The demand for Salesforce skills is rising significantly in India, defying the previous global trend of declining demand. For Salesforce experts, this makes it an especially promising area. Experts with the ability to create custom applications and modify Salesforce using code (Apex, Lightning Web Components) are still in great demand. Hence, getting yourself updated with these skills through our Salesforce developer tutorial will be much beneficial. Explore our Salesforce course syllabus to get started.
Getting Started to Salesforce Developer Basics
A well-known provider of cloud-based software, Salesforce offers an extensive suite of programs centered around customer relationship management (CRM) and other areas. This tutorial covers from salesforce introduction to salesforce practice projects that includes all important areas.
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce assists companies in managing their relationships and interactions with both present and potential clients. By combining many divisions including sales, service, marketing, and commerce, their platform provides a 360-degree perspective of the consumer.
Better communication, more individualized experiences, and increased client loyalty are made possible by this single point of view.
Key Features and Capabilities of Salesforce:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Sales Cloud
- Service Cloud
- Marketing Cloud
- Commerce Cloud
- Data Cloud (formerly Customer 360)
- Einstein AI
- Salesforce Platform (Lightning Platform)
- AppExchange
- Mobile CRM
- Reporting and Analytics
- Workflow Automation
- Security
- Scalability and Customization
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Salesforce Architecture
The multi-layered structure of Salesforce’s architecture underpins its wide range of cloud-based services. Below is a summary of the essential elements:
- Multi-Tenant Architecture: Salesforce uses a multi-tenant design at its core. This indicates that servers and databases are part of the same underlying infrastructure that is shared by several clients (tenants).
- Metadata-Driven Platform: Salesforce uses a development methodology that is driven by metadata. “Data about data” or metadata describes the organization, features, and user interface of a Salesforce organization (Org).
- API Services: Salesforce offers a comprehensive collection of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that facilitate data exchange and communication between various platforms.
- CRM and Related Functionality: This layer includes the main CRM programs, such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud, and provides a variety of tools for handling customer relations, sales procedures, customer service, and advertising campaigns.
- Enterprise Ecosystem: Salesforce has a large network of partners who develop and offer additional services and apps on the AppExchange, extending the platform’s capabilities to satisfy various business needs.
- Trust: Security is an important thing in the Salesforce infrastructure. It comprises a number of steps to safeguard data on several levels, guaranteeing its availability, confidentiality, and integrity.
Key Architectural Concepts:
Here are the important Salesforce architectural concepts:
- Org: A customer’s single Salesforce instance, complete with data and configuration specific to that customer.
- Instance: It is a particular Salesforce platform deployment on Salesforce’s infrastructure. A single instance may host several Orgs.
- Sandboxes: They are separate settings that mimic production organizations and are used for development, testing, and instruction without affecting real-time data.
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Salesforce Editions
Salesforce provides a range of editions designed to accommodate varying business requirements and sizes. The features and functionalities offered by these editions change, and so does their cost.
For Sales Cloud:
- Starter Suite ($25/month): It comes with basic reporting, email integration, and all the capabilities needed to manage leads, accounts, contacts, and opportunities.
- Pro Suite ($100/month): It offers more customization choices, campaign management, forecasting, and sales quoting.
- Enterprise ($165/month): It provides territory administration, process automation, sophisticated reporting and analytics, and comprehensive customization and automation features.
- Unlimited ($330/month): It provides all the Enterprise edition’s features along with unrestricted customization, comprehensive support, and extras like full development and testing sandboxes and predictive AI.
- Einstein 1 Sales ($500/per month): Improved with collaborative tools, data unification tools, and sophisticated AI capabilities.
Here are other types of cloud services:
Service Cloud: Service Cloud has different editions with different features and prices. It offers basic case management, while the higher-tier editions have more sophisticated capabilities including knowledge bases, omni-channel assistance, AI-powered service, and self-service portals.
Marketing Cloud: Depending on the product (e.g., Marketing Cloud Engagement, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement – formerly Pardot), Marketing Cloud offers a variety of pricing schemes.
Commerce Cloud: Depending on the particular requirements of the company, including elements like gross merchandise value and the intricacy of the e-commerce activities, the cost of the Commerce Cloud might vary greatly.
