THIS -->
4. Enter the following markup between the start and end <apex:page> tags.
This map shows the locations of candidates who have applied
for the <b>{!Position__c.Name}</b> position.
The result should look like this:
<apex:page standardController="Position__c">
This map shows the locations of candidates who have applied for the
<b>{!Position__c.Name}</b> position.
</apex:page>
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The description includes the {!Position__c.Name} merge field enclosed in the <b> HTML
tag. We've used merge fields quite a bit while building our app. They were in our email template
and some of our formulas. Now, we're using them once again, this time side by side with
HTML and Visualforce component tags.
5. Click the save icon (
) on the page editor.
Right now, our merge field isn't displaying because the Candidate Map is out of context, that
is, there's no specific position record from which it can grab the data. Don't worry about that
for now—we'll learn how to set context later. For now just trust that the
{!Position__c.Name} merge field will render the position name, and the <b> HTML tag
will make it bold.
Our Visualforce page is now ready for us to add our interactive map!
Try It Out: Adding the Map to Our Visualforce Page
The interactive map functionality that is essential to our Candidate Map feature can be achieved
with a blend of Visualforce markup and JavaScript that accesses the Yahoo! Maps Web Services.
As promised, you don't have to learn JavaScript to get the Candidate Map working. Instead,
we'll use the sample code in the RecruitingApp-7_0.zip file you downloaded from
Developer Force in Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships.
1. In the RecruitingApp-7_0.zip file, locate the file CandidateMapSample and
open it in your favorite text editor.
Important: Make sure that Word Wrap or any feature that might add line
breaks to the code is turned off in your text editor. You must preserve the
original line breaks in the code sample. New line breaks caused by word
wrapping features in text editors can break the code and prevent the code
sample from working correctly.
Also, be aware that copying code from Adobe PDF files can also cause
code to break, so avoid copying code from PDF versions of this book.
2. Select the entire content of the file, and copy and paste it into the page editor at the
bottom of your CandidateMap Visualforce page. The CandidateMapSample file
contains the Visualforce markup you added in the steps above, so just replace
everything in the page editor with the entire sample in the file.
3. Click the save icon (
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The interactive map should appear on your CandidateMap Visualforce page, but with an error
message and without plots. This is because the Candidate Map is still out of context and the
page can't figure out which candidates to show. We can fix this by simply adding the
CandidateMap Visualforce page to our position page layouts.
Try It Out: Adding the Candidate Map to Position Page Layouts
Adding Visualforce pages to page layouts is as simple as adding fields or sections to page
layouts. And once we add the CandidateMap Visualforce page to our position page layouts,
the map will automatically plot the locations of the candidates who apply to each position. It'll
work like magic!
We have two page layouts for the Position object and we'll want the map to appear on both.
Let's start by adding the page to the original position page layout (Position Layout).
If you have any standard position records that use the Position Layout, navigate to one of those
positions and click the Edit Page Layout link in the upper right corner of the record. If you
don't have any standard position records:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. Click Position.
3. In the Page Layouts related list, click Edit next to Position Layout.
The Position Layout is ready to edit. Let's create a section on the page layout for the
CandidateMap Visualforce page.
4. In the palette, select the Fields category.
5. Drag the Section user interface element from the palette to just below the Description
section on the page layout. The Layout Properties popup window appears.
6. In the Section Name text box, enter Candidate Map.
7. In the Display Section On Header area, select both the Detail Page and Edit
Page checkboxes.
8. In the Layout drop-down list, choose 1-Column.
9. Click Ok.
Now let's move the CandidateMap Visualforce page into our new section.
10. Select the Visualforce Pages category on the palette.
Notice that the palette lists our CandidateMap Visualforce page as a user interface element.
11. Drag the CandidateMap user interface element from the palette to the Candidate
Map section on the page layout.
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The Candidate Map JavaScript generates a map that is 400 pixels high and spans the width
of the screen. This is just large enough to be useful without consuming too much room on the
screen. The default properties of the Visualforce page user interface element need to be adjusted
to accommodate the map. Otherwise, there might be odd spacing around the map and
distracting scrollbars.
Let's fix the Visualforce page user interface element properties to accommodate the size of the
generated map, as well as the text we added to the top of the CandidateMap Visualforce page.
(In case you don't remember, the text is “This map shows the locations of candidates who have
applied for the <b>{!Position__c.Name}</b> position.”)
12. Double-click the CandidateMap element to access its properties.
13. Set the width to 100%.
14. Set the height to 405.
The height is always in pixels, while the width can be specified either in pixels or as a percentage.
Setting the height to 405 pixels allows 400 pixels for the map and five more pixels for the text.
Perfect!
15. Leave the Show scrollbars and Show label checkboxes deselected.
16. Click OK to exit the user element properties.
17. Click Save on the page layout.
Repeat all of the above steps for your other Position object page layout, the IT Position Layout.
Once you finish, it's time to test the Candidate Map!
Try It Out: Testing the Candidate Map
Navigate to any position record with one or more candidate applications. (If you haven't created
any job applications in your app, now would be a good time.) After you bring up a position
record, scroll down to see the Candidate Map in action!
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Figure 114: Our Working Candidate Map
Notice how the Candidate Map Visualforce page is embedded within our Recruiting app just
like the other functionality we built using the platform's declarative, point-and-click tools.
Also notice that the map automatically displays only candidates who applied to this position.
With very little programming and a few clicks, we've mashed up Yahoo Maps Web Services
with Force.com and made the result look as if it were made expressly for our Recruiting app.
Couple SOAP API with the thousands of Web services that are available on the Internet today,
and the possibilities are limited only by our imaginations!
Implementing the Mass Update Status Button
The Candidate Map feature we just added is both useful and flashy. It'll help recruiters do
their jobs more efficiently while adding an eye-catching graphic to an otherwise plain collection
of data. The next feature we're going to implement is not as aesthetically appealing, but is
much more useful and likely to save your users an incredible amount of time.
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Picture yourself as a recruiter at Universal Containers. You're working on filling a highly-coveted
position that's garnered hundreds of job applications and you've finally zeroed in on the three
top candidates. However, before you can go further you need to reject the job applications
submitted by all of the other candidates for the position—a task that could take hours if you
have to open every one of those job application records and set the Status to rejected. What
can you do?
Fortunately, creating tools that perform mass actions on data is yet another of the innumerable
ways you can build upon the platform's functionality. With a few lines of Visualforce and the
platform's point-and-click tools, we can enhance the Recruiting app in a way that will
dramatically increase our users' productivity. When we're done, the daunting task of updating
the Status field on multiple job applications will be reduced from hours of tedium to a few
seconds of easy mouse clicking.
Planning the Mass Update Status Feature
The objective is simple: create a way to update the Status field on multiple job applications
in a single operation. We just need to work out a few logistics to make sure the implementation
goes smoothly. For example, where in our app will users go to access the Mass Update Status
functionality? And how will they perform the actual update?
When designing a new feature, it's important to consider the context in which users will access
it. Since the purpose of the Mass Update Status feature is to update the Status field on
multiple job applications for a single position, it's most likely that users will want to perform
this operation while viewing a position record. Therefore, it makes the most sense to provide
access to the Mass Update Status feature from position records.
So where exactly on a position record should we provide access to the feature? Well, back in
Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships on page 87, we added a Job Applications
related list to our position records that made it easy for users to quickly identify all of the job
applications submitted for a position. We could leverage that list by adding a checkbox next
to each job application so that users can select the group of job applications they want to update.
Then we could add an Update Status custom list button that lets users update the Status
fields on all of the selected job applications in one fell swoop.
Once we're done, the feature will work something like this:
1. Open a position record and scroll down to the Job Applications related list.
2. In the Job Applications related list, select the checkboxes next to the job applications
you want to update.
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Figure 115: Job Applications Related List
3. Click the Update Status button.
The Mass Update Status page appears:
Figure 116: Mass Update Status Page
4. Choose a value for the Status field.
5. Click Save.
It may sound like this will take an astounding effort to implement, but it's really quite simple.
All you need to do is create the Mass Update Status page with some basic Visualforce markup,
and add a custom list button to the Job Applications related list on position records. You'll be
done before you know it!
Try It Out: Creating the Mass Update Status Page
We'll begin implementing the Mass Update Status feature by creating the Visualforce page
that lets users choose the value with which the Status field is updated. To make this page
even more usable, we'll include a table that shows the Job Application Number, Position
Title, Candidate Name, and Status of each selected job application.
1. In the address bar of your browser, replace everything to the right of
salesforce.com/ with apex/MassUpdateStatus.
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The resulting URL should look something like this:
https://na1.salesforce.com/apex/MassUpdateStatus. Remember to only modify
the part of the URL after salesforce.com/.
2. Press Enter.
3. Click the Create Page MassUpdateStatus link.
We now have a new Visualforce page called MassUpdateStatus. Next, we'll add the Visualforce
markup that implements the Mass Update Status functionality.
To enter our markup, we'll use the Visualforce development mode page editor just as we did
before. But this time around, we won't need any JavaScript; Visualforce will be able to do it
all!
4. In the footer at the bottom of the MassUpdateStatus Visualforce page, click
MassUpdateStatus to display the Visualforce development mode page editor.
5. Delete all of the default markup in the Visualforce development mode page editor
and replace it with the following markup. Remember that instead of typing, it's
easiest to copy and paste the code from the MassUpdateStatusSample file located
in the RecruitingApp-7_0.zip file you downloaded from
developer.force.com/books/fundamentals.
<apex:page standardController="Job_Application__c"
recordSetVar="applications">
<apex:sectionHeader title="Mass Update the Status
of Job Applications"/>
<apex:form>
<apex:pageBlock>
<apex:pageMessages />
<apex:pageBlockButtons>
<apex:commandButton value="Save"
action="{!save}"/>
<apex:commandButton value="Cancel"
action="{!cancel}"/>
</apex:pageBlockButtons>
<apex:pageBlockSection title="Status Update"
collapsible="false">
<apex:inputField value=
"{!Job_Application__c.Status__c}"/>
</apex:pageBlockSection>
<apex:pageBlockSection title="Selected Job
Applications" columns="1">
<apex:pageBlockTable value="{!selected}"
var="application">
<apex:column value="{!application.name}"/>
<apex:column value=
"{!application.position__r.name}"/>
<apex:column headerValue="Candidate Name">
<apex:outputText value=
"{!application.candidate__r.
First_Name__c & ' ' & application.
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candidate__r.Last_Name__c}"/>
</apex:column>
<apex:column value=
"{!application.Status__c}"/>
</apex:pageBlockTable>
</apex:pageBlockSection>
</apex:pageBlock>
</apex:form>
</apex:page>
Tip: In this sample code, notice that some components don't have close
tags. If there are no other components nested within a component, you can
“close” the tag by putting a forward slash at the end of the start tag, like this:
<apex:sectionHeader/>.
6. Click
.
Understanding the MassUpdateStatus Visualforce Markup
Let's take a moment to discuss the main Visualforce tags we just added to our MassUpdateStatus
page. Although we won't go into all of the use cases for each component or discuss every
attribute in depth, you'll get a better understanding of how Visualforce works.
Tip: To see general descriptions and examples for all of the Visualforce components
and their attributes, click the Component Reference link in the upper right corner
of the Visualforce development mode page editor.
<apex:page>
As with all Visualforce pages, the MassUpdateStatus page must begin with an <apex:page>
component. Notice the tag has the same standardController attribute used in our
interactive Candidate Map feature, although this time it is set to the Job Application object
(Job_Application__c). This makes sense because the Mass Update Status feature updates
a field on job application records, not position records.
The component also has a recordSetVar attribute. We use this attribute to change the
standardcontroller so that it accommodates a set of records rather than a single record.
<apex:sectionHeader>
The <apex:sectionHeader> component adds a header to the top of the page. The
component's title attribute determines the text in the header.
