Ashish Agarwal – Freelance Salesforce.com, Force.com & Oracle Application Express Professional

Here is a list of all the useful URLs on Salesforce.com.

As URLs change frequently, if any of the following URL is not working, please leave a comment with details and I will update the URL. Also if you come across any other URL that is useful for Salesforce.com, do let me know. I will include that URL in the list here.

Salesforce.com
http://www.salesforce.com

Salesforce.com Pricing & Editions
http://www.salesforce.com/ap/crm/editions-pricing.jsp

Salesforce.com – Salesforce Videos
http://www.salesforce.com/video/

Salesforce.com You Tube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/salesforce

AppExchnage
http://appexchange.salesforce.com/

Salesforce.com & Force.com Developer Resources
http://developer.force.com/

Force.com Technical Library
http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Wiki

Force.com Platform Fundamentals
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/fundamentals/index.htm

Force.com Workbook
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/workbook/index.htm

Force.com Cookbook
http://developer.force.com/cookbook/

Force.com Discussion Boards
http://boards.developerforce.com/sforce/?category.id=developers

Introduction to Apex
http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/An_Introduction_to_Apex

Apex Home Page
http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Apex

Force.com Apex Code Developers Guide
HTML – http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/index.htm
PDF – http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/salesforce_apex_language_reference.pdf

Apex Code Best Practices
http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Apex_Code_Best_Practices

VisualForce Home Page
http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Visualforce

VisualForce Developer’s Guide
HTML – http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/index.htm
PDF – http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/salesforce_pages_developers_guide.pdf

Web Services Home Page
http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Web_Services_API

Web Services API Developer’s Guide
HTML – http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/index.htm
PDF – http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/apex_api.pdf

Metadata API Developer’s Guide
HTML – http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api_meta/index.htm
PDF – http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api_meta/api_meta.pdf

You can view all the features that will be incorporated in Salesforce Spring 11 release. The videos are classified under different sections, based on the products that Salesforce offers.

1. Overview (Duration : 59:19 minutes)

If you are not a able to view the video, watch it directly on YouTube by clicking here.

2. Sales Cloud (Duration : 2:59 minutes)

If you are not a able to view the video, watch it directly on YouTube by clicking here.

3. Service Cloud (Duration : 1:10 minutes)

If you are not a able to view the video, watch it directly on YouTube by clicking here.

4. Chatter (Duration : 2:39 minutes)

If you are not a able to view the video, watch it directly on YouTube by clicking here.

5. Jigsaw (Duration : 3:34 minutes)

If you are not a able to view the video, watch it directly on YouTube by clicking here.

5. Force.com (Duration : 0:54 minutes)

If you are not a able to view the video, watch it directly on YouTube by clicking here.

Salesforce allows you to create reports using wizards. And though this offers a lot of flexibility in the terms of creating customized reports, it wasn’t very intuitive. You had to follow a series of steps before you could actually see the output.

Salesforce has now come up with a new feature called “Report Builder” based on “WYSIWYG” (What you see is what you get).  Currently available as “Developer Preview” (available only in developer edition), report builder is expected to be available in Winter 2010 for production use.

With report builder you will actually be working on the output itself. Report builder is going to fetch the first 50 rows based on the filters that your specify and then you can use drag and drop and other features to customize it as per your requirement. View the following YouTube video to find out how exactly it works.

If you are not a able to view the video, watch it directly on YouTube by clicking here.

If you are using web-to-lead form to capture leads from your website directly into Salesforce, there is a very high chance of getting hundreds and thousands of junk or spam leads. If you want Salesforce to do something about it please vote for the idea at URL http://sites.force.com/answers/ideaView?id=08730000000BrZkAAK

And while we are waiting for Salesforce to come up with the solution, here is what you can do.

Create a data validation rule on Leads (Setup -> Customize -> Leads -> Validation Rules).

which will look something like this

Email = “maxim-1980@bk.ru” || CONTAINS(FirstName, “online”) || CONTAINS(LastName, “online”) || CONTAINS( Message__c, “http://”)

This validation condition has been created because most of the time the spam lead that I receive has one of the following characteristic

1. The e-mail address is the same (like “maxim-1980@bk.ru”) or
2. contains the keyword “online” in first name or last name
3. Has ” http:// ” in the message or description field.

If you can find a characteristic like this, you may want to create a data validation rule to disallow such leads. But you need to be careful to ensure that no genuine lead gets rejected by this validation rule.

Hope this helps. If anyone else has got any other idea, please feel free to share.