Listed on the Force.com Sites Gallery

My work on the Force.com Site I built recently was listed on the “Sites Gallery” by Salesforce.com.

Check it out – http://developer.force.com/sitesgallery

No Comments

My First Force.com Site

Check it out – http://datacenters.digitalrealtytrust.com/

I learned a lot in making my first Force.com Site: a lot of apex, a lot of visualforce and a lot Amazon Web Services.

No Comments

Using javascript and visualforce to solve a calculation problem

I had the need for a formula field in Salesforce.com to do two things:

  1. Evaluate an expression that my user types in. example: ((2+2) * 6) / 3
  2. Store the actual formula the user typed in to another field, in the case the formula should be audited for accuracy.

The formula is different for every record (being used on the Contract standard object), thus the need for my user to type it in. Plus, I have to be able include the actual formula in a Report column for auditors.

I solved this using a few things:

  1. Two custom fields:”FieldX__c” for the custom expression and “FieldY__c” for the evaluation
  2. Javacript to conduct the calculation
  3. A visualforce page to put the two fields and javascript together

Here, in written format, is what the user experiences:

  1. The user types their custom expression into “FieldX__c” – ex: (2 + 2) * 6
  2. The user clicks on the “=” button
  3. The javascript evalutes the expression in “FieldX__C” and stores the value in “FieldY__c”

No Comments

Now a Salesforce.com Certified Developer

I recently sat for the DEV401 certification exam at DreamForce ’09 and passed.

The nice thing about it is I sat for the test on Tuesday and on Wednesday at DreamForce they had these boards printed up standing in the heaviest-traveled area of the show floor.

DreamForce '09 - My name amongst those who passed cert exams

DreamForce '09 - My name amongst those who passed cert exams

My name amongst those who passed cert exams

My name amongst those who passed cert exams

No Comments

Podcasting on iTunes

A couple of months ago we started publishing our audio and video files on iTunes via Podcast and Video Podcast respectively.

If you have iTunes installed, you can find our channel here: Digital Realty Trust Knowledge Library

No Comments

Google Products

Just a quick note to highlight the proliferation of Google throughout my life:

  • Home – I use gmail like an addict
  • Home – All of my contacts are synced up with Google Contacts
  • Home – My wife and I use Google Docs to help keep track of the family budget
  • Home – My wife and I use Google Picasa to store all of our photos online
  • Home – My wife and I use Blogger to…blog
  • Home – I subscribe to several RSS feeds and use Google Reader multiple times a day
  • Home – I recently set up a Google Voice account for call-forwarding and voice mail
  • Work – I use the Google Data Visualization API at work to generate graphs
  • Work – Of course, I use Google Search hourly
  • Work – We will be using Google AdWords to manage our PPC campaign in 2010 
  • Work – Several of our videos are hosted on YouTube
  • Work – A large section of our corporate website uses Google Maps
  • Work – We use Google Analytics to track stats on our website

No wonder they are slowly taking over the world.

No Comments

Certificate: Adobe DreamWeaver 101

This is my “Certificate of Completion” from Lynda.com for sitting through the course titled, “Creating a First Web Site with DreamWeaver CS4.”

No Comments

Marketing “Systems” I use

I was just putting together a list of all “systems” I use here in the Marketing department and thought I would share. My job title, officially, is ‘Marketing Information Systems Manager’.

No Comments

Force.com Sites

I just received word from the Salesforce.com Product Manager that DLR and I have been accepted into the Force.com Sites Pilot program.

I guess you can say its a privilege. It’s basically a beta program intended to allow a few customers “production” access to the Force.com Sites technology so that they can fine tune anything before they make it generally available to every Salesforce.com customer. The pilot program, I hear, was rather selective.

Currently, I’m going through the initial set up (nothing to show yet) but I do hope to be able to show some progress, or at least screen shots, here.

No Comments

“drt.com wide”

A few years ago the web standard was to build your site no wider than 800px. With advances in monitor technology and size, most web-saavy users cannot remember the days of 800px-wide sites.

Therefore, I took a deep dive into our Google Analytics accounts and sure enough, people shop our website with some rather large resolutions (e.g. 1920×1200, 1680×1050, 1400×1050, 1600×1200).

So, I’ve recently widened the site to 990px:

Screenshot of the new, wider drt.com

Screenshot of the new, wider drt.com

No Comments