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<apex:form>
The <apex:form> component establishes a section on the page in which users can enter data
and submit it by clicking a button or link. It's like an invisible container, similar to a <form>
element in HTML.
<apex:pageBlock>
The <apex:pageBlock> component designates an outlined area on the page similar to the
areas on detail pages that contain sections.
<apex:pageMessages>
The <apex:pageMessages> component allocates space for standard system messages (such
as those that notify users when a file is being saved) and validation rule errors. These messages
already exist in the Force.com platform, so you don't have to create them—you just have to
use this component to make room for them in case the platform needs to display them.
<apex:pageBlockButtons>
The <apex:pageBlockButtons> component allocates space for a set of buttons on the
page. Its subcomponents specify what the buttons do and how they are labeled.
<apex:commandButton>
Each <apex:commandButton> component creates an individual button inside the
<apex:pageBlockButtons> component. The Mass Update Status page uses two
<apex:commandButton> components: one to create a Save button and a second to create
a Cancel button. The buttons are styled like standard Salesforce buttons.
The value attribute on the <apex:commandButton> component determines the words
that appear on the button (such as “Save” or “Cancel”), while the action attribute determines
the operation that occurs when the button is clicked. When setting the action attribute, you
must use merge field syntax. For example, to configure the button to save the data entered on
the page, set the action attribute to {!save}.
Each button appears twice on our MassUpdateStatus page—once at the top of the area allocated
by the <apex:pageBlock> component and once at the bottom. This is a precautionary
measure built into the <apex:pageBlockButtons> component to ensure that the button
functionality is apparent to users, even if the page block is large.
<apex:pageBlockSection>
The <apex:pageBlockSection> component can be used within <apex:pageBlock>
components to create a section on a page similar to the sections found on page layouts. On
this page, the <apex:pageBlockSection> component is used twice.
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The first instance of the <apex:pageBlockSection> component has a title attribute
that's set to "Status Update." This text will appear at the top of the section. It also has a
collapsible attribute that determines whether users can collapse and expand the section
by clicking an arrow to the left of the title. We don't want users to accidentally collapse this
page block section, so the attribute is set to “false.”
The second <apex:pageBlockSection> component creates a section that has a table
showing the job applications selected for updating. Its title attribute is set to “Selected Job
Applications." Also, its columns attribute is set to “1."
Tip: Unlike page layouts, a section on a Visualforce page can have more than two
columns. However, the platform's stylesheets are optimized to accommodate one or
two columns, so it's best not to exceed that limit.
<apex:inputField>
The <apex:inputField> component renders the Status field from the Job Application
object on our page. Use <apex:inputField> components to create HTML input elements
for any Salesforce field. All you need to do is set the component's value attribute to the API
name of the Salesforce object and field.
<apex:pageBlockTable>
The <apex:pageBlockTable> component renders a table containing field values from
multiple records of a specific object. For our feature, we need to set two of this component's
attributes: value and var.
The value attribute tells the table which set of records contains the values to display. In this
instance, we set the attribute to the expression {!selected} to enable the table to display
values from the selected job applications.
The second attribute, var, creates a name that components within the table can use to reference
individual records in the record set without actually referring to each record by name.
<apex:column>
The <apex:column> components inside the <apex:pageBlockTable> determine the
columns of the table and the job application fields each column displays. For three of the four
<apex:column> components, we just need to set the value attribute to an expression that
references the field using the value of the <apex:pageBlockTable> component's var
attribute followed by the API name of the field. For example, the following expression displays
the values of the Job Application Number field:
{!application.name}
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For the Candidate Name field, though, we need to do a bit more because the field is actually
a combination of the First Name and Last Name fields from the Candidate object. To
combine these fields, we use an <apex:outputText> component inside an <apex:column>
component and set its value attribute to an expression that combines the First Name and
Last Name fields from the Candidate object.
<apex:column headerValue="Candidate Name">
<apex:outputText value="{!application.
candidate__r.First_Name__c & ' ' &
application.candidate__r.Last_Name__c}"/>
</apex:column>
When you generate column fields in this manner, the value attribute on the <apex:column>
component is not set, so the table doesn't know what to use as the column header. Rectify this
by setting the headerValue attribute on this <apex:column> component.
Beyond the Basics
Did you know you can add a Chatter feed to a Visualforce page?
Say you want to add the Chatter feed for a position to its detail page. You can simply use
the <chatter:feed> standard component:
<apex:page standardController="Position__c">
<chatter:feed entityId="{$!Position__c.id}">
<apex:detail />
</apex:page>
To find out more, see the Visualforce Developer's Guide at
wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Documentation#Reference_Guides.
Try It Out: Creating a Custom List Button
Now that our Mass Update Status Visualforce page is complete, we're ready to create the
button that users will click to access it.
The platform gives us the option of creating two types of buttons:
Detail Page Buttons
Buttons that appear on detail pages in the Button Section of the page layout.
List Buttons
Buttons that appear in list views, search result layouts, or related lists.
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We need a button that users can click in the Job Applications related list on position records,
so let's create a list button.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. Click Job Application.
You might be wondering why we chose the Job Application object instead of the Position
object, given that the button will appear on position records. The reason is that you create list
buttons on the object that is being listed.
3. In the Custom Buttons and Links related list, click New.
Figure 117: Custom Button Edit Page
The custom button edit page should look familiar, since it closely resembles the formula editor
that we saw previously.
4. In the Label text box, enter Update Status.
5. In the Name text box, accept the default value of Update_Status.
6. In the Description text box, enter Updates the Status field on
multiple job applications.
We now have the option to specify whether we are creating a detail page link, detail page
button, or list button. We've already decided to create a list button, but keep these other options
in mind for future apps.
7. Select List Button as the Display Type.
When we selected the List Button option, did you notice the Display Checkboxes
(for Multi-Record Selection) checkbox that appeared beneath it? By leaving this
option selected, the platform knows to put checkboxes next to the records in the related list.
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8. Leave the Display Checkboxes (for Multi-Record Selection) checkbox
selected.
Next, the Behavior picklist lets you choose what happens when a user clicks the button. We
know we want the button to open the Mass Update Status page, but we can specify whether
the page opens in a new window or in the existing window, and whether or not it is has a
sidebar and header. You can even configure the button to execute some JavaScript if necessary.
For our app, it makes the most sense to configure the button to open the Mass Update Page
in the existing window, and to leave the sidebar and header there as well.
9. In the Behavior picklist, select Display in existing window with
sidebar.
Now we need to specify the content we want to display. To do this, we'll first need to indicate
the type of content we want to display in the Content Source picklist.
10. In the Content Source picklist, select Visualforce Page.
When you select the Visualforce Page option, the bottom section of the custom list
button edit page displays a Content picklist. The picklist contains the Visualforce pages in
your organization that have a standard controller set to the object for which you are creating
the button.
11. In the Content drop-down list, select
MassUpdateStatus[MassUpdateStatus].
12. Click Save.
After clicking Save, you are reminded that no users will be able to access the button until it is
added to a page layout. This is because creating a custom button is similar to adding a custom
field to an object—even if it's defined in the database, nobody will be able to see it until you
explicitly add it to a page layout.
Try It Out: Adding a Custom List Button to a Page Layout
Let's finish up our Mass Update Status feature by adding the Update Status list button to our
Position page layouts.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Objects.
2. Click Position.
3. In the Page Layouts related list, click Edit next to the page layout you want to edit
first.
4. Click the wrench icon ( ) in the Job Application related list to edit its properties.
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5. In the Related List Properties window, click the Buttons bar at the bottom to expand
the Buttons section.
Figure 118: Custom Button Edit Page
Here we can specify the standard and custom buttons that the related list displays. The Update
Status button we just created should appear in the Available Buttons list.
6. Select the Update Status button and click Add to move it to the Selected Buttons
list.
7. Click OK to exit the Related List properties window.
8. Click Save.
Repeat the above procedure for the other Position page layout. Once that's done, the Mass
Update Status feature is ready to test!
Try It Out: Testing the Mass Update Status Feature
To test the Mass Update Status feature, navigate to a position record to which multiple
candidates have applied, and scroll down to the Job Applications related list. Notice that the
Update Status button is there, and checkboxes appear next to the job application numbers,
just as we planned.
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Now select a few job applications and click the Update Status button. Our Mass Update Status
Visualforce page appears. Notice that the lower half of the page lists the job applications we
selected on the previous page.
Figure 119: Mass Update Status Page Displaying Selected Applications
In the Status picklist, choose the new status for the selected records, and click Save. Salesforce
updates all of the selected records with the new value.
The feature is a success!
Taking Your App Public with Sites
We've looked extensively at what the Force.com platform can do for employees at Universal
Containers, and how it's possible to build upon that power with Web services and Visualforce.
Still, there's a key part to a company's success that's missing from the equation: the public. In
today's world, it's critical for companies to exchange information not just with their own
employees, but with customers, community members, developers, bloggers, and so forth. And
given the lightening-fast pace of business in the 21st century, this information must be shared
with ease and efficiency.
While most of the data in our Recruiting app is highly sensitive and should only be accessible
to users with the appropriate permissions, there is one piece of data that should definitely be
publicized: open positions. By enabling job seekers outside of the company to view the positions
that are available, we expand the pool of candidates and increase the odds of hiring the best
person available. This is central to the success of not only the Human Resources department
at Universal Containers, but the entire company.
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In the past, to make Force.com data available to the general public, you had to set up a Web
server, create custom Web pages (JSP, PHP, or other), and use the API to integrate Force.com
apps with an external website. This is no longer the case, thanks to Sites!
Introducing Sites
With Sites, you can create public websites that are directly integrated with your Force.com
organization. Anyone on the Internet can access these sites without logging in with a username
and password.
Use sites to selectively expose a subset of your Force.com data through pages that are branded
to match the look and feel of your company's website. For example:
•
•
•
•
Host a public community forum for sharing and voting on ideas about your company,
services, or products.
Provide support information on a public website where customers can search for solutions
to their issues.
Add a public tool to your portal that helps customers find stores in their area.
List all of your company's products on a public website, with model numbers, current prices,
and product images pulled dynamically from your organization.
Sites are hosted by salesforce.com on the same servers that host the Force.com Web domain,
so there are no data integration issues. And because you build sites on the Force.com platform
with Visualforce pages, the Force.com platform handles all of the validation on the data collected
through the site.
You can build multiple Force.com sites for your organization. For example, you can create one
site for your Marketing department, a separate one for a community forum, and another for
an online catalog.
In this chapter, we're going to build a very basic site called Career Resources that will allow
any Web user to view the open positions at Universal Containers. While it's possible to add
just about any kind of functionality to this site, such as search options and electronic job
application forms, we're going to keep it simple to limit the amount of Visualforce needed to
get the job done. By the time you're done with this chapter, though, anyone on the Internet
will be able to see the positions that are open at Universal Containers, and you'll have a solid
understanding of the power of Sites. Let's begin!
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Introducing Force.com Domain Names
As mentioned above, sites are hosted on the Force.com domain. This saves you the hassle of
dealing with a third-party Web hosting service, and allows for seamless integration with the
Force.com platform. Each Salesforce account that uses sites has its own reserved section on
the Force.com domain servers.
Before you begin creating sites, you must register a unique Force.com domain name that will
identify your account's space on the Force.com domain. Your Force.com domain name is a
URL that consists of a prefix followed by a string of characters that Salesforce provides.
Prior to creating your first site, you must register your Force.com domain name. You only have
to do this one time, though. Once your Force.com domain name is registered, you never have
to repeat this part of the process again.
Try It Out: Registering Your Force.com Domain Name
To register your Force.com domain name:
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Develop > Sites.
