What Is Salesforce? A Beginner’s Guide for Developers
Welcome to Salesforce, Before we start about Salesforce, Let me tell you something about CRM, Customer management relationship. Each company has its own server. Customer relationship management (CRM) is an approach to manage a company’s interaction with current and potential customers. A company may have millions of customers and related information.
To store the data of customer we need Server. Can you assume the cost Server and time it took to set up your own CRM? Here the Salesforce comes into the picture, Salesforce is a CRM tool in the cloud that you can work from anywhere using a web browser, tablet and a smartphone.
You can manage Customers, accounts, and sales leads using Salesforce without any special setup or customized work.for example a real estate company can use Salesforce where customers are sellers and buyers.The Salesforce platform allows a business to customize the CRM system and try to make it more profitable within less time.
On top of that Salesforce provides you various options like creating applications, reports and Dashboard. You can manage all this stuff easily within minutes.
History of Salesforce
The company was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez as a company specializing in software as a service (SaaS).The journey began from the small room and now it is reached to the cloud.
Over 100,000 customers, millions of users, a very popular application that’s used for things like sales about sales reps, managers, supporting a sales team, recording sales and prospects and things like that.
Where the Salesforce Developers comes into the picture?
Any feature or functions which are not available as a part of an application and the application needs to extend refers to customization. Despite you configured the things there are few actions which are not achievable and it results in adding some custom code, which results in Customization.
The best way to think of the Salesforce is to think of a database in the cloud, a database that can be customized to store the information that is important to you.
Path to start salesforce technology
Want to learn how to code in Salesforce but scared to start? You can start at zero, and get a full-time job in less than six months. I can say to start with Salesforce you should have a better understanding of OOPS concepts and logic power should be strong than you will be Hero of Salesforce.
If you don’t know about OOPS not a problem, there is another opportunity which Salesforce brings to you that is point and click. Salesforce is divided into two parts that are
- Point and click (Salesforce Administrator)
- Coding (Salesforce developer)
Trailhead (The fun way to learn salesforce)
Before you move ahead let me tell you that you can learn Salesforce with fun by completing your badges using Trailhead account
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/
Create an account in trailhead and create a Salesforce account link both accounts and here you go.
On Trailhead site there is a Module tab, Click on that and you can decide which path to choose Beginner, Intermediate, or advance.
Reference guide for Salesforce Administrator:
- https://in.udacity.com/course/intro-to-point-click-app-development–ud162 (free video)
- https://resources.docs.salesforce.com/204/latest/en-us/sfdc/pdf/basics.pdf
Reference guide for Salesforce Developers:
- Go to https://developer.salesforce.com This is the official developer library, where you can find signup button and click on that and create an account on Salesforce platform.
- Go through the Salesforce.org. Try to get familiar with Salesforce Org.
- https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.fundamentals.meta/fundamentals/adg_preface.htm (Force.com Platform Fundamentals)
- https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_dev_guide.htm (Apex Developer Guide)
- https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_triggers_order_of_execution.htm (Understand the execution of flow)
- https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.pages.meta/pages/pages_intro.htm (Visualforce Developer Guide)
- https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.soql_sosl.meta/soql_sosl/sforce_api_calls_soql_sosl_intro.htm (Force.com SOQL and SOSL Reference)
- https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.lightning.meta/lightning/intro_framework.htm (Lightning Components Developer Guide)