Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification Handbook

By Siddhesh Kabe

About This Book

• Get to grips with the fundamentals of Force.com to pass the certification exam with flying colors
• Create Force.com applications, automate business processes, and manage data operations to be a successful Salesforce.com Certified Force.com app builder
• A step-by-step guide that covers the most essential topics for the Platform App Builder Certification in an easy-to-understand format

Who This Book Is For

Salesforce beginners who need to prepare for the Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification exam will benefit from this book. This book is ideal for developers and admins who are new to Salesforce CRM and the Force.com platform.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781785280771

Siddhesh Kabe

Siddhesh Kabe has been working on Force.com projects since 2008. He is working as a developer, analyst and consultant for many custom applications built on Force.com and has also trained end-users and developers. Apart from that Siddhesh is an active member of the force.com community and owns an active blog on it (http://force.siddheshkabe.co.in). He is also the leader of Force.com Pune Users Group. Based in Pune (India), he has completed his Bachelor of Engineering Degree from Pune University with specialization in Computer Science. He is addicted to coffee and in his spare time writes humorous articles and draws cartoons for his online blog and magazines. Siddhesh can be reached via twitter (@_siddhesh) or his site http://siddheshkabe.co.in

Book preview

Index

Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification Handbook

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Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification Handbook

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: April 2016

Production reference: 1220416

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-78528-369-7

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Credits

Author

Siddhesh Kabe

Reviewer

Doug Ayers

Acquisition Editor

Sonali Vernekar

Content Development Editor

Mayur Pawanikar

Technical Editor

Naveenkumar Jain

Copy Editor

Rashmi Sawant

Project Coordinator

Nidhi Joshi

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Hemangini Bari

Graphics

Kirk D'Penha

Production Coordinator

Shantanu N. Zagade

Cover Work

Shantanu N. Zagade

About the Author

Siddhesh Kabe calls himself the monk who sold his computer for the cloud. He has had a rock-solid career in consulting, training, designing, developing, and advocating the Force.com platform for 8 years. He has five certifications in Salesforce. He likes to break into things—code and gadgets—and believes that, given enough coffee, anything can be hacked into.

His other published work includes a science-fiction satire called Ragnarok and a fantasy graphic novel entitled Agatya. Apart from this, he is an active member of the Force.com community and owns an active blog (http://force.siddheshkabe.co.in). He is also the leader of the Force.com Pune Users Group.

Acknowledgments

When I first started writing the Force.com Developer Certification Handbook (DEV401), Packt Publishing in 2012, the goal was clear—how can you make the Salesforce development easy, accessible, and simple. You don't realize how daunting a task is, until you actually start it. But in the infamous words of Brian Tracy, you eat a large frog one bite at a time. And so the little bites started and the book finally released almost 4 years ago. When the team from Packt Publishing asked me to write a revised edition of the book, we all thought it would be easy.

With Salesforce, it hardly is. The pioneers of cloud computing are known for one thing—they change fast and for better. The exam had changed, the syllabus was different, and there were tons of new features coming in. When it comes to publishing, we cannot always tackle things quickly, not with a book as massive as this. Hence, while working with this book, I had to accommodate as many new features as I could before the book went live. The lessons learned from my previous experience and the feedback received on social media, in person and via e-mails, are all included in this book, and an extra effort has been made to make the book error-free.

One cannot trot forward without the undying support system and I would like to take this opportunity to thank some of those who were there for me. First and foremost, I would like to thank Govind and Shobhana Kabe, my parents and mentors, who insisted very vocally that I take computer engineering as a career. I cannot thank my wife, Deepika, enough and if I start enlisting all the ways she supports me, this acknowledgment will fill more pages than the book itself. My brother, Chaitanya Kabe, for being there with me always.

A special thanks to Doug Ayers for painstakingly going through the content and giving a honest and valuable feedback.

I would like to thank the team at Packt Publishing for being patient and keeping up with me as I kept missing deadline after deadline. A special thanks to the content editor, Mayur Pawanikar, for not losing patience as he kept chasing me for the content. Thanks to the technical editor, Naveenkumar Jain, for helping with the content and to Sonali Vernekar for initiating this project.

I would like to thank the mentors I met on this journey of the Salesforce platform, who helped and guided me at different stages of my career. Without their guidance, I would not be where I am today. No book on the Salesforce platform can be complete without mentioning the amazing developer community and the Salesforce developers team itself; thank you for the great cloud platform and the developer events that have helped us from time to time.

About the Reviewer

Doug Ayers has over 9 years of experience leading teams to build reliable web apps and enterprise services with agile engineering practices on Salesforce and Java platforms. He holds multiple Salesforce developer certifications and is pursuing the Technical Architect certification. He enjoys the rich ecosystem of open source software and contributes to the community on GitHub, https://github.com/DouglasCAyers, Twitter, https://twitter.com/DouglasCAyers, and his technology blog, http://douglascayers.com.

As someone who is continually learning and trying new approaches, he enjoys collaborating with and mentoring others. He volunteers as a coach for the VetForce Program, https://veterans.force.com, and leads and speaks at the Nashville Salesforce Developers Group.

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Preface

This book will assist you in building a strong foundation in Force.com to prepare for the Platform App Builder Certification Exam. It will help you to design, build, and implement custom applications using the declarative customization capabilities of the Force.com platform.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Force.com, helps you understand the application life cycle of an application build using Force.com.

Chapter 2, Creating a Database on Force.com, helps you start with building a database model to support our application.

Chapter 3, User Interface, focuses on how to create user interfaces and user experiences.

Chapter 4, Implementing Business Logic, focuses on the declarative syntax used to write business logic and connect our database to the user experience.

Chapter 5, Data Management, covers the cloud-based import wizard and the utility data loader to import data. It also gives a brief overview of automatic data loading.

Chapter 6, Analytics and Reporting, teaches you how to generate reports and display maximum information using colorful charts.

Chapter 7, Application Administration, discusses how to configure the application for multiple users.

Chapter 8, Exam Guide and Practice Test, helps you understand the exam and answer the frequently asked questions. This chapter also includes a practice test that will help refresh the skills we have learned throughout the book.

What you need for this book

The Salesforce online application can run on any computer with an Internet connection and supports the following browsers:

Google Chrome™, most recent stable version.

Mozilla® Firefox®, most recent stable version.

Microsoft® Internet Explorer® versions 9, 10, and 11. If you use Internet Explorer, use the latest version that Salesforce supports. Apply all Microsoft software updates.

Apple® Safari® Versions 5.x, 6.x, and 7.x on Mac OSX.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for Salesforce developers who are preparing for the Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder exam. This book provides an introduction to the Force.com platform if you are new to the platform and don't know where to start.

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