The sites registration page appears. Near the bottom of the page is a text box in a URL. This
is where you will enter the prefix for your Force.com domain name. Before you do, though,
consider the following:
•
•
•
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The Force.com domain name can contain only underscores and alphanumeric characters
(no spaces or punctuation), and must begin with a letter. Also, it can't end with an
underscore or contain two consecutive underscores.
Your Force.com domain name must be unique throughout the entire Force.com domain.
To avoid any duplicate entries, consider using your company's name or a variation of your
company's name, such as mycompanysite.
Salesforce combines the prefix you enter with the rest of the URL on the page to create
your Force.com domain name. For example, if you enter mycompanysite as your prefix
and the rest of the URL is -developer-edition.na1.force.com, your full Force.com
domain name will be www.mycompanysite-developer-edition.na1.force.com.
Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App Development
Figure 120: Sites Registration Page
2. In the text box, enter a prefix for your Force.com domain name.
3. Click Check Availability.
Salesforce quickly scans all of the other Force.com domain names to make sure the one you
entered is unique. If your Force.com domain name is unique, you'll see a message indicating
it's available. If it's not unique, you'll have to try another name.
4. Click the link to review the Sites Terms of Use. Acknowledge your acceptance by
selecting the checkbox.
5. Click Register My Force.com Domain.
A prompt appears warning that you can't change your Force.com domain name after you
register it.
6. Click OK.
Nice! You're now ready to create your first Force.com site.
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Try It Out: Creating a Force.com Site
After registering your Force.com domain name, you should still be on the sites introductory
page. If you navigated away from the page, click Your Name > Setup > Develop > Sites to
return.
1. Click New.
The Sites edit page appears. The first field, Site Label, is the name of the site as it appears
in the administration setup area of the Force.com platform user interface.
2. In the Site Label text box, enter Career Resources.
When you click out of the Site Label text box, notice that the value Career_Resources
appears in the Site Name text box. Site Name is the name used when referencing the site
in the API.
3. Leave Career_Resources as the value of the Site Name text box.
4. In the Site Description field, enter A public site for
employment—related information at Universal Containers.
Every site must have a designated user who can receive site-related communications from the
site's visitors and salesforce.com.
5. In the Site Contact field, click the lookup icon and choose yourself if your name
is not already the default value.
The next field, Default Web Address, displays your Force.com domain name followed by
a text box. In the text box, enter a unique domain suffix using alphanumeric characters. The
Force.com domain name and suffix constitute the complete default Web address for this site.
For example, if your Force.com domain name is
www.mycompanysite-developer-edition.na1.force.com and the suffix is careers,
the default Web address for this site is
www.mycompanysite-developer-edition.na1.force.com/careers.
After we set up and activate the site, anyone on the Web will be able to access the site by
entering the default Web address.
6. In the Default Web Address text box, enter careers.
As with any Web page, you can allow your site to be accessed via an alternative URL, one that
is perhaps shorter or easier to remember. To do this, you have to set up a custom Web address
through a domain name registrar and configure it to redirect users to the default Web address
specified above. If you are building the Recruiting app in your sandbox or a version of Salesforce
other than Developer Edition, you'll see a Custom Web Address field in which you can
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enter that custom Web address. For now, leave this field blank; however, if you create a custom
Web address in the future for this site, return to this page to enter the address in this field.
7. Leave the Custom Web Address text box blank.
A site is not available to the public until it is activated. If you were creating a site for a public
company or working on a complex site that took several days to develop, it would make sense
to create and test the site before making it available to everyone. Since we're creating a simple
site for a fictitious company, it's OK for our site to be immediately available when we save this
page.
8. Select the Active checkbox.
The Active Site Home Page field lets you specify which Visualforce page people see if
they navigate to your site when it's active. Ultimately, we'll want this to be a Visualforce page
that displays all of the open positions at Universal Containers page, but we haven't created
that page yet. For now, let's use the UnderConstruction page included with the Force.com
platform.
9. In the Active Site Home Page field, enter UnderConstruction.
Even though we opted to make our site immediately active, there still may be times in the
future in which we'll want to deactivate the site for maintenance or redesigning. When the site
is inactive, users are redirected to the Visualforce page listed in the Inactive Site Home
Page field. Again, the Force.com platform includes a default Visualforce page for this purpose.
10. In the Inactive Site Home Page field, leave InMaintenance selected.
We haven't begun designing the pages of our site yet, but while we're setting up our site's basic
configuration, we can specify a site template to make the construction of our site's pages much
easier. A site template is a Visualforce page that lets you dictate the style and layout of any of
your site's pages that don't reference a specific site template. That is, every page on your site
will inherit the site template's look and feel unless you specify another template on the page
itself. With site templates, you can control the visual styling of your entire site from a single
file!
If you have multiple sites, you can use the same site template for each site to preserve a uniform
style throughout your company's entire Web presence. Alternatively, you can create different
site templates for different sites so that visitors instantly recognize a change in context. For
our Careers Resources site, we're going to use the default Visualforce page provided with all
organizations called SiteTemplate.
11. Leave SiteTemplate selected in the Site Template field.
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The next few fields and checkbox are a bit technical and don't affect our site's functionality,
so we're going to leave them blank. It's useful to understand what they can do, however, since
it's quite likely you'll want to utilize them when creating sites in the future:
Site Robots.txt
This file determines which parts of your public site are accessible to Web crawlers. A Web
crawler is a computer program that browses the Web and retrieves current data. The data
is primarily used by search engines for indexing purposes, and for automating maintenance
tasks on Web sites, such as checking for broken links. However, there are reasons to deny
Web crawlers access to your site. For example, some Web crawlers are maliciously designed
to gather contact information from Web pages, such as email addresses, for spam. Also,
Web crawlers can consume networking resources, impeding download rates for legitimate
Web users.
Site Favorite Icon
This icon appears in a browser's address field when a user visits the site. You can use this
field to set the favorite icon for your entire site, or you can specify an icon for each individual
page.
Analytics Tracking Code
This code lets you easily integrate your site with Google Analytics. By integrating your
site with Google Analytics, you can track the usage of your site and site pages, including
the number of visits and page views over a specific period of time, the average time visitors
spent on the site, and more.
Note: This option may not be available in all organizations.
URL Rewriter Class
After setting up your site, you can create an Apex class to rewrite your URLs to make
them more user-friendly. Enter the class in this field to apply it to your site. To find out
more, see “Site.UrlRewriter” in the Force.com Apex Code Developer's Guide.
Enable Feeds
This option displays the Syndication Feeds related list, where you can create and manage
syndication feeds for users on your public sites. Syndication feeds give users the ability to
receive updates in external news readers when there are changes to a site. This field is
visible only if you have the feature enabled for your organization.
12. Click Save. The Site detail page appears.
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Figure 121: The Site Detail Page
Your first site is live! If you go to the URL you entered in the Default Web Address field
or just click the link in the Default Web Address field on the Site detail page, you'll see
the UnderConstruction Visualforce page that we selected as our Active Site Home Page.
Note: Sometimes it takes a few minutes for changes to your sites to appear. If the
changes don't appear immediately, check back a few minutes later.
Notice that the email us link opens an email addressed to the site contact.
Figure 122: The UnderConstruction Page
If you go back to the Site detail page and scroll down, you'll see several related lists that display
information such as the site's usage and change history. One of these related lists contains the
various Visualforce pages associated with the site. These are default pages included with the
platform though, and none of them display the positions open at Universal Containers, which
is the whole reason we're building the site. We'll have to create that page ourselves, but that
won't be hard since we already picked up a few Visualforce tricks earlier in this chapter.
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Try It Out: Creating the Public Jobs Page
Now that we're ready to create our Public Jobs Visualforce page, let's iron out the details so
we can understand precisely what we're creating.
First, we know that we want the page to display some of the data on position records, such as
each position's title, location, and description. Those are essential bits of information to job
seekers. We probably shouldn't make the pay ranges public, though, since that information
could give candidates the upper hand when negotiating salaries. Also, keep in mind that the
page is going to list all open positions, and large scale companies might have hundreds or
thousands of open positions. For that reason we'll want to restrict the information we display
to just the three essential fields mentioned above.
Next, we have to decide how the page will look. What colors will we use? What format will
we use to render the data? As mentioned before, we want to keep things simple, so let's give
the page the same look and feel that position records have in our app. We'll render the data
in a table, and we'll add a brief introductory blurb above the table that will orientate the site's
visitors by describing the contents of the page and how they should use it. Let's begin!
1. In the address bar of your browser, replace everything to the right of
salesforce.com/ with apex/PublicJobs.
The resulting URL should look something like this:
https://na1.salesforce.com/apex/PublicJobs. Remember to only modify the part
of the URL after salesforce.com/.
2. Press Enter.
3. Click the Create Page PublicJobs link.
We now have a new Visualforce page called PublicJobs. The next step is to add the Visualforce
code to the page that will display open positions.
4. In the footer at the bottom of the PublicJobs Visualforce page, click PublicJobs to
display the Visualforce development mode page editor.
5. Delete the default markup in the Visualforce development mode page editor and
enter the following:
Tip: You can cut and paste this markup from a file in the
RecruitingApp-7_0.zip file you downloaded from
developer.force.com/books/fundamentals.
<apex:page standardController="Position__c"
recordSetVar="positions"
sidebar="false" showHeader="false">
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Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App Development
<apex:pageBlock>
<h1>Welcome to the Universal Containers Careers
Home Page!</h1>
<p>Universal Containers is an industry leader,
but to stay ahead of the pack, we need to grow!
We are currently seeking bright and talented
professionals to join our winning team. Browse
the current openings below and email your resume
to apply.
</p>
<br/>
<apex:pageBlockTable value="{!positions}"
var="position">
<apex:column value="{!position.name}"
rendered="{!IF(position.Status__c ==
'Open - Approved', true, false)}"/>
<apex:column value="{!position.Location__c}"
rendered="{!IF(position.Status__c ==
'Open - Approved', true, false)}"/>
<apex:column value="{!position.Job_Description__c}"
rendered="{!IF(position.Status__c ==
'Open - Approved', true, false)}"/>
</apex:pageBlockTable>
</apex:pageBlock>
</apex:page>
6. Click Save.
The public jobs page appears:
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Chapter 11: Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App Development
Figure 123: The Public Jobs Page
You probably recognize the components in the markup since we used all of them before in our
Mass Update Status feature. The page begins with the familiar <apex:page> and
<apex:pageBlock> components, followed by a few elementary HTML tags that add a
header and some introductory text. Then the <apex:pageBlockTable> component and a
few <apex:column> components create a table that displays fields from a set of records.
Simple!
While all of the components are familiar, the markup uses a few attributes that we haven't seen
yet. Let's take a look at them.
First, in the <apex:page> component, we set the sidebar and showHeader attributes to
false. These attributes specify whether the page displays the standard sidebar and tab header
you see on your app's pages. If we set these values to true or don't set them at all, the sidebar
and header are visible. However, the search functionality in our app is restricted to registered
users, so having the sidebar appear might mislead our site's visitors into believing they can
search for positions when in fact their search attempt will result in an error message. As for
the tabs, they don't really make sense on a single-page site like the one we're building, so we
shouldn't display them. Therefore, both of these attributes are set to false.
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Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App Development
The other attribute that we haven't covered yet is the rendered attribute on the
<apex:column> component. If the value of this attribute is true, the field specified in the
value attribute appears in the table; if the value is false, the field doesn't appear. Since this
value should change depending on the status of the position we're displaying, we've set the
attribute to an expression that resolves to either true or false. That way, the page can dynamically
determine whether or not to display fields.
For example, the rendered attributes in our markup are set to the following expression:
{!IF(position.Status__c == 'Open - Approved', true, false)}
The expression uses a simple IF() function that only resolves to true if the Status field on
a position record is set to “Open — Approved.” This means that our <apex:column>
components will only display fields from position records that are open, which is perfect because
we only want open positions to appear on our Public Jobs page.
