Salesforce Ninja: An Elite Blog about Salesforce.com

I had taken up Computer Engineering as my specialization and the only languages we had in our syllabus were 'C', 'C++' and core Java with a horrible touch of machine language (yes we had that), DOS and Unix. It all began in third year of engineering college when all seniors informed that .net was the key to secure job in the future. I was a 'C' language loyalist and c was my home turf. I believed in 'while' loop more than 'for' loop. 'Pointers' were my best friend. However when seniors informed, as any scared college grad would do, I walked into a local shop selling second hand .net books and purchased a black book on .net (buying original complete reference or black book series in pocket money was not affordable). .Net was fairly easy to understand. Only trouble was getting a decent visual studio to develop. Affording a license copy was not that easy and college had to provide a license key (for which had to argue a lot with the com...

In December 2012 I attended a Salesforce Foundation roadshow in Bangalore. Many Salesforce foundation costumers had gathered at the venue to listen to salesforce or share their stories. One common complaint that was shared was what to do once I get the salesforce license. A little variation to the complain was, there was xyz who introduced us to salesforce but now he has moved on or has no time for implementation. There were a lot of technical queries on building an app on Salesforce. If you are a non-profit and cannot afford to hire a consultant to configure Salesforce for your needs, you can always use the DIY approach. Building a basic data collection app on Force.com is very easy and takes hardly a week. Compiling here is the collection of some implementation questions if you are building a Force.com app for yourself without any prior knowledge. What is salesforce? What is force.com To begin with, the very first thing you need to understand is the difference betw...

Remember the infographics resume that was created long back ? This is the version two of the same with many added sections and detail explanation of how to create one at the bottom. This resume is truly cloud made and all the tools that are used are based on cloud. The way this resume was created is: 1. All the graphs and charts are real. Created an App called 'Resume Builder' on Force.com. The resume builder app has got all the data sources like Publication, Work Experience, Academic score etc. 2. The About me section is generation using wordle.net a cloud tool to generate word cloud. It is pushed on the resume using visualforce component. 3. Small editing is done to insert the header and footer and my name but keeping the dashboard format. Image editing is done using Pixlr.com , a free photoshop on the cloud (now taken over by Autodesk) If anyone wants to use the App to build such resume, feel free to get in touch. Ill deploy the package for you. Cheerio, Si...

Force.com Bangalore User Group started their first meet in August with much fanfare. The first keynote was given by John Barnes, CTO, Model Metrics, a Salesforce.com company. He talked about Salesforce.com, platform and other updates from Salesforce. The group members promised to meet first Sunday of every month. A sunday spent on Namma Bengaluru taking about Force.com and having coffee together. The initiative was driven by Sunil Murthy, President of InfoToros and highly active member of the community. For the second meetup, keynote was given by Ankit Arora, or as some of you know him as Forceguru, in a new concept #hangoutWithMVP. Ankit connected with the Bangalore meetup group via Google Hangout from Jaipur. After two successful meetups, this Sunday Bangalore User Group met for the third time. For this meetup we gathered on the premises of yourstory.in Media Pvt Ltd. in Bangalore. The main motto for the event was certifications. Surprisingly for this event we had ...

Hello there, There are two reasons why you are on this page, one is that you like to go through Force.com blogs and gain as much knowledge as you can. Its a good thing, only you won't gain any knowledge reading the blogs but by digging. Two, you are highly frustrated and have Googled extensively for keywords 'ActionSupport', 'Lookup' and 'Visualforce' for many hours and before that were struggling with ActionSupport, onblur, onChange and other events. If you are here for second reason, we both sail in the same ship and even though I may sound like a telemarketer who is keen on wasting your time, I however, would like to inform you that I am sympathetic towards you. After having struggling to get this thing work on a Lookup for a long time, I decided to embark on the journey that took me back in time even before Salesforce.com existed. I went to the very depths of DOM and source code. Right to the birth place... ok not really, but I am just back from Star...

Whenever you join a new company, there is a common problem that is seen everywhere. It is getting oriented with the company processes. If the company has more number of employees that can be counted on the fingers, then it is obvious that the newbie will be ragged and bullied by the gazillion computer systems that smash him on the face everyday. One of the most common phrase you hear on an enterprise level application, "No it won't work on Chrome or Firefox, install Internet Explorer 6" (I am not making this up). I often wonder if microsoft pays these IT guys to promote them or why this uncanny love with Internet Explorer but whatever the fact is, these system are. The systems are almost always slow, require some amount of dexterous skill and are working just because they are. Just like the governance in India these systems are working on some ancient wizardry. But the problem is, these enterprise system are necessary for governance. When we fill out a time sheet o...

2012 is here and so are its predictions, doomsday prophecy and some old calender written on stone. Year 2011 was the year of the social media where the entire world came online. 700 million people on Facebook is just an indication of the world coming out of the hidden illusions. However, as I have been repeatedly telling social media is not letting people talk about stuff online, people were always talking about stuff, Social Media is enabling the topic that people talk about take advantage of the conversation by changing the course and being part of it. The year 2012 will see a new wave of Social Software and more rise in the terms of Enterprise 2.0 and collaborative software. There is a known factor that not all companies are open to become collaborative. There are multiple mindset for that, humanity has evolved from being a individualistic society to being a collaborative one. When earlier everyone had the schematics for building a spear (stone age), n...