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This post provides a high-level overview of the Winter ’16 enhancements to the Custom Metadata Types platform capability. Custom Metadata Types – The App Configuration Engine for Force.com There are in my view two distinct ways to consider Custom Metadata Types (CMT); firstly as analogous to Custom Settings and secondly as an architecturally significant paradigm […]
This first video post provides a brief introduction to scripted Salesforce deployment with the Force.com Migration Tool and Ant.
In most cases software implementation projects start off with a clear vision of the various macro-level influences, constraints and directives that define the shape of the project at the outset. During the initiation stage the clear, consensus view on the project principles influences fully the micro-level decisions taken in terms of architecture, solution design, resourcing, […]
Environment Hub was announced back in August 2012 and was initially made available as a Pilot feature of the Winter ’13 release. This post follows up (some 2 years later) on my initial interest in understanding the utility Environment Hub delivers in the context of environment/user management. Environment Hub – What is it? In simple […]
This post provides some general best practices in regard to Apex Unit Tests. This isn’t a definitive list by any means, as such I’ll update the content over time. Top 10 Best Practices (in no order) 1. TDD. Follow Test Driven Development practice wherever possible. There is no excuse for writing unit tests after the […]
The biggest area of risk on any Salesforce implementation project is the data model. In my view this assertion is beyond question. The object data structures and relationships underpin everything. Design mistakes made in the declarative configuration or indeed technical components such as errant Apex Triggers, poorly executed Visualforce pages etc. are typically isolated and […]
This post presents a basic model for the control of change within a Salesforce development process. Best practice suggests that all non-trivial projects should implement some degree of governance around environment change, i.e. Change Control. This is perhaps obvious, what isn’t necessarily obvious is how to achieve effective change control without introducing friction to the […]
Challenge – outside of the ISV development model there is no concept of an application namespace that can be used to group the technical components related to a single logical application. To mitigate this issue, and to provide a means to isolate application-specific components, naming schemes such as application specific prefixes are commonplace. Risk – […]
In a typical development process requirements are captured and the information synthesised to form a solution design. The constituent components of the solution design are ultimately translated into physical concepts such as a class, page or sub-page view. This analysis, design, build cycle could be iterative in nature or fixed and may have different degrees […]
A very common challenge addressed by architects working with Salesforce is the definition of an appropriate release methodology. By this I mean the identification of the Salesforce orgs required to support the project delivery whether serial or concurrent in nature, the role and purpose of each org and critically, the means by which change is […]
