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API Design, Development and Enterprise Apps

RENAISSANCE 2014SAN FRANCISCO, CA

JANUARY 31, 2014

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Evan KirchhoffCOO, Qubop Inc.evan@qubop.comtwitter: @theevank

www.qubop.com

Hello!

twitter: @qubopinc

≠

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What is Salesforce?

Salesforce for native iOS developers

API design for enterprise apps

OUTLINE

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IN A GOOD MOBILE APP,

API DESIGN IS DERIVED

FROM UI DESIGN

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IN MOBILE, YOUR UI

DESIGN DETERMINES

YOUR BUSINESS MODEL*

* SLIGHTLY CONTROVERSIAL TO CLIENTS

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What is Salesforce?

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Mobile Back-end as a Service (MBaaS)

= ?!

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The “Big 4” Salesforce elementsfrom a mobile app developer’s point of view

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(BASED ON MARKETING TERMS THAT YOUR CLIENTS WILL KNOW)

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Our job is to “flatten” the platform into a minimal set of APIs

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Default apps running on a general-purpose

database platform with common APIs

=

The Salesforce architecture & APIs

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Different APIs=

= Different APIs

The Salesforce architecture & APIs

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Lead Objects & Opportunity Objects

Example: the Sales Cloud technology stack

SOQL

Apex

VisualForce / HTML5

DATABASE TABLES

QUERY LANGUAGE

SERVER MIDDLEWARE CODE

WEB UI AND PRESENTATION

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The Salesforce developer community is primarily a web development community

...and extremely seperate from the iOS developer community

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Salesforce for iOS Developers

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SALES LEAD

SALES OPPORTUNITY

PROSPECTING (10%)QUALIFICATION (20%)

PROPOSAL (50%)NEGOTIATION (80%)

WON! or CLOSED

Typical Salesforce “sales pipeline” model

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Default Salesforce web paradigm

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Does Salesforce 1 (Nov 2013) affect the world of native iOS developers?

(NOT THAT MUCH, SO FAR)

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The “Salesforce 1 app” (hybrid platform)

3RD PARTY WEB-TECHNOLOGY APPS PLUG INTO THE LEFT SIDE MENU

BUILT-IN ACCESS TO STANDARD SALESFORCE DATA TYPES

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Salesforce platform: what is interesting to native iOS developers

Native SDK (OAuth, communication stack)

Rapid back end development

Automatic server-side optimization

Lots of free general business logic

Authentication, security, user roles

Valuable clients: $$$

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Sales Organization Manager (live demo)

NATIVE IPAD APP USING ALL OF THE “BIG 4” SALESFORCE ELEMENTS

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API Design for Enterprise Apps

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Design the app UI first!

The world’s smartest dumb terminal

EVEN IF BUSINESS LOGIC LIVES ON THE SERVER, THE CLIENT IS “THICK” AND MAY CONTAIN SUBSTANTIAL UI LOGIC

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Don’t design the UI based on the data structure

X

THE USER DOESN’T PERCEIVE THE APP THE WAY YOU PERCEIVE THE DATA

...AND THE SCREEN IS VERY SMALL

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Don’t be satisfied with the stock APIs

THIS USUALLY MEANS THAT YOU’LL NEED TO WRITE MIDDLEWARE

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Sales Organization Manager:our custom API calls from iOS

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Example: Opportunities Heatmap UI

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Example: Opportunities Heatmap UI

(1) iOS connection to custom Apex endpoint

(2) Apex class written specifically to feed this heatmap UI

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(MASHES UP LEAD AND OPPORTUNITY OBJECT DATA)

(3) JSON response from Apex, converted to NSDictionary in iOS

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(4) Finally: render the circles and columns in iOS

“AMOUNT” = NUMBER OF DEALS IN THE COLUMN (DETERMINES CIRCLE RADIUS)

Where should your code live?your code live?

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Business logicvs. presentation logic?

Data vs.documents?

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Example: Documents + server-based email = API

GOAL: THE SALESPERSON WANTS TO ATTACH COLLATERAL FROM SALESFORCE TO EMAIL

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Standard solution: use the iPhone native email client

SALESFORCEDOCUMENTSTORAGE

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Better solution: create an API to send email + attachments from the server

ALLOWS FOR QUEUEING LOGIC, LOW BANDWIDTH, OFFLINE CASE HANDLING

SALESFORCEDOCUMENTSTORAGE

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Evan KirchhoffCOO, Qubop Inc.evan@qubop.comtwitter: @theevank

Thanks!

www.qubop.comtwitter: @qubopinc