That's all the Visualforce markup we'll need for our site! We just have a few more clicks left
to finish up our app.
Setting Your Active Home Page
When we created our site, we set its Active Site Home Page field to the
UnderConstruction page because we had yet to create our Public Jobs page. Now that our
public jobs page is ready to go, let's set it as the site's home page.
1. Click Your Name > Setup > Develop > Sites.
2. Click Edit next to the name of your site.
3. Use the lookup field to find and select the PublicJobs page for the Active Site
Home Page field.
4. Click Save.
The Public Jobs page is now the home page for your Career Resources site; however, if you
launch the default Web address in your browser, the Public Jobs page is not there. Instead,
you see a Web page with a message saying that authorization is required. Why would
authorization be necessary to access a public site?
It turns out there's still one step left. We have to grant public access to the position object.
Granting Public Access Settings
Public access settings control what public users can do on each site. These settings are similar
to the profile settings we set in Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships, only this time
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we're setting them specifically for this site and not the entire app. In fact, the settings only
apply to Internet users who do not have a Recruiting App login.
For our site, we need to give the public “Read” access to the Position object. If we don't, the
platform will not render the Public Jobs page because the page contains position data to which
the public doesn't have access.
1.
2.
3.
4.
From the Site Details page, click Public Access Settings.
Click Edit.
Under Custom Object Permissions, enable the “Read” permission on Positions.
Click Save.
We're done! Let's test our site.
Testing Your Site
Testing your site is easy—simply point your browser to the site's default Web address. You
can do this by entering the default Web address in your browser's address bar, or by clicking
the Default Web Address link on your site's detail page.
Once the Public Jobs page loads, you can see the title, location, and description of each open
position at Universal Containers, even if you aren't logged in to the Recruiting App. We've
successfully published a subset of our data while keeping the rest of it secure!
We're going to stop here since we achieved our targeted goal of creating a public site. However,
it's good to think about the additional functionality that you could build into your site to
improve its usability. For instance, career websites like ours typically have search capabilities
that let visitors view positions based on specified criteria. Also, it's nice to give users a more
efficient way to apply online rather than sending a resume in an email.
All this and so much more can be implemented using advanced Visualforce markup and Apex.
Those topics are out this book's scope, but they are thoroughly covered in the various resources
available at developer.force.com. If you go on to learn more about Visualforce and Apex, you
can become a true master of cloud computing!
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Chapter 12
Learning More
In this chapter ...
•
•
•
•
•
Developer Force
Help and Training
Options
Multimedia
AppExchange Partner
Program
What Do You Think?
This book has introduced some of the native technologies
associated with the Force.com platform. We've created a
fully functional Recruiting app, and we've introduced
Visualforce and the SOAP API to show you how it can be
used to build composite apps. But there's only so much we
can cover in a single book—we skipped over many other
powerful tools and options, and didn't talk about how you
can share your own apps with others on the AppExchange.
Indeed, we'd be surprised if you didn't have more questions
about how you can take advantage of all that the platform
has to offer!
Fortunately there are a number of ways you can learn more
about the platform.
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Chapter 12: Learning More
Developer Force
Developer Force is salesforce.com's free developer program for the Force.com platform. The
Developer Force website is a developer community where you can learn, access key resources,
and discuss a diverse set of topics related to Force.com, Database.com, Heroku, and other
related salesforce.com platforms with other developers in the community. Application
development topics include Apex, Visualforce, integration APIs, database topics, packaging
and distribution of your applications, and much more.
There are many ways to use and contribute to Developer Force, including:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Read and contribute technical articles that explain development topics.
Download and contribute sample code.
Read our blogs, subscribe to our RSS feeds, or become a blogger yourself.
Read and contribute to the Developer Force Discussion Boards.
Read the monthly Force.com Developer News email newsletter.
Register for an event in our event calendar or watch and listen to archived multimedia
events.
Participate in special programs such as developer previews to get a first hand look at what's
coming.
Watch technical webinars that help you get up to speed with new features.
Help and Training Options
In addition to the Developer Force website, the platform itself offers lots of help and training
options:
•
•
•
330
Find answers to your questions. Click Help at the top of any page in the application.
Enter your keywords in the Search box and click Go!. The search returns online help topics,
knowledge base solutions, and recommended training classes that match the keywords you
entered.
Take online training. Select the Training tab of the Help & Training window, choose
your role and geographic location, and click View Classes! to find free online training
classes. More than fifteen online training classes are available to you on-demand, 24/7!
Attend a class. A number of examples in this book have been provided by Salesforce.com
Training & Certification and are drawn from the expert-led training courses available
around the world. Salesforce.com training courses provide an opportunity to get hands-on
experience with the Force.com platform and Salesforce applications, and prepare you to
Learning More
•
become Salesforce Certified. To learn more or register for a class, visit
www.salesforce.com/training.
Download tip sheets and best practice guides. Select the Help tab of the Help & Training
window and click Tips in the task bar to view and download tip sheets, implementation
guides, and best practices for specific features.
Multimedia
Thanks to the hard work of our colleagues on the Salesforce.com Community and Force.com
websites, we have an impressive number of podcasts and videos available. Our podcasts and
videos keep the Force.com platform community connected by providing free access to a wide
range of best practices, case studies, and product- and platform-focused digital audio content.
Find podcasts on our iTunes channel by searching for “salesforce” in the iTunes Music Store.
To find our videos, go to the http://developer.force.com/content/type/Tech+Talk
on the Developer Force website.
Access to expert Force.com platform and CRM-related luminary interviews, thought-leadership
presentations, roundtable discussions, and best practices are just a click away. Happy listening
and watching!
AppExchange Partner Program
With the emergence of The Business WebTM, companies can offer their services and
applications to businesses over the Internet as easily as retailers and auctioneers can connect
with online consumers. As AppExchange partners, more than 150 companies are already
participating in this new chapter of computing by making their offerings available on The
Business Web via the AppExchange. The AppExchange partner program makes it easy for
both new and established businesses to join this growing community of cloud computing
providers.Visit the Partner Program website at www.salesforce.com/partners/ and
join the Force.com AppExchange partner program today!
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Chapter 12: Learning More
What Do You Think?
Well that about sums it up. Did you like what you've read? Has it inspired you to create your
own on-demand apps and enter the world of cloud computing? We certainly hope so! We
welcome any comments you might have—indeed, we count on your feedback and ideas. Go
to the Developer Force discussion boards at
community.salesforce.com/sforce?category.id=developers or email us at
[email protected] and let us know what you think!
332
Glossary
This glossary defines terms that appear in this guide.
A
Activity (Calendar Events/Tasks)
Planned task or event, optionally related to another type of record such
as an account, contact, lead, opportunity, or case.
Administrator (System Administrator)
One or more individuals in your organization who can configure and
customize the application. Users assigned to the System Administrator
profile have administrator privileges.
Advanced Function
A formula function designed for use in custom buttons, links, and
s-controls. For example, the INCLUDE advanced function returns the
content from an s-control snippet.
Analytic Snapshot
An analytic snapshot lets you report on historical data. Authorized users
can save tabular or summary report results to fields on a custom object,
then map those fields to corresponding fields on a target object. They
can then schedule when to run the report to load the custom object's
fields with the report's data.
Analytic Snapshot Running User
The user whose security settings determine the source report's level of
access to data. This bypasses all security settings, giving all users who
can view the results of the source report in the target object access to
data they might not be able to see otherwise.
Analytic Snapshot Source Report
The custom report scheduled to run and load data as records into a
custom object.
Analytic Snapshot Target Object
The custom object that receives the results of the source report as records.
333
Glossary
Apex
Apex is a strongly typed, object-oriented programming language that
allows developers to execute flow and transaction control statements on
the Force.com platform server in conjunction with calls to the Force.com
API. Using syntax that looks like Java and acts like database stored
procedures, Apex enables developers to add business logic to most system
events, including button clicks, related record updates, and Visualforce
pages. Apex code can be initiated by Web service requests and from
triggers on objects.
Apex Controller
See Controller, Visualforce.
Apex Page
See Visualforce Page.
App
Short for “application.” A collection of components such as tabs, reports,
dashboards, and Visualforce pages that address a specific business need.
Salesforce provides standard apps such as Sales and Call Center. You
can customize the standard apps to match the way you work. In addition,
you can package an app and upload it to the AppExchange along with
related components such as custom fields, custom tabs, and custom
objects. Then, you can make the app available to other Salesforce users
from the AppExchange.
App Menu
See Force.com App Menu.
AppExchange
The AppExchange is a sharing interface from salesforce.com that allows
you to browse and share apps and services for the Force.com platform.
Application Programming Interface (API)
The interface that a computer system, library, or application provides
to allow other computer programs to request services from it and
exchange data.
Approval Action
See Workflow and Approval Actions.
Approval Process
An approval process is an automated process your organization can use
to approve records in Salesforce. An approval process specifies the steps
necessary for a record to be approved and who must approve it at each
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Glossary
step. A step can apply to all records included in the process, or just
records that have certain attributes. An approval process also specifies
the actions to take when a record is approved, rejected, recalled, or first
submitted for approval.
Auto Number
A custom field type that automatically adds a unique sequential number
to each record. These fields are read only.
B
Boolean Operators
You can use Boolean operators in report filters to specify the logical
relationship between two values. For example, the AND operator
between two values yields search results that include both values.
Likewise, the OR operator between two values yields search results that
include either value.
C
Class, Apex
A template or blueprint from which Apex objects are created. Classes
consist of other classes, user-defined methods, variables, exception types,
and static initialization code. In most cases, Apex classes are modeled
on their counterparts in Java.
Clone
Clone is the name of a button or link that allows you to create a new
item by copying the information from an existing item, for example, a
contact or opportunity.
Cloud Computing
A model for software development and distribution based on the Internet.
The technology infrastructure for a service, including data, is hosted on
the Internet. This allows consumers to develop and use services with
browsers or other thin clients instead of investing in hardware, software,
or maintenance.
Combination Chart
A combination chart plots multiple sets of data on a single chart. Each
set of data is based on a different field, so values are easy to compare.
You can also combine certain chart types to present data in different
ways on a single chart.
335
Glossary
Component, Visualforce
Something that can be added to a Visualforce page with a set of tags,
for example, <apex:detail>. Visualforce includes a number of
standard components, or you can create your own custom components.
Component Reference, Visualforce
A description of the standard and custom Visualforce components that
are available in your organization. You can access the component library
from the development footer of any Visualforce page or the Visualforce
Developer's Guide.
Controller, Visualforce
An Apex class that provides a Visualforce page with the data and business
logic it needs to run. Visualforce pages can use the standard controllers
that come by default with every standard or custom object, or they can
use custom controllers.
Controller Extension
A controller extension is an Apex class that extends the functionality of
a standard or custom controller.
Controlling Field
Any standard or custom picklist or checkbox field whose values control
the available values in one or more corresponding dependent fields.
Custom App
See App.
Custom Controller
A custom controller is an Apex class that implements all of the logic for
a page without leveraging a standard controller. Use custom controllers
when you want your Visualforce page to run entirely in system mode,
which does not enforce the permissions and field-level security of the
current user.
Custom Field
A field that can be added in addition to the standard fields to customize
Salesforce for your organization’s needs.
Custom Help
Custom text administrators create to provide users with on-screen
information specific to a standard field, custom field, or custom object.
336
Glossary
Custom Links
Custom links are URLs defined by administrators to integrate your
Salesforce data with external websites and back-office systems. Formerly
known as Web links.
Custom Object
Custom records that allow you to store information unique to your
organization.
Custom Report Type
See Report Type.
