Introducing Agile Vision from CA!

CA just released Agile Vision - their first application built entirely on Force.com. Agile Vision is an application that teams can use to collaborate and manage their projects. It's especially aimed at teams that are using an Agile development methodology. I'm the Technical Account Manager for CA, so I'm pretty excited about this launch.

The app looks great - CA has built a lovely user interface that will help teams work efficiently, even if they are distributed:

I'm really excited for CA, and this is just the first of many great apps that CA will build on Force.com. For more information, check out ca.com/agile.

Salesforce Spring '10 - New User Interface Theme

Read about the new hotness over on the Force.com blog: Salesforce Spring '10 - New User Interface Theme

S-Control Deprecation

From the Force.com Blog:

S-Controls were labeled as deprecated in the Spring ‘09 release. With the upcoming Spring ‘10 release, we will be taking the next step in S-Control deprecation. Read the S-Control Deprecation article for more detail on what will and what won't change with the next phase of S-Control deprecation.

Dreamforce 2009: How to Write Good Unit Tests in Force.com Code

In addition to presenting the Creating Rich User Experiences session at Dreamforce 2009, I also presented a session on How to Write Good Unit Tests. I was really happy with how the session turned out - after the session, a couple of attendees told me that they were surprised that I was so enthusiastic about a topic that they had considered to be complete drudgery. They said that they were excited to go back home and start applying the tips that I had provided.

If you haven't already, I encourage you to check out the video, read the accompanying How to Write Good Unit Tests article, download the slide deck and play around with the sample source code from the session.

Dreamforce 2009: Creating Rich User Experiences Using Google Visualizations and Adobe Flex

The content from the session that I presented with Nick Simha at Dreamforce 2009 is now available. The feedback that we received on the session was pretty great, so I hope that you'll check it out!

In addition to the video and slide deck, be sure to check out all of the great session resources that we put together.

Introduction to Developing Commercial Applications on Force.com

If you're thinking about building a new application on Force.com, be sure to check out the new How to Develop Commerical Applications on Force.com blog post.

Force.com as Google Visualization Data Source

From the Force.com Blog:

Did you know that you can configure Force.com apps to act as a Google Visualization Data Source? This means that you can now publish data from your Force.com org to the internet where it can be easily consumed by various Google Gadgets and Google Visualizations - not just on your website, but on any website that supports embedding the gadgets or visualizations.

Much of your company's data probably should not be published out on the internet, but you can certainly imagine a number of situations where exposing some of your company's data could be very beneficial.

For example, if your company is putting on a user conference, your marketing team might want to expose some of the attendees' demographic data so that the conference attendees can create heat maps of shared geographic locations, shared topics of interest, etc.

Or your sales team might want to expose a list of its most popular products so that your customers can see what other customers are buying - similar to the way that Amazon publishes lists of its bestselling items.

Or your support team might want to expose its call volume data so that customers know when they're most likely to be able to speak with an agent directly.

There are many additional reasons why you might want to publish some of your company's Force.com data to the internet. Once you do, your customers may just innovate and come up with additional uses for your data that you had never even thought about. Learn more about exposing your Force.com data as a Google Visualization Data Source.

Watch Force.com Developer Courses on iTunes!

Really exciting news on the Force.com blog - You can now access over 30 hours of Force.com classroom training as podcasts on iTunes!

Google Visualizations Project Update

Over on the Force.com blog, I mentioned that the Google Visualizations project has been updated on Force.com Code Share.

The updates include a couple of new visualization components, including a Hierarchical Chart component that can be used to visualize Account hierarchies and Contact hierarchies out of the box. In addition, the test coverage for the entire project has been increased, and there are many new code samples - so there's something for everyone!

Optimizing Standard Detail Pages That Contain Visualforce Pages

I just posted a new tip on Optimizing Standard Detail Pages That Contain Visualforce Pages over on the Force.com blog. Check it out, and let me know if you have any questions.