Learning The Platform: Fun Things You Can Do With Salesforce.com

The Easter Egg

In my post 3 April Fool’s Pranks for Salesforce Admins I challenges readers to find the Easter Egg on this page.

This Easter Egg was something that I added as a Visualforce Component to one of my former orgs. I had a very tired and frustrated team member during a business requirement gathering meeting. When I asked if she had a preference for a “loading image” she just said “I just want rainbows and unicorns.”

I gave her Rainbows and Unicorns. Thankfully I had read a blog post from Jason Venable. that contained his own fun project he called “Unicorn Blast.” I adapted it, added it to a visualforce component so I could reuse it, and then embedded on the page.

When my tired team member clicked on the Object Detail heading, she got her wish – rainbows and unicorns. Give it a try. Click the words “Opportunity Detail” http://jquery-developer-edition.na126.force.com/WizardMatch/WizardNews_Prank_Example?id=006d0000005vDyI

An added Easter egg for you. There’s one more method on that page to call forth the rainbows and unicorns. Can you find it?

Pick Up Line Generator

Back in February, the fun loving and brave Anna Eschenburg , asked the Salesforce MVPs for their Salesforce & Force.com pick up lines. This was indeed a very brave thing to do. A few days and over 126 pick up lines later, 14 were chosen for the Salesforce blog http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2014/02/14-salesforce-pickup-lines.html.

This was really funny to me and also very sad. 14 were chosen and the remaining 112+ were left in a chatter group to slowly be forgotten. I had to do something about it! So I imported all the pickup lines into an object and then wrote a little page. This page will randomly select one out of 126 pick up lines. If you get one of the 14 pickup lines chosen you’ll see the very nice card, otherwise you just see the text. I had plans to go through and write some jquery or something that would make the others appear similar to the 14 chosen, but I got busy.

So here’s the infamous Pick Up line Generator . Use these with real human beings at your own risk. We’re not liable for any face slapping or HR disputes.

In Line “Help”

I’m a big believer of giving users the information and help details on the page as much as possible. With the new deal between Microsoft and Salesforce I thought a classic may return.

Here’s my thought of what this deal may bring. Got to this page: Inline Help and then click one of the Opportunity names.

Thanks to smore.com for providing the javascript libraries.

Wizard Match Making

Dreamforce 2013 was over. I had joined a handful of MVPs up in a hotel room. There may or may not have been wine and pizza involved. The conversation topics turned to how difficult it can be to find dates as a busy Salesforce professional, especially if you’re running your own business.

After falling off the couch while laughing at something, I made a off hand comment that I should start “Wizard Match Making” for the busy Salesforce professional.

Once I returned from San Francisco, this idea stuck in my head. A full match making site would be a bit silly since the market is simply choking by them. The idea of making the fun last just a little bit longer, I created this: Wizard Match Making

Teasing a Friend

In my post Salesforce Developer Evangelist – Some of My Favorite People I mentioned Reid Carlberg.

I have a great deal of respect for Reid. He’s a fantastic Dev Evangelist who has repeatedly inspired and encouraged me in learning the developer side of the platform. Reid also has a fantastic blog that recently has been focusing on the Internet of Things. Makes me jealous since I haven’t even had time for some basic soldering. Check it out Reid’s blog here: http://reidcarlberg.com/

Last year, Reid participated in Movember, a charity organization. As part of this he grew one fantastic mustache and kept it from Dreamforce.

Most importantly, Reid has a good sense of humor. He posted an Audio file of him admitting he was wrong and then tweeted it. Meanwhile, I was trying to build a Streaming API example and was trying to figure out how to play audio files… Can you see where this is going?

Thus my messy streaming API example. I display a question and a series of answers. You’ll notice Reid is one of the responders. Marking his answer as “wrong” will kick off a push topic via the streaming API and will post to the left of the Q&A panel. Bonus, it’ll also play a nice little sound bite. It’s not perfect quite yet. There’s a bit of a delay between the text update and the audio being played. My refresh to show his answer is wrong also isn’t working for some reason. Close enough! You can try it out here: https://wizardmagic-dev-ed–c.na98.visual.force.com/apex/Streaming_API_Example?sfdc.tabName=01rE00000004k6A

You may need to allow your audio player access to the page. I’m using Chrome and it prompted me to allow quicktime to play the wav file.

Enjoy!

Baby Force

In January of 2012, I became the father of two beautiful baby girls. I decided to take 2 weeks off per child to celebrate and try to learn to be a father. My kids were born a few weeks premature and it was imperative that we tracked every feeding and every diaper change. This was being done on a small paper notebook. Feedings occurred every 2 hours… 24 hours a day. The first week we met with the doctors every day and then once a couple weeks after that.

I was sleep deprived. I was frustrated with tracking because I had no idea how things were going, primarily because I couldn’t read my hand writing. It was also the second longest period of time I had not work. Something in my snapped and at 3 AM one night I started to build Babyforce.

I started by entering the notebook into a developer org I had. I then began creating reports and dashboards. I loved it. Sadly, the mobile options in 2012 were not very friendly too me or to my wife. We couldn’t have a laptop up every where had the kids. So the data entry continued on a notebook.

Had my kids been born just a couple of years later, I would have had Salesforce1 and an instant mobile platform. Then I could be lucky person like Chris Zullo and his BabyForce

Inspired by @Kwongerific my version of Babyforce confirms it takes a team effort #salesforce1selfie pic.twitter.com/EbgbSZ8dth

— Chris Zullo (@chriszullo) April 1, 2014

A Note From The Editor

A little secret about WizardNews posts. I hate writing Post Titles. I struggle with trying to write titles that are informative, accurate, and grab your attention. One of the more difficult parts is not to interject my sense of humor into the title – too much. For example, alternative titles for today’s post included:

• Things to do when you’re bored
• How I learn the platform
• How to abuse your developer org and get away with it
• 6 examples of how I’ve lost my mind
• 6 examples of fun salesforce projects

What other titles can you come up with for this week’s blog post?