Dev 401 Winter 14 Release Questions?

1. What is a capability of historical trending? Choose 2 answers
a. Historical trending can track number, formula, and checkbox fields.
b. Historical trending reports show changed values in different colors.
c. Historical trending can be enabled for all standard and custom objects.
d. Historical trending reports can be filtered to show only records that have changed.

      ANS: B, D

2. What is a capability of embedded analytics?  Choose 2 answers
a. An embedded chart can be filtered to show data for the record on which it appears.
b. Report charts can be used to show data from tabular, summary, and joined reports.
c. An embedded chart can be used to share report data from a personal folder.
d. Report charts can be embedded on page layouts for standard and custom objects.

     ANS:  A, D

3. What is a capability of Salesforce Identity? Choose 2 answers
a. Require users to enter a time-based token in addition to login credentials when accessing Salesforce.
b. Require users to have a High Assurance session to access Reports, Dashboards, and Connected Apps.
c. Require users to use a time-based token when logging into Salesforce outside the trusted IP ranges.
d. Require users to have a High Assurance session to edit, modify, or delete selected objects.
   
    ANS:  A, D


4. How can an administrator or developer restrict users from seeing other users in the organization?
a. Set the organization-wide default for the User object to Private.
b. Create a sharing rule to prevent users from seeing other users.
c. Enable the "Restrict Access to Users" permission for all users.
d. Disable manual sharing for the User object

      ANS: A

5. What is a capability of site.com? Choose 3 answers
a. View the site in different resolutions using live mode.
b. Use workflow rules to automate site publishing.
c. Export the style sheet from a site.
d. Create version of the site in multiple languages.
e. Import existing HTML pages into a site.

      ANS: A, D, E

Winter ’14 Release Developer Preview

Summer is fading and fall will soon be here. Question: do you know what the best part of fall is? That’s right, the winter release of Salesforce.com. The Winter ’14 release of Salesforce.com is right around the corner and that means once again I get the distinct pleasure of reviewing some of the new developer features that have been added. There are a large number of new features in the Winter ’14 release that developers will enjoy and in this post I’ll highlight a few of, what I feel, are the more pertinent points that developers will be interested in.

Visualforce:
The enhancements to Visualforce in this release are around improving the developer experience of building HTML5 apps along with some other core improvements and new tools.
• <apex:input>is a new, HTML5-friendly, general purpose input component that adapts to the data expected by a form field. It uses the HTML type attribute to allow client browsers to display type-appropriate user input widgets,
• The HTML5<datalist>element specifies a list of auto-complete options to associate with an <input type=”text” /> element.
• A Visualforce page’s view state can be viewed now in the developer console.
• We’re piloting a new feature that allows a Visualforce page’s view state to be stored on the server rather than the client thus preventing the need to send it back and forth with each request and response. This could help improve performance where low bandwidth or high latency could cause problems (think mobile). As with most features we release in pilot, you’ll need to request to have this one activated.

Sandboxes:
We’re making some interesting changes to sandboxes in this release as well. These changes significantly help with testing and life cycle management. I think developers will also like the data limits increase.
• Configuration Only sandboxes have been renamed to Developer Pro sandbox and the storage limit on them has been increased to 1GB.
• Developer Sandboxes have had their storage limit increased to 200MB.

Developer Console:
As always with each release we try to make it easier to manage the code in your applications. We’ve continued that with some of the following additions to the Developer Console.
• You can now create and edit JavaScript, XML, CSS and plain text in static resources with the Static Resource Editor. If you’ve ever managed static resources I’m sure you’ll agree with me that this is one of those hallelujah features that developers are going to use a lot.
• We’ve included a history panel that lists the last ten SOQL queries making query reuse easier. Also worth noting is the query editor now supports SOSL as well.

**UPDATE**

It was brought to my attention after I posted this that I forgot one of the cooler enhancements to the Developer Console. We now can search across the entire codebase. There’s a flow-diagram view of a transaction, which shows how workflow and triggers are timed relative to one another. This will be tremendously helpful in debugging complex or large code bases. This can also be used with declarative and programatic logic.

**

Apex Code:
As usual we’ve continued adding features to and improving on the world’s first cloud programming language. There are a ton of additions to Apex. Here are a just a few.
• There is no more code statement limit. Although we’ve removed this limit, we haven’t removed the safety mechanism it provided. Instead we’ve limited the CPU time for transactions. The limits are now 10,000ms for synchronous Apex and 60,000ms for asynchronous Apex.
• The Topic and Topic Assignment objects now support triggers.
• New Database methods improve record merging functions.

