CTA

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

This post provides an outline approach to consider when performing an internal audit of an existing (or emerging) Salesforce implementation. As an individual who specialises in the provision of such quality assurance services from an external perspective, I’m convinced that most projects would benefit from a periodic internal review, perhaps augmented by some occasional external […]

In addition to the proprietary Authentication Provider types (Facebook, Janrain, Salesforce) Winter ’14 (v29.0) added support for the OpenID Connect protocol, enabling off-platform authentication via any compatible OpenID Provider (Google, PayPal, Amazon and others). This post provides a basic implementation overview. OpenID Connect what is it? OpenID Connect is a lightweight authentication (identity verification) protocol […]

A real challenge for all Salesforce Architects is keeping up-to-date on the constantly evolving native platform capabilities and customisation/extension points. It’s a truism that nothing stands still, this is especially true in the Salesforce world, with 3 releases a year, frequent off-cycle incremental feature enhancements, acquisitions etc. etc.. This constant evolution is of course great […]

I passed the Salesforce Certified Technical Architect programme in January of this year (2012), here I’ll share general thoughts on the process and some key areas to study. Ok, so the CTA programme has 3 elements; 1. Self-certification Simple record of who you are, plus a self-assessment on domain relevant skills. Note you are required […]