Audit9 Blog

I think it’s fair to say that consideration of reporting and analytics is not traditionally a technical architect’s direct concern. In the Salesforce context I always challenge this presumption and promote the idea that a project architect should absolutely be looking at the high-level analytical requirements during the foundation stage of the project. Why you […]

A real frustration with inline Visualforce pages (added to standard page layouts) is the static nature of the height setting. From the layout we can set a specific height, but ideally we want the height set dynamically from the content height. Sounds like a simple enough requirement, however, the fact that the VF page section […]

The Salesforce metadata API is an extremely powerful tool, when combined with Ant, Jenkins etc. for build automation. There is however a number of configuration items that simply can’t be retrieved and deployed using this API (Account Teams, Support Settings, Lead Settings, Case Assignment and Escalation Rules etc.). The unsupported list can be found here, […]

If your deployment process involves manual modification of the metadata files between retrieve and deploy steps, it’s time to consider extending your knowledge of Ant. This is critical for Continuous Integration where manual processes are an anathema. With a small amount of Ant knowledge you can delete metadata files, edit and replace/remove content via regex, […]

With the upcoming Spring 13 release (release window dates below) the new Tooling API goes GA. 11th Jan, sandbox instances 18th Jan – 9th Feb, production instances (EU0 8th Feb, EU1/2 9th Feb) What is the Tooling API? The full details can be found in the API guide here, in short the API is intended […]

In this post I’ll share some recent practical experiences implementing Federated SSO between Salesforce and Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 (ADFS 2.0 for brevity). For detailed configuration and theoretical information on this subject please refer to the excellent resources below. http://blog.rhysgoodwin.com/cloud/salesforce-sso-with-adfs-2-0-everything-you-need-to-know/ http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Single_Sign-On_with_Force.com_and_Microsoft_Active_Directory_Federation_Services To set the scene – the “deployment view” schematic below shows the building […]

I’ve always considered programming to sit somewhere between art and science, the “art of programming” being a phrase I like. Whilst the language syntax, underlying algorithms and platforms are definitely scientific in their absolute nature, the code we write is less definitive, more personal and in my view a creative process. As with any creative […]

I passed the Salesforce.com Certified Force.com Developer and Administrator Winter ’13 Release Exams this morning. I always try to do this as early as possible and make the exams the culmination of a detailed investigation into the new release. The excellent resources available (pre-release webinars and orgs, release training, release notes and sandbox previews) make […]

I’m a big advocate of setting out the key elements of the development process succinctly but unambiguously at the start of a software development project, particularly in cases where I have no prior history of working with the development team. Such process elements typically cover environments, coding standards, technical design and review requirements, source-code control […]

A robust and intelligent data model provides the foundation upon which a custom Salesforce implementation can be built. Mistakes made in the functional or technical build are typically inexpensive to rectify (if caught quick enough), however a flawed data model can be incredibly time and cost expensive to mitigate. At the start of all projects […]