In this post, let us learn about the Batch Apex and its usage. Once after completing this post, you will be able to write a batch class very comfortably.

When to go for Batch Apex?

As a developer, we may come across situations to handle thousands of records for a database operation. In those cases, batch apex simplifies our processing time and system complexity. Batch apex operates over small batches of records, covering your entire record set and breaking the processing down to manageable chunks.

These jobs can be programmatically invoked at runtime using apex. We can have only 5 queued or active batch jobs at one time.

How to use Batch apex?

Write an apex class – by implementing the interface Database.Batchable and then invoke the class programmatically.

Database.Batchable – Contains 3 methods

Start()

return type: Iterable |Querylocatorarguments : Database.batchableContextexecute()

no return typearguments : Database.batchableContext , List<Sobject> scopefinish()

no return typearguments : Database.batchableContextExample: Use Case: Reassign Account owner

global class OwnerReassignment implements Database.Batchable<sObject> {
	String query;
	String email;
	Id toUserId;
	Id fromUserId;
	global Database.querylocator start(Database.BatchableContext BC) {
		return Database.getQueryLocator(query);
	}
	global void execute(Database.BatchableContext BC, List<sObject> scope) {
		List<Account> accns = new List<Account>();
		for(sObject s : scope){Account a = (Account)s;
		if(a.OwnerId==fromUserId) {
			a.OwnerId=toUserId;accns.add(a);
		}
	}
	update accns;}global void finish(Database.BatchableContext BC) {
		Messaging.SingleEmailMessage mail = new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage();
		mail.setToAddresses(new String[] {email});
		mail.setReplyTo('batch@acme.com');
		mail.setSenderDisplayName('Batch Processing');
		mail.setSubject('Batch Process Completed');
		mail.setPlainTextBody('Batch Process has completed');
		Messaging.sendEmail(new Messaging.SingleEmailMessage[] { mail });
	}
}

The above code can be run by executing the below snippet from Anonymous window

OwnerReassignment reassign = new OwnerReassignment();
reassign.query = 'SELECT Id, Name, Ownerid FROM Account ' + 'WHERE ownerid="' + u.id + '"'; 
reassign.email = 'admin@acme.com';
reassign.fromUserId = u;
reassign.toUserId = u2;
ID batchprocessid = Database.executeBatch(reassign);

References: Salesforce apex developer guide

Salesforce’s On-Demand Email Handler Service can be further enhanced using a case trigger to better identify the type of case that is being created. Inherently not the best way for customers to create cases (Web-to-Case, Communities are much better alternatives), but sometimes this is the path of least resistance.

This solution shows how to parse out an email subject and search for a list of potential strings to match against to help categorize your case (and potentially route to appropriate service agents). Workflow rules or Process Builder flows will not be able to do exactly this.

Follow the steps below to parse an Email Subject in email-to-case using RegEx

Step 1:

Create some Custom Labels with comma-separated lists of strings to match against.  For example, let’s say we want to distinguish between emails asking for support versus sales. The best approach is obviously to have 2 separate email addresses, but let’s say you have just one target email address.

EmailSubjectSupport = “help,support,assistance”
EmailSubjectSales = “buy, new, order, cost”

Step 2:

Create picklist values in Case.Type for “Support” and “Sales”

Step 3:

Create Case Trigger (beforeInsert) and use this code snippet below:

public static void setCaseType(List<Case> records) {
    String searchWords;
    List<String> strings;
    for(Case c : records) {
        searchWords = Label.EmailSubjectSupport;
        strings = searchWords.split(',');
        if (isStringInTarget(strings, c.Subject)) {
            c.Type = 'Support'; continue; 
        }
        searchWords = Label.EmailSubjectSales;
        strings = searchWords.split(',');
        if (isStringInTarget(strings, c.Subject)) {
            c.Type = 'Sales’; continue;
        }
    } // end for loop
} // end setCaseType

public static Boolean isStringInTarget(List<String> strings, String target) {
    String strRegEx = '(?i)\b(';
    // case insensitive and exact match only 
    for (String s : strings) {
        strRegEx = strRegEx + s + '|'; // build up a list of strings using | separator 
    }
    strRegEx = strRegEx.removeEnd('|'); // get rid of the last OR
    strRegEx = strRegEx + ')\b';
    Matcher matcher=Pattern.compile(strRegEx).matcher(target);
    Boolean result= matcher.find();
    return result;
}

Even though Salesforce has always been an innovative platform, just a couple years ago our troubleshooting options seemed as they were much more closer to the stone age, especially when we were comparing them to the other development platforms like Java or .NET. We were using things like “System.debug()” to print out important information to the log files, and then we were analyzing hundreds and thousands of lines of logs (I can feel the migraines and the sandpaper eyes just thinking about this now). However since that time, we already have had a great amount of tools for debugging become available to us, and we’ll highlight a couple of common scenarios that we are normally faced with, and how to handle them with these tools.

