Building and Publishing Your Application

The key to turning an idea into reality lies in the execution. Having the inception of an idea and getting it implemented as an application and into the hands of users is an exciting journey and one that constantly develops and evolves between you and your users. One of the great things about developing on the Salesforce Platform is the support you get from the platform beyond the core engineering phase of the production process.

In this first chapter, we will use the declarative and programmatic tools of the platform to quickly build an initial version of an application that we will use throughout this book. This will give you an opportunity to get some hands-on experience with some of the packaging and installation features that are needed to release applications to your target users. For ISV (Independent Software Vendor) developers, we will also look at the facilities available to publish your Salesforce application through Salesforce AppExchange (equivalent to Apple’s App Store) so that your future customers can find and purchase your application, and finally, how you can provide end user support.

The following topics outline what we will achieve in this chapter:

• Introducing Salesforce DX
• Required organizations
• Introducing the book’s sample application
• Package types and benefits
• Creating your first managed package
• Package dependencies and uploading
• Supporting package upgradability
• Introduction to AppExchange and creating listings
• Installing and testing your package
• Licensing
• Supporting your application
• Becoming a Salesforce partner and the benefits of doing so
• Customer metrics
• Trialforce and Test Drive features
• Package considerations for customers building external integrations