The other day while browsing in Safari, I realized Google had limited my advanced date searches (which I use incessantly). Then it occurred to me I had not suffered the same fate in Firefox. It turns out I was using a Greasemonkey script I had written (quite poorly, I may add) and uploaded to Userscripts.org. It can be found here and obviously requires the greasemonkey Firefox add-on.

I got the good old scheduled maintenance window message on na1 this week, but I didn’t expect it to be for the Winter ‘09 release. Kudos to SFDC for the early release (a month before Dreamforce).

Release Preview

Release Notes (pdf)

http://www.jonathanrm.com/blog/?p=12

I got tired of logging into our Salesforce.com instance to log billable activities, so I developed this AIR app…is this something people would use?

//Flex code
<mx:ComboBox width="180" dataProvider="{comboList}" />

A bit late, but I just wanted to pay my respects to one of the greatest comedians of our generation, Bernie Mac. Bernie became a Hollywood staple in part due to his outstanding support roles in movies like the Ocean’s 11 series and Charlie’s Angles, but his real genius is evident in his standup act (and role in The Original Kings of Comedy). RIP Bernie.

*Let me preface the rest of this post by saying there should be an option in Time-Based Workflow to run a trigger (I know I’ve seen this on the IdeaExchange, but I haven’t been able to track it down).

Over the last several months, I’ve had several clients request that a record be checked for certain conditions after a certain amount of time has elapsed. While the solution to this requirement may be intuitive to some of us seasoned Salesforce.com fanboys, I figured I’d walk through it for those new to the platform.

Sample Requirement: After a Lead is inserted, wait three days, then check if any tasks have been associated with this record. If not, send an email alert to the user’s manager.

First, we create a custom checkbox field on Leads called “Check for Activity”. Then, create a workflow rule that runs when a Lead is inserted (add any additional filters if necessary). Add to this workflow rule a time-based field update that runs three days after the Lead was inserted. The field update will mark the “Check for Activity” checkbox “TRUE”. Then, we create an Apex trigger that runs After Update on Leads:


trigger checkForLeadActivity on Lead (after update)
{
    for (Lead l : Trigger.new)
    {
        if (l.check_for_activity__c == true)
        {
            //run our code
        }
    }
}


Obviously, I’ve left you high and dry on the code, but if you need more assistance feel free to reach out to me and I’d be happy to walk you through the code.

Happy Apex-ing!

*EDIT
I want to make sure I stress the importance of coding your triggers for bulk processing. The code block above should actually read like so:


trigger checkForLeadActivity on Lead (after update)
{
    List<Lead> myLeads = new List<Lead>();

    for (Lead l : Trigger.new)
    {
        if (l.check_for_activity__c == true)
        {
            myLeads.add(l);
        }
    }

    //process myLeads outside the for loop 

    //to avoid governor limits on things like SOQL queries

}