API:
I think the biggest announcement that developers have been waiting for API wise is the availability of our Analytics API. We introduced a limited pilot in summer 13 and now the Analytics REST API is generally available. The Analytics API lets you integrate Salesforce report data into your apps programmatically and has several resources that let you query metadata, and record details. Not to be outdone, the team has also added features to the REST API, SOAP API, Metadata API, Streaming API, Bulk API and the Tooling API. A big change here is the introduction of flexible limits for both the SOAP and REST API. Flexible limits allow you to excede API request limit by up to 50% within the limit timeframe.

Miscellaneous Updates:
I’ve created this last category to lump a few things together that don’t really fit anything I’ve mentioned above nor are there enough of to warrant a separate category of their own.
• Have you ever been stymied by or frustrated by the fact you couldn’t use the User object in workflow? Well be frustrated no more, there’s a new beta feature that allows the User object to be used in workflow rules.
• Advanced setup search is now beta. With it enabled you can search for Setup pages, custom profiles, permission sets, public groups, roles, and users from the sidebar in Setup.
• We introduced the custom state and country picklist beta in summer 13. They’re now generally available.

How to calculate date for weekday and weekend only In Salesforce?

In Salesforce, it is easy to calculate number of day between 2 date.
Just create a formula field, example: End_Date__c - Start_Date__c. DONE!!!

But, is it possible to find out only weekday and only weekend between 2 date?
Hmmm.... most of us will think about Apex Trigger.
Yes, it is correct solution, apex trigger able to calculate without issue, but, if you are not from developer, you need a developer for this.

Wait a minute.... Can we use 'just' formula to calculate weekday and weekend?

YES, it is possible with complex formula. Here we go:

To calculate Weekday
CASE(MOD( Request_Date__c - DATE(2007,1,1),7),
0 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c ,7),1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,5,6,5,1),
1 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c ,7),1,2,2,3,3,4,4,4,5,4,6,5,1),
2 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c ,7),1,2,2,3,3,3,4,3,5,4,6,5,1),
3 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c ,7),1,2,2,2,3,2,4,3,5,4,6,5,1),
4 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c ,7),1,1,2,1,3,2,4,3,5,4,6,5,1),
5 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c ,7),1,0,2,1,3,2,4,3,5,4,6,5,0),
6 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c ,7),1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6,5,0),
999)
+ (FLOOR(( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c )/7)*5)
-1

To calculate Weekend
CASE(MOD( Request_Date__c - DATE(2007,1,1),7),
0 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c, 7),1,0,2,0,3,0,4,0,5,1,6,2,0),
1 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c, 7),0,0,1,0,2,0,3,0,4,0,5,2,2),
2 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c, 7),0,0,1,0,2,0,3,1,2),
3 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c, 7),0,0,1,0,2,1,2),
4 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c, 7),0,0,1,1,2),
5 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c, 7),0,1,2),
6 , CASE( MOD( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c, 7),6,2,1),
999)
+ (FLOOR(( Execution_Date__c - Request_Date__c )/7)*2)

If you see in formula above, we have DATE(2007,1,1), this is refer to 1-Jan-2007 is Monday. So, you can use any date which is Monday, example 1-Jan-1900

ISBLANK() or ISNULL() in Salesforce?

To determine if an expression has a value or not, you can use ISBLANK() function in Salesforce. It will  returns TRUE if it does not and if it contains a value, this function returns FALSE. You can use this function in formula field, as well as in workflow.

ISBLANK(expression) and replace expression with the expression you want evaluated.
sample:
IF(ISBLANK(Maint_Amount__c), 0, 1)

A field is not empty if it contains a character, blank space, or zero. For example, a field that contains a space inserted with the spacebar is not empty.

If you use this function with a numeric field, the function only returns the specified string if the field does not have a value and is not configured to treat blank fields as zeroes.

You also can use BLANKVALUE() function to determine if an expression has a value and returns a substitute expression if it does not. If the expression has a value, returns the value of the expression.
sample:
BLANKVALUE(Payment_Due_Date__c, StartDate +5)
Use the same data type for both the expression and substitute_expression.

How about ISNULL() ?
Use ISBLANK instead of ISNULL in new formulas. ISBLANK has the same functionality as ISNULL, but also supports text fields. Salesforce will continue to support ISNULL, so you do not need to change any existing formulas.

The same goes for NULLVALUE(), it is similar with BLANKVALUE(), with exception:

Avoid using NULLVALUE with text fields because they are never null even when they are blank. Instead, use the BLANKVALUE function to determine if a text field is blank.
Don’t use NULLVALUE for date/time fields.

Choose Treat blank fields as blanks for your formula when referencing a number, percent, or currency field. Choosing Treat blank fields as zeroes gives blank fields the value of zero so none of them will be null.

Standard profiles in Salesforce?

