Now a Certified Scrum Master

I’ve recently attended a two-day course on the Agile Methodology and Scrum. I’ve already put in to place what I learned in my current client projects and highly recommend the course, at least, even if you are not interested in the certification. It gave me a renewed/refreshed perspective on how to complete complex work.

Here is my obligatory certificate posting:

Now a Salesforce.com Certified Sales Cloud Consultant

Great news! I just passed the certification exam to gain my “Certified Sales Cloud Consultant” credential. Check out the snazzy new badge on the right.

Good preparation paid off here! A lot of the questions regarding account hierarchy, org-wide defaults, sharing rules, contact roles related list and the partner roles related list on Accounts, Person Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities get rather lengthy when the question is setting up the “scenario” that it will ask about it. So towards the end of my exam my head was spinning with all the different “scenarios” they set up. It’s a lot to keep straight and you have to be good at easily forgetting the “scenario” from the last question and focusing on the “scenario” for the question you are currently answering.

Now a Salesforce.com Certified Service Cloud Consultant

Great news! I just passed the certification exam to gain my “Certified Service Cloud Consultant” credential. Check out the snazzy new badge on the right.

I highly recommend getting certified. It is a rewarding experience. I now have three of the seven certifications offered by Salesforce.com. FYI: Here is a link to the Salesforce.com Certification site to get you started.

My next targeted certification: Sales Cloud Consultant. Although, I do hope that with my background and experience working with the Sales Cloud that the certification will come a little easier than the Service Cloud certification came.

Hope isn’t a strategy, though. Back to the books!

Visualforce Wizard: Contract Standard Object

In this example, I am using the Contract standard object and in this enterprise edition org we have the “Contract” standard object renamed as “Lease”. Therefore, as you review the code samples below, you have to use “Contract” and “Lease” interchangeably.

The business case here is to provide a visualforce wizard to help speed up data entry and also make the data entry more “bite size”. The Lease record, in this case, has near 80 fields to gather user input and spreading that data entry out over 5 steps in the wizard makes each step a little more manageable.

In total, there are:

  1. 5 visualforce pages
  2. 1 apex class
  3. 1 apex test class
  4. 1 static resource – a javascript file

Continue reading

Getting started with Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com

Today, I started development on a simple project using Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com. I must say getting the software installed as well as the plug-in was more difficult than I had expected, but all is well now.

I say “started”. I’ve actually built a RIA in the past using what used to be known as Adobe Flex Builder 3. It was a web-based application that used data grids and the accordion to show our available inventory data. It worked really well.

Now, Flex Builder 3 has gone away and Adobe has released Flash Builder 4 as its replacement. On top of that, Salesforce.com and Adobe have worked together to make RIA development on the Force.com platform even easier by providing Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com.

That, better stated, is where I am starting today.

This simple application I’m building is simply (1.) taking our Property data from our corporate website, (2.) randomly displaying a Property when the page loads and (3.) giving the user pagination controls to view all our Properties.

Once I’m done, I hope to be able to post a demo here. Stay tuned.

Using Quotes in the Sales Cloud

Quick shout out to Salesforce.com and the new Quotes object released in Winter ’10.

We just now got around to enabling Quotes and it has been a breeze to set up. Plus, I’ve been able to create three different Quote templates with great ease. In sum, I’ve spent roughly a week setting it all up.

This now enables us to track and report on billable hours and revenue all in one place (Salesforce.com) that was previously being tracked in two systems: Salesforce.com and another, unnamed system.

Now, our Sales Management can see both low-frequency, high-value Opportunities in the same report as high-frequency, low-value Opportunities if they wish.

Kudos.