In our article, check out Salesforce Org Troubleshooting Scenarios, Troubleshooting Production Issues, Dealing with Governor Limits, and How to Fix Apex Unit Tests, and save a lot of time and efforts while debugging!

Are you starting to code with Apex, Visualforce, or Lightning?

If you trail from .Net to Salesforce development, it would be good to start from the Syntax knowledge – Get to know how to write code, and which rules apply to it.

Grab this free cheat sheet to see the main syntax differences at a glance

While both C# and Apex are high-level development languages with a lot of similarities in syntax and general approaches, there are also lots of differences between these languages.

So what will you get with the cheat sheet?

• Knowledge of the differences between Salesforce and non-cloud application development
• Avoiding some bottlenecks on your way to Salesforce!
• Understanding approaches and mindsets for climbing aboard Force.com
• Helpful tools!

Using Angular JS with Remote Actions

Nowadays Angular JS is a great front end framework in order to manipulate DOM and do many more things throughout the DOM. Here I’m going to describe how to use Angular JS with Visualforce and apex remote actions.

There are two ways to add angular into the Visualforce page. We can add angular code in the Visualforce page itself or we can add angular code to the static resource.

If we use angular code in the Visualforce page itself it will break the single page application concept and also it’s hard to maintain the code. We cannot have multiple Visualforce pages in one angular app. Once rendering a new Visualforce page there only have one angular application for each Visualforce page. In this post, I’m going to use a static resource to write angular code. And also I’m going to use welkin suite for as the IDE for the development. Because from welkin suite we can modify the static resource bundle (But currently we cannot add js files for partial pages to a static resource, the only thing what we can do is modify the js files, but it is great because we can compare the modifications with salesforce org) and also welkin suite is really familiar to me because welkin has the same look and feel like Visual Studio.  When we using Static Resource we have to consider one thing of the sales force governor limit. That is static resource is limited to 5 MB. If you using more than 5MB for the static resource bundle you have to make separate bundles that have less than 5MB size after zipping.

You can download welkin suite from https://welkinsuite.com/downloads/

Creating Static resource for Angular Bundle

Hope you have some knowledge of Angular developments. And I’m going to use the UI route for the routing mechanism for the app. Initially, you have to create the folder structure for the angular static resource bundle as below. Here I’m using two controllers (firstController.js) and one service (firstService.js) and two partial HTML (firstView.html, secondView.html) pages and app.js file. You can create this folder structure with the empty js and empty HTML files and add those files to the static resource.

app – controllers – firstController.js – services -firstService.js – views -firstView.html -secondView.html app.js

If you going to use welkin, create a new project by giving your salesforce credentials and security token. Or else you can use MavensMate or another tool to edit Static Resource.

Now you need to create a Visualforce page to make the root page container for the angular app. I have created the page as AngularTest.page.Then create an apex class to expose the remote actions. I have created the class as AngularRemoteClass. Here I’m going to demonstrate a really simple angular application in order to call a remote action. So I have written a RemoteAction method as ‘angularRemoteFunction’. It will return Boolean true value once you give any name as method parameters. According to the requirement, you can make the modifications to the RemoteAction. Here I will keep it as a very simple for the demo.

public class AngularRemoteClass {
    @RemoteAction public static Boolean angularRemoteFunction(String name) { 
        return true; 
    }
}

Below I have noted the code of the apex page. Here I have added angular.js file and angular UI route js files from the CDN. If you like you can add those angular files to the static resource (and that is the recommended way to add external resources).  I have created the angular app as MyApp. And I have added <ui-view></ui-view> tags to change HTML partials dynamically from the angular. And also here I have added the SitePrefix javascript variable because from the static resource we cannot directly call to the apex global variables. So I have added it to the js global variable and then I can call for the SitePrefix from the static resource js files. (AngularApp is the static resource bundle name) var SitePrefix=”{!URLFOR($Resource.AngularApp)}/app/” ;

After the UI view tag, I have referenced to the app.js file, firstController.js, and firstService.js file from the static resource.

