Category Archives: Heroku

Farewell Package.xml…you will not be missed

Salesforce’s Spring 21 release has brought about a lot of big changes. Some I am not so thrilled with, but one has so far been nice to see.

Sandbox Source Tracking went GA with this release. This is meant to help us poor developers keep track of all metadata changes between our local VS Code source repositories and the actual Sandbox/Scratch orgs.

In a nutshell, it appears to me that the dreaded package.xml file will be going away, eventually. This file has caused far too many problems (especially for teams of developers). Instead of having to manually track all metadata data changes, Salesforce will automatically keep those changes synchronized between your local development workspace and the org. THANK YOU Salesforce!

Now before you get too excited, this is NOT going to be an easy transition. For starters, a force:source:pull will not get you all the metadata from an org. I experienced problems just trying to do a simple demo with a scratch org this past weekend, using brand new code.

I anticipate a lot of customers are going to experience huge problems as a result of this change. This will be especially difficult for legacy customers with huge monolith orgs that have not been untangled.

But, I do believe this step is necessary to allowing all Salesforce developers to really emerge from the 90’s and start doing serious modern web development. Before you go too far with this, you need to know what you are dealing with. Start by checking out this Developer Blog article. I am sure there will be lots more Trailhead modules/videos etc to come on this.

So, this is not some “magic pill” to solve all development/deployment problems. But, it is a good first step. Looking forward to seeing problems addressed and enhancements made.

Not to be missed Developer Content on Trailhead

THLogoOk, I know I work for Trailhead and so I am a little bit biased, but I just have to say that we released some incredibly awesome developer-based content in September. If you are a serious Salesforce developer that has been waiting for some juicy content from Trailhead, I think you will really like what we have out right now. This post highlights my favorites.

Got Slack?

A lot of teams do and they love it. If your team does, wouldn’t it be cool if you could integrate Slack with systems in your own company? Well you can. Using webhooks, you can bring notifications and data in from other systems and build your very own Slack app. You can even use AI services to create your own intelligent Slack bot.

To get started, check out this beginner module, Slack Development Basics. Once you know the basics, you can move on to working through the Build a Welcome Bot for Slack. In that hands-on project, you will use Node SDK’s and the Slack API’s to build a welcome bot that interacts with users that signup to your channel.

What about Heroku?

If you have not been playing around with Heroku, then you are missing out. Seriously! Heroku is such an incredible platform and EVERY Salesforce developer should be looking at how they can work with it to deliver incredible online experiences.

We have two new projects that you need to check out. If you are new to Heroku, then look at Quick Start: Build a Java App on Heroku, which is a simple three step project that will get your feet wet with creating, deploying and scaling a simple Java app on Heroku.

More experienced developers wanting to see a rich end-to-end solution will want to move straight to Develop a Heroku App that Integrates with Salesforce, which walks you through installing the Dreamhouse App to Heroku and then setting up Heroku Connect so that property data is synced both ways between your Salesforce org and Heroku app. You will even see how to implement continuous delivery through Heroku Pipelines and Flow.

Need to know more about JavaScript?

Every Salesforce developer should be trying to enhance their JavaScript skills since the Lightning platform is all about JavaScript. JavaScript Skills for Salesforce Developers is just what you need to learn the key JavaScript skills that you need to take your Visualforce pages and Lightning Components to the next level.

Think you know enough about Unit Testing?

I bet you could learn some more and I know just the module to help. This new module called Unit Testing on the Lightning Platform dives deep into topics such as positive and negative testing, using a mock and a stub, as well as permission-based testing. It even covers testing JavaScript with the Lightning Testing Service.

Finish it all off with Alexa

Ready for some fun? We have a super fun project that uses a new voice platform called Violet to build an Alexa-based app that links back to your Salesforce org. Quick Start: Violet will walk you through setting up an Alexa Skill that lets you plan a game night for your friends.

Have fun!!!