Standard profiles cannot be deleted and permissions cannot be edited.

Loading products , pricebooks and pricebook entry?

There is always a need to load Products into salesforce. Its a 3 step process to load products and associate them with pricebook . There is a standard pricebook which salesforce provides by default which can be deactivated. There is also an option to create custom pricebook as many as you want in accordance with the business.

Fields in red are required and fields in blue are read only



Pricebookentry is the junction object between product2 and pricebook2 object( For strange reasons they have suffix 2 for standard object) . It has lookup for product2 and pricebook2 field through product2id and pricebook2id field. Name and productcode is copied over from product2 based on product2id field.

Essentially for loading Products you need to load product2 table first. Create a CSV file. Name is the only required field. Optionally have columns for other fields indicated in the pic.set Isactive to true. use dataloader to insert data. Get the id of the products from success file which got created.

Pricebook2 will also have only Name as required field. Isstandard indicates whether its a standard or custom and its readonly. Also Isactive should be set to true if you are planning to use it. Get the Pricebook2id from success file. Alternatively export pricebook2 table to get id of pricebook already created.

Final step is to create pricebookentry. Pricebook entry needs to be created for each Pricebook.
populate ids of product2 in product2id column and pricebook2 in pricebook2id column. Unitprice is a required field where the price for this pricebook is set. Pricebook entry for a custom pricebook cannot be made if that product is not there in the standard pricebook.

Unitprice can be made read only if usestandardprice field is set to true. This can be made only for custom pricebook and when the product is added to standard pricebook. So the unitprice set in standard pricebook will be carried over to the custom pricebook. Make Isactive true whenever u are planning to use it. Use dataloader to insert the pricebookentry. you have to repeat the above 2 steps for each custom pricebook.If you have multiple currencies enabled there should be as many pricebook entry records for a single product in a pricebook for each currency.

Salesforce.com - Reference to tools and resources - All in one place

Everytime i need to install a administrative tool or if i need tutorials or references, i found that i spend a considerable amount of time in locating them... As a result, this article came to my mind..

Here, you will find links to some of the administrative tools in Salesforce.com as well as less-known good resources..

This list would be updated as and when i find new resources.. So, make sure you bookmark this page :-)

Salesforce objects, fields and their usage - Complete description

This is the official WebServices Developer's guide but has enough information that you would want to know about Salesforce objects, how to use them etc through the API. Click here

Excel Connector for Salesforce.com

Sforce Connector - Click here

Office toolkit 3.0 - Click here

Please note that Office toolkit 4.0 is installed automatically when you install the Outlook connector for Salesforce....

Apex Explorer

Installation guide and notes - Click here

Installation file - Click here to download

Apex Data Loader

Installation guide and notes - Click here

Running the Apex Data Loader from the command prompt: Click here
Running the Apex Data Loader from the command prompt (Simplified) : Click here

SFDC Web to anything -

You might have heard about web to Case, web to anything lets you to create records in any object through a web form..

You can find the code, screenshots and description here - Click here

iGoogle like Salesforce Home Page (iSalesforce)

The project source and a demonstration are hosted here. Click here

Tutorials and guides -

The official salesforce.com guide's and tutorial's page - Click here

Discussion forums -

The official salesforce.com community forums - Click here

Salesforce delete record: 'Insufficient privileges' error?

In some organisation, user allow to delete records, but sometimes user get error message 'Insufficient privileges' although Delete button exist. What's happening? Let us analyze:

1. User able to access the record
There are few scenario:

• Organization-Wide Defaults sharing setting on that object is Public Read Only or Public Read/Write; or
• Sharing rule added based on record owner or criteria for Public Groups or Roles; or
• User is the owner of the records; or
• User in higher role hierarchy of record owner; or
• User profile have "View all Data" or "Modify all Data" permission

2. User see Delete button
This is happened because:

• Delete button is added in record page layout; and
• User profile have permission to delete that object

3. Error 'Insufficient privileges'
The ability to delete records in Salesforce is controlled by the role hierarchy. Setting a sharing model to "Public Read/Write" alone does not give users the right to delete others records. There are 2 scenarios in which a user can delete a record:

• The user attempting to delete the record is a System Administrator.
• The user attempting to delete the record is the owner, or higher on the role hierarchy than the record owner.
Any other user that attempts to delete a record will receive an "Insufficient Privilege" error message.

Those below you on the role hierarchy may have read/write privileges according to the sharing model rules, however, they may not delete information from those individuals above them in that hierarchy.