<apex:page controller="AngularRemoteClass" showheader="false" sidebar="false" doctype="html-5.0" standardstylesheets="false"> 
    <html lang="en">
        <head title="MyApp"> 
            <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.4.5/angular.min.js"></script> 
            <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/angular-ui-router/0.2.18/angular-ui-router.min.js"></script> 
            <script type="text/javascript">
                var SitePrefix="{!URLFOR($Resource.AngularApp)}/app/";
            </script>
        </head>
        <body ng-app="MyApp">
            <ui-view></ui-view>
            <!-- Add JS Files HERE --> 
            <script src="{!URLFOR($Resource.AngularApp)}/app/app.js"></script>
            <script src="{!URLFOR($Resource.AngularApp)}/app/controllers/firstController.js"></script> 
            <script src="{!URLFOR($Resource.AngularApp)}/app/services/firstService.js"></script> 
        </body>
    </html>
</apex:page>

app.js file

I have used ui-route for the routing, therefore I have injected $stateProvider to the config.

(function () { 
    'use strict';
    angular.module('MyApp', [ 'ui.router', 'MyApp.services', 'MyApp.controllers']) .config(function ($stateProvider, $urlRouterProvider) {
        $urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/default');
        $stateProvider .state('default', { url: '/default', views: { '': { templateUrl: SitePrefix + 'views/firstView.html', controller: 'firstController' } } })
    })
    angular.module('MyApp.services', []); 
    angular.module('MyApp.controllers', []); 
}());

firstController.js file In here I have injected myFirstService factory method to call Apex Remote Action. And I’m calling to ‘authenticateUser’ method from ‘myFirstService’ service and I’m passing ‘prasad’ as the name parameter.

(function() {
    'use strict'; 
    angular.module('MyApp.controllers').controller('firstController', ['$scope' , 'myFirstService' , function ($scope , myFirstService ) {
        myFirstService.authenticateUser({ name : 'prasad' } ,
        //success calla back
        function(data) { console.log(data); },
        //error call back
        function(data) { console.log(data); });
    }]);
}());

firstService.js

If your org using a namespace then you have to use that namespace when you calling to the Remote Action. ‘prasadRevenueS’ is my namespace. I’m calling to the apex remote action by calling to  ‘Visualforce.remoting.Manager.invokeAction’ method.

(function(){
    'use strict';
    angular.module('MyApp.services').factory('myFirstService' , ['$rootScope' , '$q' ,  function ($rootScope , $q ){
        var myAPI = {}; 
        myAPI.authenticateUser = function (param, successCallBack, errCallBack) {
            var promise = $q.defer().promise;                
            Visualforce.remoting.Manager.invokeAction('prasadRevenueS.AngularRemoteClass.angularRemoteFunction', param, function(result, event){
                if (event.status) {
                    console.log('#### Result ####');
                    console.log(result);
                    $rootScope.$apply(function() {
                        promise.then(successCallBack(result));
                    });
                } else if (event.type === 'exception') {
                    errCallBack(event);
                } else { 
                    errCallBack(event);
                } 
            }, {escape: false});
            return promise; 
        };
        return myAPI;
    }]);
}());

Finally, you will see the true result from your browser log. Please note this post is only to understand how to make the flow with angular and remote actions, therefore I kept everything in the simple form. Please share your ideas on this.

Thanks,

Prasad

In the present fast-evolving business landscape, one thing remains uninterrupted, and that is the importance of customers. Every business/company is aware that the key to sustained growth, an irrefutable market presence, and productivity is nurturing robust and lasting customer relationships. 

What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)? 

CRM is a technology that helps manage a company’s relationships and connections with customers. The end goal is simple: Improve business relationships to grow your business. A CRM system assists companies in staying connected with the customers, improves productivity, and streamlines all processes. 

When people refer to CRM, they usually mention a CRM system or a custom software development solution, a tool that assists with sales management, contact management, agent productivity, and more. CRM tools can be utilized to manage customer relationships throughout the entire customer lifecycle, spanning sales, customer service interactions, marketing, and digital commerce. 

A CRM solution helps keep the focus on the organization’s relationships with individual people, including service users, suppliers, customers, and colleagues throughout your lifecycle with them, including looking for new customers, providing support, winning their business, and additional services throughout the whole relationship. 

Benefits of Customer Relationship Management in Building Lasting Customer Relationships 

Customer satisfaction rates are not limited to the customer service that is provided but rather the quality of daily engagement with the customers. 

A CRM system can provide benefits to businesses by aiding in centralizing, optimizing, and making communications smooth with customers and becoming better in these areas. 

Improved Knowledge of Your Customers 

One of the complex challenges of building long-term relationships with customers is accumulating the right data and forming a holistic view of the customer. CRM is known for one thing only: it is a 360-degree holistic view of each and every customer. CRM proves to be a super powerful communication tool.  

According to Adamenfroy, CRM is effective enough to track customer interaction, and it is the reason why 72% of companies begin using a CRM, which then doesn’t come as a surprise. 