Custom Settings
Custom settings are similar to custom objects and enable application
developers to create custom sets of data, as well as create and associate
custom data for an organization, profile, or specific user. All custom
settings data is exposed in the application cache, which enables efficient
access without the cost of repeated queries to the database. This data
can then be used by formula fields, validation rules, Apex, and the SOAP
API.
See also Hierarchy Custom Settings and List Custom Settings.
Custom View
A display feature that lets you see a specific set of records for a particular
object.
D
Dashboard
A dashboard shows data from source reports as visual components, which
can be charts, gauges, tables, metrics, or Visualforce pages. The
components provide a snapshot of key metrics and performance indicators
for your organization. Each dashboard can have up to 20 components.
Database
An organized collection of information. The underlying architecture of
the Force.com platform includes a database where your data is stored.
Database Table
A list of information, presented with rows and columns, about the person,
thing, or concept you want to track. See also Object.
337
Glossary
Data Loader
A Force.com platform tool used to import and export data from your
Salesforce organization.
Decimal Places
Parameter for number, currency, and percent custom fields that indicates
the total number of digits you can enter to the right of a decimal point,
for example, 4.98 for an entry of 2. Note that the system rounds the
decimal numbers you enter, if necessary. For example, if you enter 4.986
in a field with Decimal Places of 2, the number rounds to 4.99.
Salesforce uses the round half-up rounding algorithm. Half-way values
are always rounded up. For example, 1.45 is rounded to 1.5. –1.45 is
rounded to –1.5.
Delegated Administration
A security model in which a group of non-administrator users perform
administrative tasks.
Delegated Authentication
A security process where an external authority is used to authenticate
Force.com platform users.
Dependency
A relationship where one object's existence depends on that of another.
There are a number of different kinds of dependencies including
mandatory fields, dependent objects (parent-child), file inclusion
(referenced images, for example), and ordering dependencies (when one
object must be deployed before another object).
Dependent Field
Any custom picklist or multi-select picklist field that displays available
values based on the value selected in its corresponding controlling field.
Detail
A page that displays information about a single object record. The detail
page of a record allows you to view the information, whereas the edit
page allows you to modify it.
A term used in reports to distinguish between summary information
and inclusion of all column data for all information in a report. You can
toggle the Show Details/Hide Details button to view and hide report
detail information.
338
Glossary
Developer Edition
A free, fully-functional Salesforce organization designed for developers
to extend, integrate, and develop with the Force.com platform. Developer
Edition accounts are available on developer.force.com.
Development Environment
A Salesforce organization where you can make configuration changes
that will not affect users on the production organization. There are two
kinds of development environments, sandboxes and Developer Edition
organizations.
Developer Force
The Developer Force website at developer.force.com provides a full
range of resources for platform developers, including sample code,
toolkits, an online developer community, and the ability to obtain limited
Force.com platform environments.
Document Library
A place to store documents without attaching them to accounts, contacts,
opportunities, or other records.
E
Email Alert
Email alerts are workflow and approval actions that are generated using
an email template by a workflow rule or approval process and sent to
designated recipients, either Salesforce users or others.
Email Template
A form email that communicates a standard message, such as a welcome
letter to new employees or an acknowledgement that a customer service
request has been received. Email templates can be personalized with
merge fields, and can be written in text, HTML, or custom format.
Enterprise Application
An application that is designed to support functionality for an
organization as a whole, rather than solving a specific problem.
Enterprise Edition
A Salesforce edition designed for larger, more complex businesses.
Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)
A data modeling tool that helps you organize your data into entities (or
objects, as they are called in the Force.com platform) and define the
339
Glossary
relationships between them. ERD diagrams for key Salesforce objects
are published in the SOAP API Developer's Guide.
Event
An event is an activity that has a scheduled time. For example, a meeting,
or a scheduled phone call.
F
Field
A part of an object that holds a specific piece of information, such as a
text or currency value.
Field-Level Security
Settings that determine whether fields are hidden, visible, read only, or
editable for users. Available in Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer
Editions only.
Field Dependency
A filter that allows you to change the contents of a picklist based on the
value of another field.
Field Update
Field updates are workflow and approval actions that specify the field
you want updated and the new value for it. Depending on the type of
field, you can choose to apply a specific value, make the value blank, or
calculate a value based on a formula you create.
Filter Condition/Criteria
Condition on particular fields that qualifies items to be included in a
list view or report, such as “State equals California.”
Folder
A folder is a place where you can store reports, dashboards, documents,
or email templates. Folders can be public, hidden, or shared, and can be
set to read-only or read/write. You control who has access to its contents
based on roles, permissions, public groups, and license types.
Force.com
The salesforce.com platform for building applications in the cloud.
Force.com combines a powerful user interface, operating system, and
database to allow you to customize and deploy applications in the cloud
for your entire enterprise.
340
Glossary
Force.com App Menu
A menu that enables users to switch between customizable applications
(or “apps”) with a single click. The Force.com app menu displays at the
top of every page in the user interface.
Force.com IDE
An Eclipse plug-in that allows developers to manage, author, debug and
deploy Force.com applications in the Eclipse development environment.
Web Services API
A Web services application programming interface that provides access
to your Salesforce organization's information. See also SOAP API and
Bulk API.
Foreign key
A field whose value is the same as the primary key of another table. You
can think of a foreign key as a copy of a primary key from another table.
A relationship is made between two tables by matching the values of
the foreign key in one table with the values of the primary key in another.
Formula Field
A type of custom field. Formula fields automatically calculate their values
based on the values of merge fields, expressions, or other values.
Function
Built-in formulas that you can customize with input parameters. For
example, the DATE function creates a date field type from a given year,
month, and day.
G
Global Variable
A special merge field that you can use to reference data in your
organization.
A method access modifier for any method that needs to be referenced
outside of the application, either in the SOAP API or by other Apex
code.
Group
A groups is a set of users. Groups can contain individual users, other
groups, or the users in a role. Groups can be used to help define sharing
access to data or to specify which data to synchronize when using
Connect for Outlook or Connect for Lotus Notes.
341
Glossary
Users can define their own personal groups. Administrators can create
public groups for use by everyone in the organization.
Group Edition
A product designed for small businesses and workgroups with a limited
number of users.
H
Hierarchy Custom Settings
A type of custom setting that uses a built-in hierarchical logic that lets
you “personalize” settings for specific profiles or users. The hierarchy
logic checks the organization, profile, and user settings for the current
user and returns the most specific, or “lowest,” value. In the hierarchy,
settings for an organization are overridden by profile settings, which, in
turn, are overridden by user settings.
Home Tab
Starting page from which users can choose sidebar shortcuts and options,
view current tasks and activities, or select another tab.
Hover Detail
Hover details display an interactive overlay containing detailed
information about a record when users hover the mouse over a link to
that record in the Recent Items list on the sidebar or in a lookup field
on a record detail page. Users can quickly view information about a
record before clicking View for the record's detail page or Edit for the
edit page. The fields displayed in the hover details are determined by
the record's mini page layout. The fields that display in document hover
details are not customizable.
I
ID
See Salesforce Record ID.
Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
A software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software
developers including a source code editor, testing and debugging tools,
and integration with source code control systems.
Immediate Action
A workflow action that executes instantly when the conditions of a
workflow rule are met.
342
Glossary
Import Wizard
A tool for importing data into your Salesforce organization, accessible
from Setup.
Instance
The cluster of software and hardware represented as a single logical
server that hosts an organization's data and runs their applications. The
Force.com platform runs on multiple instances, but data for any single
organization is always consolidated on a single instance.
J
Junction Object
A custom object with two master-detail relationships. Using a custom
junction object, you can model a “many-to-many” relationship between
two objects. For example, you may have a custom object called “Bug”
that relates to the standard case object such that a bug could be related
to multiple cases and a case could also be related to multiple bugs.
K
No Glossary items for this entry.
L
Layout
See Page Layout.
Length
Parameter for custom text fields that specifies the maximum number of
characters (up to 255) that a user can enter in the field.
Parameter for number, currency, and percent fields that specifies the
number of digits you can enter to the left of the decimal point, for
example, 123.98 for an entry of 3.
Letterhead
Determines the basic attributes of an HTML email template. Users can
create a letterhead that includes attributes like background color, logo,
font size, and font color.
List View
A list display of items (for example, accounts or contacts) based on
specific criteria. Salesforce provides some predefined views.
343
Glossary
In the Console tab, the list view is the top frame that displays a list view
of records based on specific criteria. The list views you can select to
display in the console are the same list views defined on the tabs of other
objects. You cannot create a list view within the console.
Locale
The country or geographic region in which the user is located. The
setting affects the format of date and number fields, for example, dates
in the English (United States) locale display as 06/30/2000 and as
30/06/2000 in the English (United Kingdom) locale.
In Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Edition
organizations, a user’s individual Locale setting overrides the
organization’s Default Locale setting. In Personal and Group
Editions, the organization-level locale field is called Locale, not
Default Locale.
Long Text Area
Data type of custom field that allows entry of up to 32,000 characters
on separate lines.
Lookup Dialog
Popup dialog available for some fields that allows you to search for a
new item, such as a contact, account, or user.
Lookup Field
A type of field that contains a linkable value to another record. You can
display lookup fields on page layouts where the object has a lookup or
master-detail relationship with another object. For example, cases have
a lookup relationship with assets that allows users to select an asset using
a lookup dialog from the case edit page and click the name of the asset
from the case detail page.
Lookup Relationship
A relationship between two records so you can associate records with
each other. For example, cases have a lookup relationship with assets
that lets you associate a particular asset with a case. On one side of the
relationship, a lookup field allows users to click a lookup icon and select
another record from a popup window. On the associated record, you
can then display a related list to show all of the records that have been
linked to it. If a lookup field references a record that has been deleted,
by default Salesforce clears the lookup field. Alternatively, you can
prevent records from being deleted if they’re in a lookup relationship.
344
Glossary
M
Manual Sharing
Record-level access rules that allow record owners to give read and edit
permissions to other users who might not have access to the record any
other way.
Many-to-Many Relationship
A relationship where each side of the relationship can have many children
on the other side. Many-to-many relationships are implemented through
the use of junction objects.
Master-Detail Relationship
A relationship between two different types of records that associates the
records with each other. For example, accounts have a master-detail
relationship with opportunities. This type of relationship affects record
deletion, security, and makes the lookup relationship field required on
the page layout.
Master Picklist
A complete list of picklist values available for a record type or business
process.
Matrix Report
Matrix reports are similar to summary reports but allow you to group
and summarize data by both rows and columns. They can be used as the
source report for dashboard components. Use this type for comparing
related totals, especially if you have large amounts of data to summarize
and you need to compare values in several different fields, or you want
to look at data by date and by product, person, or geography.
Merge Field
A field you can put in an email template, mail merge template, custom
link, or formula to incorporate values from a record. For example, Dear
{!Contact.FirstName}, uses a contact merge field to obtain the
value of a contact record's First Name field to address an email
recipient by his or her first name.
Metadata
Information about the structure, appearance, and functionality of an
organization and any of its parts. Force.com uses XML to describe
metadata.
345
Glossary
Mini Page Layout
A subset of the items in a record's existing page layout that administrators
choose to display in the Console tab's Mini View and in Hover Details.
Mini page layouts inherit record type and profile associations, related
lists, fields, and field access settings from the page layout.
Multitenancy
An application model where all users and apps share a single, common
infrastructure and code base.
N
Notes
Miscellaneous information pertaining to a specific record.
O
Object
An object allows you to store information in your Salesforce organization.
The object is the overall definition of the type of information you are
storing. For example, the case object allow you to store information
regarding customer inquiries. For each object, your organization will
have multiple records that store the information about specific instances
of that type of data. For example, you might have a case record to store
the information about Joe Smith's training inquiry and another case
record to store the information about Mary Johnson's configuration
issue.
Object-Level Help
Custom help text that you can provide for any custom object. It displays
on custom object record home (overview), detail, and edit pages, as well
as list views and related lists.
