So as is the norm in the run up to Dreamforce things are pretty busy! I thought i’d share a little summary of whats going on and what to look out for in the coming weeks before Dreamforce and in the weeks after as the mighty Winter’16 release rolls out!

Winter’16 Release, Custom Metadata Types and more…

The release notes are out and if you grabbed yourself a pre-release org hopefully your already having a look around. I’ve yet to really sit down an poor through it, something i’m looking forward to, however i did jump to my usual favourite areas and of course Custom Metadata…

The Custom Metadata team in Salesforce continue to invest in this great feature i’ve blogged already a few times about. I’m very pleased to see native UI support for it in this release! Below is a selection of screenshots showing the Custom Metadata Type from my last blog, now in my Winter’16 preview org. While there are some gaps, the native UI compared to a Custom Object native UI is pretty good. If your interested in know more about my thoughts on this for the tool i’ve started a GitHub discussion here.

Lightning Experience

Then of course who can ignore the Lightning Experience announcement, a bold new user experience! For sure inspired by the current Salesforce1 Mobile application, and built on the same framework, namely Aura. If you’ve been developing Lightning Components, now things really start to get exciting! As Salesforce continues on its mission to make Lightning a true device agnostic platform, your components are now not just for mobile users! There is a useful Lightning Experience FAQ from Salesforce here, and you can start reading up on Lightning Experience over at Trialhead now.

Dreamforce 2015 and DevZone Sessions…

The biggest challenge each year with this event, is finding new superlatives to describe it! I’m proud once again to be selected to speak at the event, along with my fellow FinancialForce R&D team members, check out the complete list of FinancialForce DevZone sessions here. Here is a summary and a couple of short promo videos of the sessions i’ll be presenting or helping with…

• Apex Enterprise Patterns: Building Strong Foundations | Register
  Dev Session | Tuesday, 9/15 | 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM | Moscone West, Innovation Theater
• Design Patterns: ISV Recipes for Success | Register
  Dev Session | Tuesday, 9/15 | 5:00 PM – 5:40 PM | Park Central Hotel, Franciscan Ballroom
• Custom Metadata Types: Save years of development on app configurations | Register
  Dev Session | Wednesday, 9/16 | 11:00 AM – 11:40 AM | Park Central Hotel, Franciscan Ballroom
• Building your own Internet of Things with the LittleBits Salesforce Connector | Register
  Dev Session | Wednesday, 9/16 | 3:30 PM – 4:10 PM | Moscone West, 2008

 

Internet of Things #IoT

In preparation for my Dreamforce session above, the LittleBits Connector for Salesforce has been enhanced, and its now making plugging together my use cases a true joy, i can add new devices, subscribe to events from them in seconds, just they way a Clicks not Code solution should be! Check out my last blog for more details.

Working with LittleBits i’ve got some great kit and demos to bring to Dreamforce, that will really i hope entertain and encourage you to get more involved in the every growing world of IoT. So if you want to take part as well as learn about IoT please join my session, where a hand shake really does close an opportunity…. 

Social Coding

Increasingly my Salesforce community time is spent responding to questions, ideas and submissions via my GitHub profile page. Repositories such Apex Enterprise Patterns, Apex Mocks, Declarative Rollup Summary Looks and of course Apex Metadata API are all seeing increased traffic and an increasing amount of submissions from fellow community developers, such as the mighty Jon Davis (here and here). I’m so proud to see this happening and its one of my favourite ways to spend my community time (in addition to playing with LittleBits at the moment!). Today i released v1.23 of Declarative Rollup Summary tool, with a solid set of enhancements and bug fixes from Jon, the tools latest prolific contributor.

 

Is there anything more…?

Yes there is! But you’ll have to join myself and FinancialForce at Dreamforce to find out about other developments that have been keeping several other FinancialForce developers and myself very busy these last few weeks….