A CRM system provides marketing, sales, and customer service teams with a competitive edge, a cheat sheet offering easy access to crucial information. 

A CRM system also allows the team to see the contact’s following details: 

• Full name 
• Email address 
• Telephone number 
• Website 
• Social media accounts 
• Job title  
• Relationship to other contacts in your database 
• Language skills & preferences 
• Birthday 

With all this information at your fingertips, customizing your communication with contacts becomes easy. Secondly, with CRM in place, you can easily save all the activities, sales, live chat messages, projects, invoices, email exchanges, orders, or customer service requests related to the contacts. Simply, a CRM system allows you to know your customers better and their needs. 

Improved Segmentation 

Nobody desires to do business with a featureless crowd. Everyone desires to deal with a perfect audience.  

But how?  

This can be accomplished by dividing contacts (prospects or customers) into target audiences. Also, there is barely anything else out there that does segmentation better than a CRM. 

CRM allows the itemization of data by groupings and criteria, making it easy to generate focused lists. Apt in marketing and sales, such sectioned lists run specific customer marketing and account-based marketing campaigns while analyzing the business sales process and lead pool. 

When you are aware of whom you are lecturing, you can deliberately personalize your offer, your strategies, and even your business sales pitch. 

Simply, a good CRM system helps in knowing better about who really is interested in what a business is offering, who is still on the boundary, and who’s frigid. 

Better Customer Support 

Apart from being a great strength in defining and promoting potential and new customers, CRM also works as a great tool for keeping the prevailing customers happy. The CRM system comes with a handful of ‘customer support’ advantages by helping to assure and encourage regarding the appointments or the time to send follow-up emails. 

CRM promotes reaching out to those customers who have not been communicated with in a while and perhaps feel abandoned. After all, keeping prevailing customers is 6 to 7 times cheaper than getting a new one, according to Fredrick Reichheld of Brain & Company. 

To ensure the customers’ interest, a CRM system can also aid in composing your B2B marketing tactics, free trial offers, shared email campaigns, or post-purchase customer surveys. 

Improved Expectation of Needs 

Feeling more confident is natural when you are aware of what to expect, right? The same applies to business. It’s easier to upsell or cross-sell a customer when you have been tracking their buying practices. 

One of the key benefits of having a CRM system is to assist salespeople in selling more and faster, and the access to customer interaction history via the entire customer journey allows sales reps to expect predicted requirements. 

If you are aware of the contact’s purchase history, what they bought and when, what they were offered, the buying habits that they demonstrated, and even how they became your customer, you can be proactive and come up with new or better offers at the correct time. 

A CRM system is also essential in offering great customer service, and access to the interaction history makes offering timely customer service easier. 

Enhanced and Faster Communication 

Not letting the customers wait by rapidly replying to their requests is an indication of professionalism. Saving the business and customers’ time is the CRM system that offers a set of tailored, easy-to-use email templates, documents, quotes, letters, proposals, newsletters, and invitations. 

Also, CRM systems help with drafting SMS and emails besides scheduling their notices weeks or months in advance. And when customer service requests are considered, speed is critical. Actually, the number one reason for companies to invest in CRM is to advance customer service. There is a huge amount of collected data and value required to include. 

Holding all contact communication history in place, CRM allows you to customize your communication, send replies offering quick solutions to recurrent problems, and share links to videos and FAQs, not to mention that phone calls can be made directly from the system. 

Better Safety of Data Privacy 

The ‘buzzword’ of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the past few years. It’s extremely crucial to have CRM software that has in-built GDPR-related functionality that helps them meet the privacy requirements of the new regulations. 

 The key advantage of CRM here is that it saves enough time and effort. Also, being GDPR accommodating is a job in itself, apart from declaring all the hostile legal significances if the privacy laws are disturbed. 

Enhanced Collaboration within the Organization 

A good CRM does not merely provide benefits to the way to manage customer relationships but also enhances cooperation within the organization.  

How?  

By improving the way you and your team collaborate with each other. Cloud-based CRMs make it easier for all employees to look for communication and collaboration between the company and customers. This visibility means that employees gain a mutual appreciation of how to grant themselves and the company future tips. 

When employees are allowed to engage with each other, besides stating or sharing each other assignments and planning internal meetings in one interrelated system, it has never been easier to improve internal collaboration, which fundamentally means more efficiency. 

To conclude, building and maintaining robust customer relationships is necessary for businesses to boost and progress in a present competitive market. Custom Software Development Dallas also provides nurturing long-lasting customer relationships that help businesses maximize revenue via repeat business and upselling, diminish customer acquisition costs, and refine combat market challenges.