Object-Level Security
Settings that allow an administrator to hide whole objects from users so
that they don't know that type of data exists. Object-level security is
specified with object permissions.
One-to-Many Relationship
A relationship in which a single object is related to many other objects.
For example, an account may have one or more related contacts.
346
Glossary
Organization
A deployment of Salesforce with a defined set of licensed users. An
organization is the virtual space provided to an individual customer of
salesforce.com. Your organization includes all of your data and
applications, and is separate from all other organizations.
Organization-Wide Defaults
Settings that allow you to specify the baseline level of data access that a
user has in your organization. For example, you can set organization-wide
defaults so that any user can see any record of a particular object that is
enabled via their object permissions, but they need extra permissions to
edit one.
Outbound Message
An outbound message is a workflow, approval, or milestone action that
sends the information you specify to an endpoint you designate, such as
an external service. An outbound message sends the data in the specified
fields in the form of a SOAP message to the endpoint. Outbound
messaging is configured in the Salesforce setup menu. Then you must
configure the external endpoint. You can create a listener for the messages
using the SOAP API.
Overlay
An overlay displays additional information when you hover your mouse
over certain user interface elements. Depending on the overlay, it will
close when you move your mouse away, click outside of the overlay, or
click a close button.
Owner
Individual user to which a record (for example, a contact or case) is
assigned.
P
Page Layout
Page layout is the organization of fields, custom links, and related lists
on a record detail or edit page. Use page layouts primarily for organizing
pages for your users. In Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions,
use field-level security to restrict users’ access to specific fields.
Picklist
Selection list of options available for specific fields in a Salesforce object,
for example, the Industry field for accounts. Users can choose a single
347
Glossary
value from a list of options rather than make an entry directly in the
field. See also Master Picklist.
Picklist Values
Selections displayed in drop-down lists for particular fields. Some values
come predefined, and other values can be changed or defined by an
administrator.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
An environment where developers use programming tools offered by a
service provider to create applications and deploy them in a cloud. The
application is hosted as a service and provided to customers via the
Internet. The PaaS vendor provides an API for creating and extending
specialized applications. The PaaS vendor also takes responsibility for
the daily maintenance, operation, and support of the deployed application
and each customer's data. The service alleviates the need for programmers
to install, configure, and maintain the applications on their own
hardware, software, and related IT resources. Services can be delivered
using the PaaS environment to any market segment.
Platform Edition
A Salesforce edition based on either Enterprise Edition or Unlimited
Edition that does not include any of the standard Salesforce CRM apps,
such as Sales or Service & Support.
Primary Key
A relational database concept. Each table in a relational database has a
field in which the data value uniquely identifies the record. This field is
called the primary key. The relationship is made between two tables by
matching the values of the foreign key in one table with the values of
the primary key in another.
Printable View
An option that displays a page in a print-ready format.
Private Sharing
Private sharing is the process of sharing an uploaded package by using
the URL you receive from Salesforce. This URL is not listed in the
AppExchange. Using the unlisted URL allows you to share a package
without going through the listing process or making it public.
Process Visualizer
A tool that displays a graphical version of an approval process. The
view-only diagram is presented as a flowchart. The diagram and an
informational sidebar panel can help you visualize and understand the
348
Glossary
defined steps, rule criteria, and actions that comprise your approval
process.
Production Organization
A Salesforce organization that has live users accessing data.
Professional Edition
A Salesforce edition designed for businesses who need full-featured
CRM functionality.
Profile
Defines a user’s permission to perform different functions within
Salesforce. For example, the Solution Manager profile gives a user access
to create, edit, and delete solutions.
Q
Queue
A holding area for items before they are processed. Salesforce uses queues
in a number of different features and technologies.
R
Read Only
One of the standard profiles to which a user can be assigned. Read Only
users can view and report on information based on their role in the
organization. (That is, if the Read Only user is the CEO, they can view
all data in the system. If the Read Only user has the role of Western
Rep, they can view all data for their role and any role below them in the
hierarchy.)
Recent Items
List of links in the sidebar for most recently accessed records. Note that
not all types of records are listed in the recent items.
Record
A single instance of a Salesforce object. For example, “John Jones” might
be the name of a contact record.
Record ID
See Salesforce Record ID.
349
Glossary
Record-Level Security
A method of controlling data in which you can allow a particular user
to view and edit an object, but then restrict the records that the user is
allowed to see.
Record Name
A standard field on all Salesforce objects. Whenever a record name is
displayed in a Force.com application, the value is represented as a link
to a detail view of the record. A record name can be either free-form
text or an autonumber field. Record Name does not have to be a unique
value.
Record Type
A record type is a field available for certain records that can include some
or all of the standard and custom picklist values for that record. You can
associate record types with profiles to make only the included picklist
values available to users with that profile.
Recycle Bin
A page that lets you view and restore deleted information. Access the
Recycle Bin by using the link in the sidebar.
Related List
A section of a record or other detail page that lists items related to that
record. For example, the Stage History related list of an opportunity or
the Open Activities related list of a case.
Related List Hover Links
A type of link that allows you to quickly view information on a detail
page about related lists, by hovering your mouse over the link. Your
administrator must enable the display of hover links. The displayed text
contains the corresponding related list and its number of records. You
can also click this type of link to jump to the content of the related list
without having to scroll down the page.
Related Object
Objects chosen by an administrator to display in the Console tab's mini
view when records of a particular type are shown in the console's detail
view. For example, when a case is in the detail view, an administrator
can choose to display an associated account, contact, or asset in the mini
view.
350
Glossary
Relationship
A connection between two objects, used to create related lists in page
layouts and detail levels in reports. Matching values in a specified field
in both objects are used to link related data; for example, if one object
stores data about companies and another object stores data about people,
a relationship allows you to find out which people work at the company.
Report
A report returns a set of records that meets certain criteria, and displays
it in organized rows and columns. Report data can be filtered, grouped,
and displayed graphically as a chart. See Tabular Report, Summary
Report, and Matrix Report.
Report Type
A report type defines the set of records and fields available to a report
based on the relationships between a primary object and its related
objects. Reports display only records that meet the criteria defined in
the report type. Salesforce provides a set of pre-defined standard report
types; administrators can create custom report types as well.
Role Hierarchy
A record-level security setting that defines different levels of users such
that users at higher levels can view and edit information owned by or
shared with users beneath them in the role hierarchy, regardless of the
organization-wide sharing model settings.
Roll-Up Summary Field
A field type that automatically provides aggregate values from child
records in a master-detail relationship.
Running User
Each dashboard has a running user, whose security settings determine
which data to display in a dashboard. If the running user is a specific
user, all dashboard viewers see data based on the security settings of that
user—regardless of their own personal security settings. For dynamic
dashboards, you can set the running user to be the logged-in user, so
that each user sees the dashboard according to his or her own access
level.
S
SaaS
See Software as a Service (SaaS).
351
Glossary
Salesforce Record ID
A unique 15- or 18-character alphanumeric string that identifies a single
record in Salesforce.
Sandbox Organization
A nearly identical copy of a Salesforce production organization. You can
create multiple sandboxes in separate environments for a variety of
purposes, such as testing and training, without compromising the data
and applications in your production environment.
Save As
Option on any standard, public, or custom report to save the parameters
of the report without altering the original report. It creates a new custom
report with your saved changes.
Save & New
Alternative “save” on most pages with which you can save your current
changes and create a new entry.
Search
Feature that lets you search for information that matches specified
keywords. If you have sidebar search, enter search terms in the Search
section of the sidebar or click Advanced Search... for more search
options. If you have global search, enter search terms in the search box
in the header.
Search Layout
The organization of fields included in search results, in lookup dialogs,
and in the key lists on tab home pages.
Setup
An administration area where you can customize and define Force.com
applications. Access Setup through the Your Name > Setup link at
the top of Salesforce pages.
Sharing
Allowing other users to view or edit information you own. There are
different ways to share data:
•
•
352
Sharing Model—defines the default organization-wide access levels
that users have to each other’s information and whether to use the
hierarchies when determining access to data.
Role Hierarchy—defines different levels of users such that users at
higher levels can view and edit information owned by or shared with
Glossary
•
•
•
users beneath them in the role hierarchy, regardless of the
organization-wide sharing model settings.
Sharing Rules—allow an administrator to specify that all information
created by users within a given group or role is automatically shared
to the members of another group or role.
Manual Sharing—allows individual users to share records with other
users or groups.
Apex-Managed Sharing—enables developers to programmatically
manipulate sharing to support their application’s behavior. See
Apex-Managed Sharing.
Sharing Model
Behavior defined by your administrator that determines default access
by users to different types of records.
Sharing Rule
Type of default sharing created by administrators. Allows users in a
specified group or role to have access to all information created by users
within a given group or role.
Show/Hide Details
Option available for reports that lets you show/hide the details of
individual column values in report results.
Sidebar
Column appearing on the left side of each page that provides links to
recent items and other resources.
Sites
Force.com Sites enables you to create public websites and applications
that are directly integrated with your Salesforce organization—without
requiring users to log in with a username and password.
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
A protocol that defines a uniform way of passing XML-encoded data.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
A delivery model where a software application is hosted as a service and
provided to customers via the Internet. The SaaS vendor takes
responsibility for the daily maintenance, operation, and support of the
application and each customer's data. The service alleviates the need for
customers to install, configure, and maintain applications with their own
hardware, software, and related IT resources. Services can be delivered
using the SaaS model to any market segment.
353
Glossary
Source Report
A custom report scheduled to run and load data as records into a target
object for an analytic snapshot.
Standard Object
A built-in object included with the Force.com platform. You can also
build custom objects to store information that is unique to your app.
Summary Report
Summary reports are similar to tabular reports, but also allow users to
group rows of data, view subtotals, and create charts. They can be used
as the source report for dashboard components. Use this type for a report
to show subtotals based on the value of a particular field or when you
want to create a hierarchical list, such as all opportunities for your team,
subtotaled by Stage and Owner.
System Administrator
See Administrator (System Administrator).
T
Tab
A tab is an interface component that allows you to navigate around an
app. A tab serves as the starting point for viewing, editing, and entering
information for a particular object. When you click a tab at the top of
the page, the corresponding tab home page for that object appears. A
tab can be associated with an object, a Web page, or a Visualforce page.
Tabular Report
Tabular reports are the simplest and fastest way to look at data. Similar
to a spreadsheet, they consist simply of an ordered set of fields in
columns, with each matching record listed in a row. Tabular reports are
best for creating lists of records or a list with a single grand total. They
can't be used to create groups of data or charts, and can't be used in
dashboards unless rows are limited. Examples include contact mailing
lists and activity reports.
Task
Assigns a task to a user you specify. You can specify the Subject,
Status, Priority, and Due Date of the task. Tasks are workflow
and approval actions that are triggered by workflow rules or approval
processes.
For Calender-related tasks, see Activity (Calendar Events/Tasks).
354
Glossary
Text
Data type of a custom field that allows entry of any combination of
letters, numbers, or symbols, up to a maximum length of 255 characters.
Text Area
A custom field data type that allows entry of up to 255 characters on
separate lines.
Text Area (Long)
See Long Text Area.
Time-Dependent Workflow Action
A workflow action that executes when the conditions of a workflow rule
and an associated time trigger are met.
Time Trigger
An event that starts according to a specified time threshold, such as
seven days before an opportunity close date. For example, you might
define a time-based workflow action that sends email to the account
manager when a scheduled milestone will occur in seven days.
U
Unlimited Edition
Unlimited Edition is salesforce.com's flagship solution for maximizing
CRM success and extending that success across the entire enterprise
through the Force.com platform.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
The global address of a website, document, or other resource on the
Internet. For example, http://www.salesforce.com.
User Interface
The layouts that specify how a data model should be displayed.
