Last August, Senior Web Designer Tommy Welti and 3 other creatives from Tier10 had the opportunity to attend Dreamforce 2011. While there, Tommy learned about a variety of different products and services that integrate with Salesforce. Below is Tommy’s list describing the sessions and services that left an impression.
1. Building Websites in the Cloud with Siteforce
The presenters led us step-by-step in creating a new site in Siteforce, which is the fastest way to build data-rich websites in the Cloud with Salesforce, and includes site hosting, content management, a database and a content delivery network all in the cloud. Whether you’re creating simple forms or an elaborate shopping cart, Siteforce lets you build a data-rich site faster than you could using traditional, less intuitive development platforms. These sites live in a secure cloud, which can use your own domain name just as we are using today for example with paragoncars.com.
2. Getting Started with Visualforce
This framework, which includes a tag-based markup language, Apex, allows developers to build sophisticated, custom user interfaces that can be hosted natively on the Force.com platform. Visualforce is intended solely for internally facing Salesforce web pages used by the administrators and others with permission to view these pages.
3. Force.com on the Cutting Edge
After listening to the two presenters, Joe and I both had a new level of respect for what they can do, which involves a lot of “getting” “forking” and “pushing” data from one location to another. The test program these guys were using in the presentation was called “FleshEatingPeaches”; if that speaks to any of you developers out there, you know what type of atmosphere was going on in this session. Force.com is used in Salesforce to quickly and easily build and deploy apps for your business.
4. Collaboration, Innovation, and Business Transformation
This presentation by Google emphasized the social, mobile and local aspects of the way we communicate with each other today: socially through Google Plus and Gmail, mobilely through Google Chat and Google Apps, and now locally through Google Hangouts, where you can have a seamless video conference experience without the headache of all those prehistoric video conferencing setups and trouble shooting.
5. The Developer Zone
With three main sections for Force.com, Database.com and Heroku, the developer zone had covered all its bases. We picked up some handy Force.com and Heroku workbooks on Building Your First App in the Cloud, Automating Your Business Processes, Heroku for Java, Heroku Postgres and a cool little cheat sheet for writing Git commands in the Terminal.
6. Radian6 (at the Salesforce Campground)
Radian6 helps your business listen to, analyze, measure, and engage in conversations across the social web. Using desktop and mobile apps, you can track conversations, learn about your company’s brand and engage with your customers in real time.
These were only a few of the services that stood out; there were many other interesting, useful solutions for working with Salesforce. I am looking forward to working with Salesforce in the coming weeks and seeing how our company here at Tier10 Marketing will grow from the true power Salesforce.
To learn more about Tommy Welti’s experience at Dreamforce, please read Four Days at Dreamforce with Senior Web Designer Tommy Welti.