Developer Edition: This is a free edition designed to help developers create and test Salesforce platform apps. Although it has storage constraints and is not intended for production use, it offers access to many of the Enterprise Edition’s capabilities.
Key Considerations When Choosing an Edition:
- Business Size and Development Objectives: To select an edition that can grow with you, take into account your present size as well as your projected development.
- Essential Characteristics: Determine the precise characteristics and capabilities your company requires in order to achieve its objectives and optimize operations.
- Budget: Validate your CRM solution’s total budget and the monthly cost per user.
- Customization Requirements: Take into account editions with more extensive customization choices if your company procedures are unique.
- Integration Requirements: Verify that the selected edition offers the required API access if you need to integrate Salesforce with other systems.
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Salesforce Developer Edition
You may explore the Salesforce platform, gain development skills, and create applications in a free environment by simply setting up a Salesforce Developer Edition.
Steps to Sign Up for a Salesforce Developer Edition:
Here is a comprehensive how-to guide.
Navigate to the Salesforce Developer Edition Sign-Up Page:
Go to the official Salesforce Developer Edition sign-up website by opening your web browser. You can find it by searching for “Salesforce Developer Edition sign up” on any search engine or by going straight to a URL. See whether there is a page that says “Sign Up for Your Free Developer Edition.”
Fill Out the Registration Form:
A form requesting your contact details and personal information will be shown to you. This usually consists of:
- First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Company, Job Title, Phone Number, Country, Postal Code, and Username.
- However, it’s good practice to make it something you can remember.
- For example, [email protected].
- Choose a secure password and confirm it.
Submit the Form:
After completing all the necessary fields, double-check your information for accuracy before clicking the “Sign Up” or a comparable button at the bottom of the form.
Verify Your Email Address:
- Salesforce will send a verification email to the email address you supplied after the form is submitted.
- Look for a Salesforce email in your inbox, as well as in your spam and junk mail folders. Typically, the subject line reads, “Verify your Salesforce account.”
- Click the verification link in the email after opening it. To activate your Developer Edition organization, you must click on this link.
Set Up Your Security Question:
You will be taken to a Salesforce website after clicking the verification link, where you will be asked to create a security question and answer. In the event that you need to change your password, this is used to confirm your identity.
Log In to Your Developer Edition:
- You’ll be taken to the Salesforce login page after creating your security question.
- Enter the password and username you came up with when you signed up.
- On the “Log In” button, click.
Explore Your New Salesforce Developer Edition:
- Well done! Your Salesforce Developer Edition has now been successfully configured. You will be redirected to the default, modern Salesforce Lightning Experience interface.
- Spend some time investigating the surroundings. The App Launcher, the Setup menu, and several common Salesforce apps, such as Sales and Service, are visible.
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Data Modeling in Salesforce
To facilitate an organization’s business activities, data modeling in Salesforce entails planning and organizing how data is arranged, connected, and stored within the platform. It’s essential to successfully configuring and modifying Salesforce.
Key Concepts of Data Modeling in Salesforce
Objects: Consider objects to be database tables. They contain particular kinds of data.
- Standard Objects: These are pre-built by Salesforce (e.g., Accounts) and come with basic CRM features.
- Custom Objects: You can develop custom objects to hold data tailored to the particular requirements of your company.
- External Objects: These map to data kept in databases or other locations outside of your Salesforce organization.
Fields: In a database table, fields function similarly to columns. They stand for discrete pieces of data inside an item (e.g., Opportunity Amount, Contact Email, Account Name).
- Numerous field types are available in Salesforce, including text, numeric, date, picklist, and formula.
- You have the option of creating custom fields or using standard fields.
Records: In a database table, records are comparable to rows. The data for its fields is contained in each record, which is an instance of an object (for example, a particular Account called “Acme Corp”).
Relationships: Relationships specify the connections between various things and the ways in which information in one item might be related to information in another.
- Lookup Relationships: are independent of one another, but they establish a connection between two items.
- Master-Detail Relationships: Strong parent-child bonds are produced via master-detail relationships.
- Many-to-Many Relationships: Numerous records in one object can be associated to numerous records in another object through many-to-many relationships.
- Hierarchical Relationships: The User object has a unique kind of lookup relationship that enables users to be connected to a manager.