V
Validation Rule
A rule that prevents a record from being saved if it does not meet the
standards that are specified.
Visualforce
A simple, tag-based markup language that allows developers to easily
define custom pages and components for apps built on the platform.
355
Glossary
Each tag corresponds to a coarse or fine-grained component, such as a
section of a page, a related list, or a field. The components can either
be controlled by the same logic that is used in standard Salesforce pages,
or developers can associate their own logic with a controller written in
Apex.
Visualforce Controller
See Controller, Visualforce.
Visualforce Page
A web page created using Visualforce. Typically, Visualforce pages
present information relevant to your organization, but they can also
modify or capture data. They can be rendered in several ways, such as a
PDF document or an email attachment, and can be associated with a
CSS style.
W
Web Links
See Custom Links.
Web Service
A mechanism by which two applications can easily exchange data over
the Internet, even if they run on different platforms, are written in
different languages, or are geographically remote from each other.
Web Tab
A custom tab that allows your users to use external websites from within
the application.
Wizard
A user interface that leads a user through a complex task in multiple
steps.
Workflow and Approval Actions
Workflow and approval actions consist of email alerts, tasks, field
updates, and outbound messages that can be triggered by a workflow
rule or approval process.
Workflow Action
A workflow action is an email alert, field update, outbound message, or
task that fires when the conditions of a workflow rule are met.
356
Glossary
Workflow Email Alert
A workflow action that sends an email when a workflow rule is triggered.
Unlike workflow tasks, which can only be assigned to application users,
workflow alerts can be sent to any user or contact, as long as they have
a valid email address.
Workflow Field Update
A workflow action that changes the value of a particular field on a record
when a workflow rule is triggered.
Workflow Outbound Message
A workflow action that sends data to an external Web service, such as
another cloud computing application. Outbound messages are used
primarily with composite apps.
Workflow Queue
A list of workflow actions that are scheduled to fire based on workflow
rules that have one or more time-dependent workflow actions.
Workflow Rule
A workflow rule sets workflow actions into motion when its designated
conditions are met. You can configure workflow actions to execute
immediately when a record meets the conditions in your workflow rule,
or set time triggers that execute the workflow actions on a specific day.
Workflow Task
A workflow action that assigns a task to an application user when a
workflow rule is triggered.
X
XML (Extensible Markup Language)
A markup language that enables the sharing and transportation of
structured data. All Force.com components that are retrieved or deployed
through the Metadata API are represented by XML definitions.
Y
No Glossary items for this entry.
Z
Zip File
A data compression and archive format.
357
Glossary
A collection of files retrieved or deployed by the Metadata API. See also
Local Project.
358
Index
Index
__c suffix 39, 50
* search wildcard 117
&& function 75
|| function 75
A
About this book 2
Actions, approval
See Approval actions 240
Actions, workflow
See Workflow actions 205
Activating
approval processes 243
time-dependent workflow 222
workflow rules 213
Activities, enabling for custom objects 41
Administration
delegating 188
setup area 33
Administrative permissions
global 188
Advanced formula editor 68
Alerts, workflow
See Workflow email alerts 206
Amazon.com 2
Analytics
See Reports 250
AND() function 75
Apex
about 16, 295
API
__c suffix 39, 50
about 15, 293
field labels vs. names 50
labels vs. names, field 50
labels vs. names, object 39
name 65
object labels vs. names 39
App setup area 33
AppExchange
partner program 331
Approval actions
about 240
creating 241
See also Workflow actions 240
Approval History related list 236, 245
Approval processes
actions 229
activating 243
approving and rejecting records 246
creating 232
delegate approvers 237
history information 235
Items to Approve related list 246
jump-start vs. standard setup 232
multiple approvers 239
page layouts 234
planning 231
record editability 234
Recruiting app 22
related users 239
Submit for Approval button 244
testing 243
visualizer 243
wireless devices 235
Approval steps
about 236
approval and rejection actions 238
creating 237
designating an approver 237
ordering 237
Approvals in Chatter 231
Approving records 246
Apps
about 34
basic elements 9
benefits 10
building iteratively 37
cloud computing 1
collaborative 11
359
Index
Apps (continued)
creating 34
custom app wizard 34
data-centric 10
databases 25
debugging 37
default tab display 144
detail pages 10
distributing on AppExchange 17
edit pages 10
fields 28
forms 10
logos 36
metadata-driven 14
multitenant 13
navigation 10
objects 26
profiles and 36
setting a default 144
tabs 9, 36, 42
Architecture, multitenant 13
Areas, page layout field 80
Assigning page layouts 183
Attachments, enabling for custom objects 41
Attributes, Visualforce 299
Audience, book 3
Auto-number data types 40
Averages, report 266
B
Blank spaces, page layouts 83
Business logic 204, 229
Button layout, list view 101
Buttons
adding to page layouts 314
creating custom list 312
Submit for Approval 244
C
Candidate custom object
creating 92
Candidate Map
adding to page layouts 303
code 302
360
Candidate Map (continued)
creating 297
testing 304
Case queues 216
Channel, Force.com iTunes 331
Charts
dashboard 277–278
See Reports 250
Chatter
about 196
adding elements to Visualforce pages 312
feed tracking 196
following 199
groups 201
Chatter Desktop 200
Chatter mobile app 200
Checkbox fields 52
Cleansing data 71
Cloning profiles 143
Cloud computing
apps 1
databases and 25
platforms 2
Code
Apex
16
about 16
Force.com platform 291
Code, Candidate Map 302
Collaborative apps 11
Colors, tab 43
Combination chart 270
Communication templates 224
Company Dashboards folder 277
Components, dashboard 277
Concatenate 111
Conditional highlighting 270
Conditions, validation rule error 73
Considerations, recruiting app 20
Contents, book 3
Context 306
Contract Manager profile 140
Controllers, Visualforce 299
Controlling picklist fields 59
Crawlers, Web 322
Create New drop-down list 45
Index
Cross-object formula fields 108
Currency fields 52
Custom app wizard 34
Custom email templates 225
Custom formula fields
See Formula fields 64
Custom objects
detail page 47
Grant access using hierarchies 167
queues 216
See also Objects 21, 38
Custom tab wizard 41
Customize Application permission 188
D
Dashboard tab 275
Dashboards
about 272
adding a chart component 278
adding a gauge component 279
adding a metric component 281
adding a table component 280
adding to the Home tab 282
components 277
creating 275
Recruiting app 24
refreshing 283
running user 276
scheduling 283
security 276
Data cleansing 71
Data integrity 179
Data types
auto-number 40
changing field 50
text 40
Data values
restricting with page layouts 78
short cut for entering numbers 239
Data-centric apps 10
Data, importing 128
Database concepts 30
Databases
data values 28
definition 26
Databases (continued)
entities 26
fields 28
foreign keys 30
objects 26
primary keys 30
records 27
relational 28
tables 26
Date fields 53
Days Open field, calculating the 65
Debugging apps 37
Default app, setting a 144
Default field values 70
Default workflow user 222
Defaults, organization-wide 161
Delegated administration groups
defining 191
verifying 193
Delegates, approval process 237
Delegating administration
about 188
groups 190
groups, defining 191
groups, verifying 193
object-level permissions 189
Demoing apps 17
Dependency matrix, field 60
Dependent picklist fields
creating 60
Deployment status 41
Detail pages 10, 46
Developer Console 229
Developer Edition 5
Developer Force
about 5
Developer resources 329
Development mode, Visualforce 296
Development, metadata-driven 14
Directory, AppExchange 17
Documentation, Force.com platform 330
Dreamforce event 330
E
eBay 2, 13
361
Index
Edit pages 10, 46
Editability, record 234
Editor, advanced formula 68
Education services, Force.com platform 330
Email alerts, workflow
See Workflow email alerts 206
Email templates
creating 224, 231
merge fields 224
naming 226
selecting merge field type 226
types 225
Employment Website custom object 119
Entities, database 26
Entity relationship diagram, Recruiting app 126
Error checking records 71
Error conditions, validation rule 73
Events
enabling for custom objects 41
Exercises, book 5
External ID fields 93
F
Favorite icons, site 322
Feedback, sending book 5
Feeds 322
Field dependency matrix 60
Field history tracking
enabling for custom objects 41
Field updates, workflow
See Workflow field updates 206
Field-level security
defining in profiles 157
vs. page layouts 156
Fields
__c suffix 50
adding to lookup dialogs 103
adding to related lists 103
adding to related lists on objects without a tab
116
adding to search results 103
adding to tab home pages 103
advanced 56
changing data types 50
creating checkbox 52
362
Fields (continued)
creating currency 52
creating date 53
creating dependent picklist 60
creating formulas 66
creating lookup relationship 90
creating master-detail relationship 107
creating multilevel master-detail relationships
108
creating picklist 56
creating text 49
data type 48
default values 70
definition 28, 48
dependent picklist 59
external ID 93
foreign keys 30
formula 64
hierarchical relationship 233
indexed 93
lookup relationship 89
master-detail relationship 89
merge 64, 224
Owner 45
page layouts 78
picklist, multi-select 56
picklist, standard 56
primary keys 30
properties 84
read-only 84
required 35, 84
restricting with page layouts 78
searchable 93
standard vs. custom 28
summary report 266
validation rules 71
Filters
adding fields to search 103
setting report 262, 268
Folders
Company Dashboards 277
report 255
Unfiled Public Email Templates 226
Force.com platform
domain name registering 318
about 17
Index
Force.com platform (continued)
API 15
app menu 37
AppExchange directory 17
checkout 33
coding on 291
collaborative apps 11
data-centric apps 10
databases 25
domain name 318
help and training 330
integrating with 293
introduction 7
Metadata API 15
metadata-driven development 14
mobile 16
multitenancy 13
objects 26
partners 331
podcasts 331
records 27
setup area 32
structured information 10
supporting technologies 12
videos 331
Force.com Platform Fundamentals book
audience 3
contents 3
following exercises in 5
online version 3
screenshots 4
sending feedback 5
Foreign keys 30, 119
Forms 10
Formula fields
about 64
advanced editor 68
checking syntax 70
creating 66
custom report summary 266
IF() function 66
ISBLANK() function 66
merge fields in 64
sample formulas 65
TODAY() function 65
Formulas
cross-object 108
default value 70
spanning 108
Functionality, recruiting app 20
Functions
&& 75
|| 75
AND() 75
HYPERLINK 110
IF() 66
ISBLANK() 66, 75
ISPICKVAL() 75
OR() 75
TODAY() 65
G
Gauges, dashboard 277, 279
Google 2, 13
Google Analytics 322
Grant Access Using Hierarchies checkbox 167
Graphs
See Reports 250
Grouping report records 259, 265
Groupings, page layout field 80
Groups, public 174
H
Help and training options 330
Hierarchical relationship fields 233
Hierarchies, role
See Role hierarchies 138
Highlighting, conditional
See Conditional highlighting 270
Hiring Manager permission set 148
History tracking, field
enabling for custom objects 41
History, approval process 235
Home tab
adding a dashboard 282
HTML email templates 225
HYPERLINK 110
Hyperlinks
See Links 10
363
Index
I
Icons
lookup 90
site favorite 322
tab 43
ID fields, external 93
IF() function 66
Importing data
viewing the import queue 130
Indexed fields 93
Information, structured 10
Installing apps 17
Interviewer permission set 153
Introductory splash pages 34
ISBLANK() function 66, 75
ISPICKVAL() function 75
Items to Approve related list 246
iTunes, Force.com platform podcasts on 331
J
JavaScript, with Visualforce 302
Job Application custom object
