Salesforce Ninja: An Elite Blog about Salesforce.com

Can we generate bar-code image on Visualforce? Yes, Can we make it a field on page layout? Also yes. There are many API's available that help us achieve that. One such API is from  http://www.searchupc.com . The API is very easy to use. Visualforce usage: 1. The {!variable} will possibly be the SobjectVariable ({!sobject.fieldname}) or some {!variable} that stores the UPC code(possibly generated from algorithm.) The output: Formula Field Usage: i) Create a formula field with output as 'Text' ii) Use the below formula, replacing the mergeField with the field you store your UPC number. image("http://www.searchupc.com/drawupc.aspx?q="+ mergeField ,"Barcode") The Output: Works like a charm. Word of Caution:  i) The API accepts only 12 and 13 digit of UPC number. Any other digit and it does not render image. ii) The data is obviously not secure as we are passing the UPC code as a plain text to the server, there is a risk of packet sni

If you did visit Dreamforce 10 this year in moscone center, SFO, you have witness the Microsoft campaign about I didn't get forced. If you didn't, well, you were not at Dreamforce. So the campaign from Microsoft was fine, but apart from catchy phrases and possibly the attempt to bank on Salesforce customers, the campaign was sheer lie. Now, I should add a disclaimer, I do not work for/ work with  Salesforce.com and also, they do not pay me to say this, but this is based on my experience. I was a dedicated .Net developer (and still prefer that over Java any-day) and a few months ago I saw the announcement on Channel 9 about Azure. I was excited, obviously, and registered for a CTP of the same. Now, I am a old timer with Windows and I have no intention of using jazzy animation, the thing girls at college used to shreak, (in fact, now I use windows only for Photoshop, rest all is ubuntu) so I was quite happy with windows xp and its slow yet stable operating system. Imagine m

Yesterday night (Indian time IST) I was doing timepass on the internet (Read: Socializing in the massive social network) when I saw #DF10 hash tag become the 5th most popular hash tag in the American trend on Twitter. As intrigued that I was on the event, I realized that not only are we Socializing, we are trending too. It was instinct after that I suppose, I knew the one place I could see what was happening there in Moscone Center, SFO right there sitting on my laptop, Salesforce Live where all the events are covered live and on-demand, you thats why cloud rocks. Some of the spinets of the keynote from Marc with my views on it: Salesforce.com Fortune's fastest growing company in 2010. Salesforce.com was the first company to use the term "platform-as-a-service." History of collaboration: 1980s: workgroup computing. 2000s: intranet computing today: social computing Benioff says Salesforce.com's operation runs on 1,500 PCs. The 1.35 CO2 emmissions (gram CO2 p