- Self-Relationships: It is possible for an Account to have a “Parent Account”; this is known as a self-relationship.
Schema Builder: You may inspect and edit your data model using this visual tool in Salesforce Setup. A drag-and-drop interface is used to build objects, fields, and relationships.
Importance of Data Modeling:
Some of the advantages of data modeling:
- Organization: Your data remains well-structured and comprehensible with a well-designed data model.
- Efficiency: It makes automated processes, reporting, and data retrieval more effective.
- Data Integrity: Accuracy and consistency of data are maintained by appropriate relationships and field types.
- Scalability: An effective data model may change to meet your changing business requirements.
- Business Processes: This guarantees that your Salesforce solution supports your particular business processes in an efficient manner.
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Automation and Workflow in Salesforce
Salesforce’s automation and workflow features are strong tools that let you increase productivity, decrease human labor, and streamline company procedures.
They let you set up Salesforce to automatically carry out particular tasks in response to predetermined criteria and triggers.
Here is an overview of the main Salesforce automation tools:
Workflow Rules (Legacy): Salesforce’s first automation tool was called a workflow rule. They enable you to specify criteria and initiate particular actions when those conditions are satisfied.
Key Features:
- Criteria-Based: When a record satisfies certain requirements, actions are carried out.
- Immediate Actions: Actions that take place immediately once the requirements are satisfied. (e.g., sending an email, updating a field).
- Time-Dependent Actions: Actions that are planned to take place at a particular point in the future. (e.g., sending a reminder email a week before a contract expires).
Process Builder (Being Replaced by Flow): Compared to Workflow Rules, Process Builder is a more robust and visually appealing automation tool. It enables you to create increasingly intricate automation through an interface akin to a flowchart.
Key Features:
- Multiple Criteria: A single process can have more than one “if/then” condition defined.
- Multiple Actions: Each criterion can be linked to several actions.
- Ability to Update Associated Records: Process Builder has the ability to update fields on any associated record, in contrast to Workflow Rules.
- Create Records: As an action, you can create new records.
- Invoke Other Flows or Processes: Processes have the ability to invoke other flows or processes.
- Launch Quick Actions: You can start Quick Actions that have already been set up.
- Post to Chatter: Make Chatter posts automatically.
- Call Apex Code: Incorporate unique Apex reasoning.
- Submit for Approval: Start the procedures for approval.
Flows (The Future of Salesforce Automation): The most powerful and adaptable automation product on the market is Salesforce Flow. It enables you to create a vast array of intricate automated procedures.
- Visual, Low-Code Interface: Automation design is done with a drag-and-drop interface.
- Screen Flows: To gather and present data, lead users through a sequence of displays.
- Autolaunched Flows: Flows that are autolaunched operate in the background without requiring user input.
- Record-Triggered Flows: These run automatically in response to the creation, modification, or deletion of records.
- Schedule-Triggered Flows: Operate on a predetermined frequency and time.
- Platform Event-Triggered Flows: It begins when the platform event message is received.
- Logic Elements: To regulate the automation’s flow, incorporate choices, loops, assignments, and more.
- Data Manipulation: Create, edit, retrieve, and remove Salesforce records as part of data manipulation.
- Integration Features: It includes the ability to call external services, Apex code, and other flows.
- User Interaction: It includes creating tasks, sending emails, and displaying screens.
- Orchestration: Use Flow Orchestration to integrate numerous flows and user interactions into lengthy, multi-user processes.
Approval Processes: In Salesforce, approval processes automate the approval of records. They specify the process a record must follow in order to be accepted or denied.
Key Features:
- Establish the requirements for entry into the approval process.
- Indicate the steps in the approval procedure and the people who must give their permission at each stage.
- Configure events to take place at various points during the approval process, such as when a record is submitted, accepted, denied, or recalled.
- Examples: Email alerts, field updates, task creation, and outgoing messages.
Apex Triggers: Custom code known as Apex triggers can be written to run either before or after particular data manipulation language (DML) events in Salesforce, such as adding, editing, or removing records.
Key Features:
- Give automation logic the greatest amount of freedom and control.
- It enables you to carry out intricate tasks that declarative tools like Flow, Process Builder, and Workflow Rules cannot.
