How We Built AppExchange and Our Communities on the Salesforce Platform

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 This presentation may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If any such uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions proves incorrect, the results of salesforce.com, inc. could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make. All statements other than statements of historical fact could be deemed forward-looking, including any projections of product or service availability, subscriber growth, earnings, revenues, or other financial items and any statements regarding strategies or plans of management for future operations, statements of belief, any statements concerning new, planned, or upgraded services or technology developments and customer contracts or use of our services.

 The risks and uncertainties referred to above include – but are not limited to – risks associated with developing and delivering new functionality for our service, new products and services, our new business model, our past operating losses, possible fluctuations in our operating results and rate of growth, interruptions or delays in our Web hosting, breach of our security measures, the outcome of any litigation, risks associated with completed and any possible mergers and acquisitions, the immature market in which we operate, our relatively limited operating history, our ability to expand, retain, and motivate our employees and manage our growth, new releases of our service and successful customer deployment, our limited history reselling non-salesforce.com products, and utilization and selling to larger enterprise customers. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of salesforce.com, inc. is included in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year and in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the most recent fiscal quarter. These documents and others containing important disclosures are available on the SEC Filings section of the Investor Information section of our Web site.

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Safe Harbor

Heather Conklin

 Lead Member Technical Staff

 Product Designer

Todd Reasinger Jochem Geerdink

 Director, Product Management

Meet Our Speakers

Our Team

 Developers

 Quality Engineers

 Document Writers

 UX Designers

 Development Managers

 Product Managers

 The people responsible for the AppExchange and the Success & Partner Communities

 

History & Overview

Three of the top Salesforce web properties

 AppExchange

 #1 Business App Marketplace

 https://appexchange.salesforce.com

 Success Community

 Community of 1.8M+ Salesforce Users

 https://success.salesforce.com

 Partner Community

 Community for the Partner Ecosystem

 https://partners.salesforce.com

AppExchange Journey

Oct 2006

Dec 2009

Sept 2012

July 2015

Success Community Journey

2005 2013 Jan 2014

August 2014

Partner Community Journey

2009 Mar 2014

Feb 2015

July 2015

RETIRED

Architecture

Architecture

 Built 100% on platform – we work like you do

 3 sites run on 1 org

 Integrate with 5 other orgs

 Stripe and Recurly used for payment processing

 Salesforce on Salesforce

- Accounts, Cases, Leads, etc. - Certifications - Known Issues - Partner Training - Knowledge Articles & Docs

Architecture  

Force.com Sites

Salesforce Communities

VF

Page

s

Con

trol

lers

Utility Classes

DAO Classes

DO Classes

Customer Portal Users

Data

User Interface Creation

From Whiteboards to Products  

Responsive Consistent On Platform

Apex, Visualforce, and Lightning Desktop, Tablet, and Phone Looks like Salesforce

Three Basic Principles  Guide all requirements and designs  

Data

Network

Identity

Product Development Process

Idea Product

specifications Information

architecture & user experience

Visual design

HTML mockups

Development User testing Product

Collaborate and iterate to deliver the best final product

HTML   •  Standard HTML

•  Consider browser support

•  Visualforce tags

<apex:inputTextArea id="supportdescr" styleClass="textarea-1000" value="{!currentCase.description}" html-maxlength="32000"/>

<textarea id="supportdescr" name="supportdescr" class="textarea-1000" maxlength="32000"></textarea>

CSS  

•  Custom CSS

•  showHeader is false

•  standardStylesheets is false

<apex:page id="..." showHeader="false" standardStylesheets="false" ...> ...</apex:page>

Override platform styling to create unique brand experience

CSS   Shared CSS stylesheets to maintain consistent look & feel

Responsive Web Design   Using CSS media queries and JavaScript

JavaScript   •  jQuery for easier web development

•  We use the platform wherever we can

<apex:actionFunction name="removeSavedListing" action="{!removeFromSaved}" rerender="savedListingsContainer, savedListAmount" onComplete="afterRemoveAction('{!listingId}');"> <apex:param name="slistingId" value=""/></apex:actionFunction>

Lesson #1: Build for Flexibility

Example: Marketing Content on AppExchange  

Marketing can make changes any time without involving the development team

Custom object: LandingPages

Landing page content options:

•  Banner images

•  Table of listings

•  HTML blob

Declarative placement of listings and marketing materials

 

 

 

LandingPageSection: Banner  

LandingPageSection: Banner  

LandingPageSection: Table  

LandingPageSection: Table  

LandingPageSection: HTML  

LandingPageSection: HTML  

Lesson #2: Build Custom on the Platform for Added Business Value

Why Custom Search?  

Weight results by specific criteria to improve relevancy

Allow custom sort ordering – most popular, relevant, etc.

Combine results from multiple sources in single search

Example: Custom Search  

Architecture  

force.com Sites

Salesforce Communities

VF

Page

s

Con

trol

lers

Utility Classes

DAO Classes

DO Classes

Customer Portal Users

Data

Custom Search  

Listing DO

Listing__c

Base DO

Base Search Engine

Listing Search Engine

sObject

Custom Search  

Listing Search Engine

•  Object and fields

•  Field weightings

•  Keywords

•  Filters

•  Sort order

Base Search Engine

•  SOSL keyword search (relevancy)

•  SOQL query (non-text or keyword search)

•  Filter and sort

Search Page Controller

initialize

search

List<BaseData>

Lesson #3: Integrate with APIs

Example: Connecting Multiple Salesforce Orgs  

Salesforce Apps

Our Org Runs all 3 Sites

Chatter Content

Ideas

Answers

AppExchange Content

Data Needed: Accounts

Cases

Leads

Certifications

Training

Known Issues

Knowledge Articles

Documentation

All your data in one place  

Utility Classes

Platform Features

S2S

Rest Data API

Custom Rest API

Standard Objects

Custom Objects

Web Services

Build for Flexibility Custom Adds Value Integrate with APIs

Connecting Multiple Orgs AppExchange Marketing Content Federated Search

3 Key Lessons  Remember these for your next development project  

Questions?

Thank you