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Step By Step Guide to Install & Configure Force.com IDE on Eclipse

Eclipse with Force.com IDE

(06-Mar-2019: Salesforce has discontinued any future development on Force.com IDE for Eclipse. For writing codes on Salesforce, you should now switch to using Microsoft Visual Studio with Salesforce Extensions Pack. And I have you covered there also. Please click here to get a step-by-step guide on how to install and get started with MS VS Code with Salesforce Extensions Pack)

Here is the step-by-step instructions with screenshots on how to download, install and configure Force.com IDE on Eclipse platform, connect to a Salesforce Org and explore. In less than 30 minutes, you will have the IDE fully setup and connected to a Salesforce Org.

Salesforce has two main proprietary programming languages. Apex & Visualforce.

Apex is a strongly typed, object-oriented programming language that allows developers to execute flow and transaction control statements.

And Visualforce is a framework that allows developers to build sophisticated, custom user interfaces that can be hosted natively on the Force.com platform.

When developing applications on Salesforce.com / Force.com Platform, you can choose any of the following ways to create your custom codes.

  1. In Salesforce GUI on browser
  2. In Developer Console
  3. Use an IDE (Integrated or Interactive Development Environment)

For simple, light development requirements, you can use Salesforce GUI on browser or Developer Console. However, for heavy development and where you need to integrate with a source code repository with version control, using an IDE is a preferred option.

An IDE typically consists of an editor, build automation tools, debugger, syntax highlighter, intelligent code completion etc. that makes development much more efficient and faster.

One of such IDE that you can use is Force.com IDE based on Eclipse platform.

If you are new to Salesforce development or have been working as a Salesforce Administrator, Consultant or Architect and want to get your hands dirty, then this blog post will help you get started with the IDE. Please note that you will need Salesforce Enterprise Edition or above or a Developer Org to connect from an IDE

The instructions and screenshots in the following presentation were taken on Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10, but I think it should work just fine on Windows also with minor deviations in the steps.

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References & Useful URLs

Salesforce Launches “AppExchange Store Builder”

Salesforce has announced “AppExchange Store Builder” today. The Store Builder will allow each customer to have their own private “App Store” or “AppExchange” so to speak. Here are some of the salient features of AppExchange Store Builder. 

  1. The store can be customized in terms of look & feel
  2. Customers can publish any apps that they want in the store, irrespective of whether it was developed in Salesforce
  3. The built-in analytics will provide stats on the usage and popularity of apps
  4. The Apps in the private app store can also listed as paid Apps and linked to payment options
  5. AppExchange store builder is free for existing customers (already having Salesforce license) and start at $5 per user per month for non-salesforce customers

Click here to view the AppExchange Store Builder on AppExchange or click here to read the TechCrunch article on the launch.

Demystifying Who Can See and Do What in Salesforce?

Roles, Profiles, Field Level Access, OWD, Sharing Rule, Permission Set – There are so many options related to security settings in Salesforce that it can overwhelm even seasoned administrators. Here is a video series put together by Salesforce on demystifying the same. Watch this series and solidify your understanding of Salesforce security model and understand Who Can See and Do What in Salesforce

How To Get a List of All Your Salesforce Objects & Fields

How do you get a list of all the objects and fields in your Salesforce instance? If you have worked on Oracle, you can query views like DBA_TABLES & DBA_TAB_COLUMNS, if you have worked on SQL Server you can query SYS.TABLES & SYS.COLUMNS. Unfortunately, there isn’t a similar simple way in Salesforce. With Salesforce you need to use Metadata APIs and write a few lines of code to get the details.

You can try Schema Lister developed by one of the developers at Tquila. Navigate to URL https://schemalister.herokuapp.com/, select your environment and API version, authorise the Apps through OAuth and it will generate a list of all the objects and fields. The benefit of using this app is that you don’t need to install anything in your Salesforce org and don’t need to provide your Salesforce username and password (as the app uses OAuth to connect to Salesforce)

Tquila Schema Lister

References & Useful URLs

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