creating 97
Job applications
Mass Update Status page 307
Mass Update Status, about 305
Job Posting custom object 118, 121
Joined reports 253
Junction objects 118
K
Keys
foreign 119
primary and foreign 30
L
Labels vs. names
field 39, 50
object 39, 50
Layout, list view button 101
Layouts, page
See Page layouts 78
364
Layouts, search
See Search layouts 101
Lead queues 216
Links 10
List Buttons
creating custom 312
List pages 34, 47
List view button layout 101
List view, role hierarchy 170
List views 9
Lists, related 47, 88
Locked records 245
Logic, business 204
Logos, app 36
Lookup dialogs
* search wildcard 117
adding fields to 103
Lookup relationship fields
creating 90
icon 90
M
Manage Users permission 188
Manager field 233
Manual sharing
defining 178
Many-to-many relationships 117
Map feature, Recruiting app
creating 297
Marketing User profile 140
Markup, Visualforce
using 299
Mash-ups
about 2, 293
implementing 297
Mass Update Status
about 305
page 307
planning 306
testing 315
Master-detail relationship
primary 122
secondary 123
secondary, sharing implications 177
Master-detail relationship fields
creating 107
Index
Master-detail relationship fields (continued)
creating multilevel 108
organization-wide defaults 166
Matrix reports 253
Matrix, field dependency 60
Menu, Force.com platform
about 37
Merge fields
name 65
Messages, workflow outbound
See Workflow outbound messages 206
Metadata API
about 15
Metadata-driven development 14
Metrics, dashboard 277, 281
Microsoft 10
Mobile app, Chatter 200
Mobile, Force.com platform 16
Model, metadata-driven development 14
Models, sharing
See Organization-wide defaults 161
Modify All Data permission 188
Modify All permission 189
Monitoring the workflow queue 223
Multi-select picklist fields 56
Multiple users, supporting 11
Multitenant architecture 13
N
Names vs. labels
field 39, 50
object 39, 50
Navigation 10, 42
Notes, enabling for custom objects 41
Number values, short cut for entering 239
O
Object-level permissions 189
Object-level security
vs. field-level security 146
Objects
__c suffix 39
about 38
adding checkbox fields 52
Objects (continued)
adding currency fields 52
adding date fields 53
adding dependent picklist fields 60
adding formula fields 66
adding lookup fields 90
adding master-detail fields 107
adding multilevel master-detail fields 108
adding picklist fields 56
adding text fields 49
auto-numbered 40
creating 38
creating a tab 42
custom 21
deployment status 41
enabling activities 41
enabling field history tracking 41
enabling notes and attachments 41
enabling reports 41
junction 118
labels vs. names 40
page layouts 78
queues 216
related lists 47, 88
relationships 22, 29, 88, 117
reporting on 257
setting object-level permissions 146
standard User 90
standard vs. custom 27, 38
validation rules 71
workflow actions and 211
workflow and 208
One-to-many relationships 117
Online book version 3
Operators
Concatenate 111
OR() function 75
Oracle 10
Organization-wide defaults
determining 162
master-detail relationship fields 166
setting 165
Organizations 34
Organizing fields on pages 78
Other Reports category 257
365
Index
Outbound messages, workflow
See Workflow outbound messages 206
Owner default field 45
P
Page editor, Visualforce 296
Page layouts
adding custom list buttons 314
adding Visualforce page 303
Approver 234
Assigning 183
blank spaces 83
Candidate Map 303
creating 182
Edit Layout link 96
editor 78
palette 79
quick save 83
Read-only fields 84
related list properties 116
Required fields 84
restricting field access with 78
saving 83
sections 80
vs. field-level security 156
Pages
detail vs. edit 46
list 34, 47
page layout editor 78
Sharing Settings 165
splash 34
Palette, page layout 79
Partner program 331
Permission sets
about 141
creating 148
Permissions
administrative 188
object- vs. record-level 146
Personal setup area 33
Picklist fields
creating 56
creating dependent 60
dependent vs. controlling 59
Planning, Mass Update Status feature 306
366
Platform, Salesforce
See Force.com platform 7
Platforms, cloud computing 2
Podcasts 331
Position custom object 38
Primary keys 30
Process Visualizer 243
Processes, approval
See Approval processes 229
Profiles
about 140
apps and 36
cloning 143
creating 143
defining field-level security in 157
field permissions 138
field-level security 155
object permissions 137
object-level security 139
setting a default app 144
standard 140
tabs and 44
vs. roles 168
Properties, field 84
Public access
about 17
settings 327
Public groups 174
Public Jobs page 324
Q
Questions to determine org-wide defaults 162
Queues
about 216
creating 216
import 130
notifying members 216
time-dependent workflow 223
viewing 222
R
Read Only profile 140
Read-only fields 84
Record ID 110
Index
Record type field 182
Record types
about 180
creating 180
Record-level security
about 161
vs. object-level security 146
Records
approving and rejecting 246
editability in approval processes 234
grouping in a report 259, 265
locked 245
submitting for approval 244
validating before saving 71
viewing in queues 222
Recruiter profile 143
Recruiting app
calculating the Days Open field 65
Candidate Map 297
Candidate object 92
coding for 291
controlling data access 132
custom objects 21
design overview 21
Employment Website object 119
entity relationship diagram 126
Hiring Manager permission set 148
importing sample data 128
Interviewer permission set 153
introduction 19
Job Application object 96
Job Posting custom object 118
Job Posting object 121
objects 26
permission sets 142
Position custom object 38
profiles 142
reports and dashboards 24
requirements 20
Review object 105
role hierarchy 167
security and sharing rules 22
Standard Employee profile 147
tabs 21
Visualforce 24
workflow and approvals 22
Refreshing dashboards 283
Registering a Force.com domain name 318
Rejecting records 246
Related lists
adding fields to 103
adding fields to objects without a tab 116
Approval History 236, 245
Items to Approve 246
properties 116
Relational databases 28
Relationship fields 89
Relationships
about 88
hierarchical 233
junction objects 118
lookup custom fields 89
many-to-many 117
master-detail custom fields 89
overview 89
Recruiting app entity relationship diagram 126
reporting on 257
Report builder
custom report 257
Report types, custom
about 284
creating 284
Reports
about 250
charts 263, 270
Combination chart 270
conditional highlighting 270
creating matrix 264
creating summary 256
dashboards 272
enabling for custom objects 41
filtering data 262, 268
folders 255
formats 252
grouping records 259, 265
objects in 257
Other Reports category 257
Recruiting app 24
summary fields 266
tab 250, 255
Required fields 35, 84
Requirements, recruiting app 20
367
Index
Resources, developer 329
Restricting fields with page layouts 78
Review custom object
creating 106
Reviewing apps 17
Role hierarchies
about 167
defining 169
Recruiting app 167
views 170
vs. an org chart 167
vs. profiles 168
Roles
assigning to workflow tasks 212
Roll-up summary fields
about 113
creating 113
Rules, sharing
See Sharing rules 138
Rules, validation
See Validation rules 71
Rules, workflow
See Workflow rules 205
Running user, dashboard 276
S
368
Salesforce Mobile 16
salesforce.com
Training & Certification 6
Sample formulas 65
Sandbox 5
Scheduling dashboards 283
Schema Builder 91
Screenshots, book 4
Search layouts
adding fields to 102
Searchable fields 93
Searching records in lookups 117
Sections, page layout 80
Security
criteria based sharing 177
Security and sharing
designing for your organization 137
field permissions 138
field-level security 155
manual sharing 138, 178
Security and sharing (continued)
object permissions 137
object-level security 139
organization-wide defaults 138, 161
overview 137
profiles vs. roles 168
record types 180
record-level security 138, 161
Recruiting app 22
role hierarchies 138, 167
setting object-level permissions 146
sharing rules 138, 173
single sign-on 193
Sending book feedback 5
Services, Web
See Web services 293
Setup area
detail pages vs. edit pages 46
Sharing
criteria-based 177
overriding 189
Sharing apps 17
Sharing models
See Organization-wide defaults 161
Sharing rules
about 173
creating 175
public groups 174
Sharing settings page 165
Sharing, manual
See Manual sharing 138
Short cut for entering number values 239
Site templates 321
Sites
about 317
active site home page 327
creating 320
favorite icon 322
Force.com domain names, about 318
public access settings 327
Public Jobs page 324
registering a Force.com domain name 318
See Sites 317
testing 328
Sites, Force.com platform 17
Index
SOAP API
See API 15
Solution Manager profile 140
Sorted list view, role hierarchy 170
Spanning formula fields 108
Specifications, recruiting app 20
Splash pages 34
Standard Employee profile 147
Standard objects
User 90
Standard picklist fields 56
Standard profiles
editing 141
Standard User profile 140
Status
Mass Update Status page 307
Mass Update Status, about 305
Structured information 10
Styles, tab 43
Submit for Approval button 244
Suffix, __c 39, 50
Summary fields, report
about 266
creating custom 266
Summary reports 252
Sums, report 266
Syndication feeds 322
Syntax, checking formula 70
System Administrator profile
permissions 188
System overview 33
T
Tab bar 33
Tables
dashboard 277, 280
database 26
Tabs
about 42
adding fields to tab home pages 103
appending to users' customizations 44
creating 42
Dashboard 275
display defaults 144
Home 36, 272
Tabs (continued)
introduction 9
launching custom tab wizard 41
profiles and 44
recruiting app 21
Reports 250, 255
setting default 255
style 43
Tabular reports 252
Tags, Visualforce 294
Tasks
enabling for custom objects 41
Tasks, workflow
See Workflow tasks 205
Technologies, supporting 12
Templates, email
See Email templates 224
Templates, site 321
Testing
Mass Update Status feature 315
Text data types 40
Text email templates 225
Text fields 49
Time-dependent workflow
about 220
activating 222
creating 220
default workflow user 222
queue 223
time triggers 220
TODAY() function 65
Tracking, field history
enabling for custom objects 41
Training & Certification 6
Training options 330
Tree view, role hierarchy 170
Triggers
time-dependent workflow 220
workflow rule 208
U
Unfiled Public Email Templates folder 226
Universal Containers, about 20
Updates, workflow field
See Workflow field updates 206
369
Index
URL Rewriter 322
Usability 179
User interface design
Visualforce 16
User object
Manager field 233
User standard object 90
User, default workflow 222
Users
dashboard running user 276
defining 185
hierarchical relationship fields 233
supporting multiple 11
V
Validation rules
&& function 75
|| function 75
AND() function 75
creating 72
error conditions 73
ISBLANK() function 75
ISPICKVAL() function 75
OR() function 75
testing 76
Values, data 28
Videos 331
View All Data permission 188
View All permission 189
Viewing queue contents 222
Views, defining 186
Visualforce
about 294
adding to page layouts 303
attributes 299
controllers 299
creating custom buttons 312
creating pages 297
dashboard 277
development mode 296
JavaScript 302
markup 294
markup, using 299
page editor 296
page editor, displaying 299
370
Visualforce (continued)
Page tag 299
Recruiting app 24
Visualforce email templates 225
Visualforce pages
Mass Update Status page 307
Public Jobs page 324
W
Web crawlers 322
Web services
about 293
Wildcard, * search 117
Wireless devices, approval processes and 235
Wizards
approval process jump-start 232
approval process standard setup 232
custom app 34
custom formula field 66
custom tab 41–42
import 129
new approval step 237
workflow rule 207
Workflow
about 204
Recruiting app 22
Workflow actions
objects and 211
time triggers 220
time-dependent 211, 220
Workflow email alerts
creating 227
Workflow field updates
creating 215, 219, 242
Workflow outbound messages 206
Workflow queue, time-dependent 223
Workflow rules
about 205
activating 213
activating time-dependent 222
creating 207, 219, 227
default workflow user 222
evaluation criteria 208
objects and 208
Workflow tasks
assigning to roles 212
Index
Workflow tasks (continued)
creating 210
testing 214
time-dependent 221
Y
Yahoo! 2, 13
Yahoo! Maps
integrating with 293, 297
371
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