Salesforce is probably the world’s #1 CRM solution and, without any doubt, a powerful tool for connecting with your customers.
If you’ve arrived at this article, you probably already have your mind set on using the platform and you’re wondering how can you tune it to your business. In this blog post, we skim through the key features that make Salesforce a leader in the market (just as a reminder), and follow with an overview of possibilities for customization in the Salesforce platform.
Table of contents:
Salesforce CRM platform – key features
Here are the key features of Salesforce ecosystem that both support its current position as industry-leading CRM and make it ready for future changes:
- true omni-channel experience allowing the flow of information from multiple systems,
- one place to gather all the data both external and internal in one holistic view,
- easy-to-build solutions for better collaboration and increased efficiency,
- designed with a mobile-first mindset for convenient access on all devices,
- highly configurable and customizable,
- possibility to use AI-based automation to further support customer journey.
Customization in Salesforce
If you wish to tune your Salesforce environment to your company’s unique needs and the system’s configuration options are not enough – you can always reach out to Salesforce consultants and solution architects who, together with software developers, will customize the platform for you.
Below, we’re describing a few of the tools that can be used for Salesforce customization both on the backend and on the front-end side of the applications.
Apex programming language
Apex is a dynamically inputted, object-oriented language for coding flows and transaction control statements on the platform server side in combination with calls to the API. Similar to Java and performing as a database-stored procedure, it enables programmers to equip the majority of system events (from button clicks to record updates) with business logic.
Both Web service requests and object triggers can initiate Apex code.
Here are a couple of Apex use cases:
- creating Web services and email services,
- achieving complex validations over multiple objects,
- developing intricate business processes,
- customizing the transactional logic that happens over the complete transaction and instead of a solitary record transaction,
- combining custom logic with additional actions (like storing a record) to make it occur whenever the action is performed.
Visualforce UI framework
The Visualforce UI framework allows for creating customized user interfaces presented natively on the Lightning platform. It features a mark-up language similar to HTML, and some controllers on the server side, which easily perform a number of basic database actions e.g. queries or saving. For extra flexibility in creating the perfect app interface, the Visualforce mark-up can be mixed with HTML mark-up, CSS styles, and even JavaScript libraries.
Visualforce not only offers nearly 150 built-in components for developers to use, but also allows them to create components of their own.
Visualforce pages are the basic elements that application developers can use as building blocks. A Visualforce page doesn’t differ much from a standard Web page, but its features enable you to conveniently access, update and display your company’s data. Each page has a unique URL, just like any regular site.
The Visualforce pages can be created and modified in a number of ways inside Salesforce but also with external tools using Salesforce APIs.
Visualforce can be used for:
- Developing multi-step processes (e.g. wizards)
- Creating custom in-app flows
- Designing patterns for navigation
- Setting data-specific rules for smoother app interactions
The Lightning Component UI framework
The Lightning Component is a UI framework for building single-page web applications for both desktop and mobile devices, both inside and outside Salesforce (for external users). Lightning components are custom, Web Standard-based HTML components created with HTML and JavaScript.
DreamInvest is one sample Salesforce application built using the Lightning Component framework. It’s a financial services app with a mutual fund selector that shows some standard coding practices for developing apps using this particular framework.
Salesforce customization services
We have solid experience in delivering custom Salesforce solutions for our clients. Our portfolio comprises a project for a company that aimed at bringing one unified process to its different entities so they could act as one. The custom solutions that we applied cover document management, file version control, project overview, and cost calculation among other things, as well as a custom contact center console.
Don’t hesitate to contact us for more information! We’ll be happy to answer any of your questions regarding your project or our Salesforce customization services.