- Able to carry out complex data transformations and communicate with external systems.
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Apex Programming (Backend Logic) in Salesforce
Extending the platform’s declarative features and putting strong backend logic into practice require apex programming. Beyond what point-and-click tools can accomplish, it lets you write custom code that runs on the Salesforce servers, allowing you to create complicated apps and automate intricate business processes.
What is Apex?
Salesforce created the object-oriented, strongly-typed programming language Apex. Its syntax is comparable to that of C# and Java.
- Cloud-based
- Trigger-based or callable
- Data-focused
- Governor limits
- Object-Oriented Programming
- Data Manipulation Language (DML)
- Salesforce Object Query Language (SOQL)
- Salesforce Object Search Language (SOSL)
- Triggers
- Classes
- Methods
- Variables (String, Boolean, Integer, Data, List, Map, Set, sObject).
- Control flow statements (if-else, for, while, do-while).
- Exceptions with try-catch-finally.
- Asynchronous Apex with future methods, queueable apex, batch apex, and scheduled apex.
- Testing and Governor Limits
Example of Apex Code
trigger UpdateAccountDescription on Account (before insert, before update) {
for (Account acc : Trigger.new) {
if (String.isBlank(acc.Description)) {
acc.Description = ‘This account was created or updated on ‘ + Date.today();
}
}
}
Development Tools for Apex
- Developer Console: Salesforce’s browser-based integrated development environment (IDE) for authoring, testing, and debugging Apex code.
- Salesforce Extensions for VS Code: A robust collection of resources for Salesforce platform development with the well-known code editor Visual Studio Code. In general, this is the recommended choice for more sophisticated development.
- Salesforce CLI (Command Line Interface): A command-line tool for working with your Salesforce organization, it allows you to deploy and retrieve metadata, including Apex code.
A key competency for extending and modifying Salesforce to satisfy intricate business needs is apex programming. You can create strong and reliable backend logic that powers your Salesforce apps by being aware of its fundamental ideas, industry best practices, and available development tools.
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Lightning Web Components (LWC) (Frontend Development)
It is the salesforce’s cutting-edge, standards-based framework for creating user interfaces. It revolutionizes frontend development in the Salesforce ecosystem by utilizing contemporary web technologies and providing notable performance enhancements.
Core Web Components standards are used in the construction of LWC.
Modern Web Standards
Core Web Components standards are used in the construction of LWC:
- Custom Elements: Let you make your own tags that resemble HTML and have unique properties.
- Shadow DOM: Encapsulates the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of your component to keep them from interfering with other areas of the page.
- HTML Templates: Define the UI structure of your component using HTML templates.
- Performance: Compared to its predecessor, Aura components, LWC renders more quickly and uses less memory by utilizing browser-native Web Components.
- Interoperability: Within the same Salesforce organization, LWC and Aura components can coexist and communicate with ease.
- Developer-Friendly: As LWC supports current JavaScript (ECMAScript 6+), developers who are accustomed to normal web development procedures will find it simpler to get started.
- Security: By improving isolation, the Shadow DOM makes your components more secure.
Example of LWC in Salesforce:
<template>
<lightning-card title=”Hello, {greeting}”>
<div class=”slds-m-around_medium”>
<lightning-input label=”Name” value={name} onchange={handleNameChange}></lightning-input>
<p>Hello, {greeting}!</p>
</div>
</lightning-card>
</template>
Development Tools for LWC:
- Salesforce Extensions for VS Code: Offers outstanding assistance for LWC development, encompassing debugging, code completion, syntax highlighting, and connection with the Salesforce CLI.
- Salesforce CLI (Command Line Interface): Creating, installing, and managing LWC components as well as communicating with Salesforce DX projects require it.
- LWC DevTools Browser Extension: It is a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that lets you examine and troubleshoot your LWC components.
The Salesforce platform’s Lightning Web Components are the frontend development of the future. You can create user interfaces that provide outstanding user experiences more quickly, securely, and maintainable by using this contemporary architecture.
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Conclusion
Fundamentals of salesforce are covered along with modern development tools, LWC, Apex in this Salesforce developer tutorial. There are many things to explore to become an expert. Learn everything comprehensively with practical experiences in our Salesforce training in Chennai.
