With Salesforce1 Salesforce.com has rebranded (and re-positioned) its development platform for its mobile readiness (mobile app) and integration capabilities. Salesforce 1 is a platform that will help software products vendors, developers to build mobile apps and integrate them with other apps quickly. With Salesforce1 even the administrators of Salesforce.com can create the simple mobile apps with just point and click customization – unlocking the power of mobile apps on Salesforce.com platform.
Here are few notable features of Salesforce1 which you should know when building mobile apps:
In-App and Push Notifications
The Salesforce1 platform supports 2 types of mobile notification:
In App Notifications – the In App Notifications appear in the app itself and can be accessed manually via the bell icon (top right hand corner).
Push Notifications – The push notifications are for Mobile device apps only and they are not supported by the mobile browser apps. the push notifications will appear as badges on the app icon etc.
The notifications are limited to Chatter (mentions, posts, comments etc.) and Approval requests. Notifications are enabled at the organization level and not on per-user basis.
Publisher Actions
One of the most powerful feature of Salesforce1 is publisher Actions.“Publisher†is the term that Salesforce uses to refer to the mechanism that lets a user take actions from the feed. Think of them as something that a user can do like create a new purchase order, mark delivery of a product as delivered or create a new task or contact.
There are three types of standard publisher actions – Create Actions, Log a Call Actions and Update Actions while developers can create Custom Actions. Actions can be Standard or Custom and Global or Object scoped. (for example, actions on an account may be different than those on a contact) and can even interact with App- Exchange applications as well as internal custom pages/apps.
Publisher actions are accessed via the (+) button on the home page, Chatter tab, Chatter group and on record detail pages.
APIs in Salesforce1
Salesforce has taken an API-first approach to their Salesforce1 platform. The intention is to provide granular service APIs and not just data APIs. This helps developers to take advantage of whatever part of Salesforce they’d like to as they write apps for any connected app, device or service. You can use Canvas APIs, can call Actions using an API and do much more.
Now you can create mobile apps with even point and click customization – which is truly releasing the potential of mobile in enterprise. So whether you have need for a field service app, material delivery app or a simple leave request app – they all can be built with seamlessly with Salesforce1.
Have any app idea that you want to implement using Salesforce1? We would love to hear from you to make your dream a reality.