Summer13 Release Features

Some Of The available Features With summer13 are  Listed Below,

  1.Approval Processes now available in change sets and exposed through the Metadata API
  2.Publisher actions are available in change sets and are supported in both managed and unmanaged packages.
  3.Summer ’13 introduces a new computer-telephony integration (CTI) Visualforce component—     support:clickToDia.
4.Summer ’13 introduces a new Visualforce component, chatter:userPhotoUpload that lets users upload a photo to their Chatter profile page
  5.The maximum size for a SOQL query has been increased to 20,000 characters
  6.Use Chatter in Apex to build Chatter integrations and custom UIs without making HTTP callouts Because Chatter in Apex exposes many Chatter API resources as Apex classes in the ConnectApi namespace
  7.Global Actions
  8. Communities

Record types in Salesforce?

Record types allow you to offer different business processes, picklist values, and page layouts to different users based on their profiles. Record types can be used in various ways, for example:

• Create record types for opportunities to differentiate your regular sales deals from your professional services engagements and offer different picklist values for each.
• Create record types for cases to display different page layouts for your customer support cases versus your billing cases.

Spring 13 release notes

Here are some highlights of Spring’13

• User-Focused help
• Dependent picklists works in all browsers
• Ability to add tasks in chatter
• Connect in Apex – Chatter objects are exposed as REST API
• Salesforce for outlook side panel is available now
• Dashboards for Touch
• You can play with Chatter answers now in your developer environment
• Connected apps are available now
• TimeZone class is available now
• State and Country picklists

What is Salesforce.com?

Salesforce.com is a web based CRM tool that helps us to maintain the relationship with the customers.

Salesforce.com is a good example for Cloud computing services.

Salesforce.com uses Multi tenant architecture.

Leaders in cloud computing systems for customer relationship management, CRM, sales, social, call centre, knowledge management software cloud computing.

SFDC INTERVIEW QUSETIONS

50 Salesforce.com Interview Questions

Salesforce.com is currently one of most sought after technology. If you are an experienced Salesforce.com guy, you are lucky. Having said that, even if you are someone who has recently started out working on Salesforce.com, don't worry, there are enough resources available on the internet to help you start.

I will be posting some of the learning techniques and how I prepared for Salesforce.com soon in my blog.

However, here are some of the most common interview questions I have come across for a developer/administrator role.

Questions:
1. How many users have you supported. 
2. What are permission sets and how do they differ from profiles. 
3. When will you use profile and permission sets together. 
4. Difference between roles and profiles.
5. What are controllers. 
6. What are extensions. 
7. Difference between controllers and extensions.
8. What is a standard controller, custom controller. Difference between the two. 
9. When you override a button by specifying a VF page, what is a necessary condition for the VF page to be available.
Ans - The VF page should have a standard controller listed for that object. Else, the VF page will not be available to override a button. 
10. Minimum number of queries required to query for 2 level, 3 level relationships. 
11. How will you avoid recursive triggers. 
12. How to bulkify triggers. 
13. Understand basic SOQL and Apex limits. 
14. What is with sharing and without sharing class.
15. How can sharing be done using Apex. 
16. Explain the trigger handler pattern. 
17. List few components which cannot be deployed using force.com IDE or change sets. 
18. What deployment methods have you used. List advantages and disadvantages of each. 
19. How will you load data for a child object. 
20. Difference between a look up and master-detail relationship.
21. Explain, the way you will query child from parent and parent from child
22. What are sharing rules, when do you used sharing rules. 
23. Explain lead to opportunity conversion.
24. What are record types. Why are the record types used. 
25. When is page layout assignment used. 
26. Can 1 user be assigned multiple profiles, if yes how, if not, what is the work around.
27. How many types of salesforce licenses are there. What are the limits. 
28. Which license will I use if users will only use 1 custom application.
29. How can I create developer, full sandbox.
30. In how many days can one refresh a full sandbox.
31. What is batch apex. Why do we use batch apex. 
32. What is @future method.
33. What are test classes, what is the test coverage you need to move a code into production. 
34. Can I directly change code in salesforce production org. 
35. How do I log a case with salesforce. 
36. How can I change owner for multiple cases at once (example - from Rob to John)
37. Difference between a workflow rule and approval process. 
38. What is the order of execution of workflow rules, validation rules, triggers.
39. Explain Salesforce.com security implementation with respect to Profiles, Roles and Hierarchy, Sharing rules, OWD(org wide default settings). Also, specify which is the most restrictive security setting. 
40. What are custom report types. 
41. What are different types of reports you can create. 
42. What is Trigger.old and Trigger.New
43. What is ApexPages.addMessage
44. How is a pdf generated using visual force page.
45. How can I redirect user to a page after processing is completed in the controller/extension.
46. What are custom settings. 
47. What are Action Support, Action Function and Action Poller used for. 
48. What is rerender attribute used for. 
49. What is package.xml
50. How can one read parameter values through the URL in Apex.