This was my first TrailheaDX and what an event it was! With my Field Guide in hand i set out into the wilderness! In this blog i’ll share some of my highlights, thoughts and links to the latest resources. Many of the newly announced things you can actually get your hands on now which is amazing!

Overall the event felt well organized, if a little frantic at times. With smaller sessions of 30 minutes each, often 20 mins after intros and questions, each was bite sized, but quite well tuned with demos and code samples being shown.

SalesforceDX, Salesforce announced the public beta of this new technology aimed at improving the developer experience on the platform. SalesforceDX consist of several modules that will be extended further over time. Salesforce has done a great job at providing a wealth of Trailhead resources to get you started.

• Command Line. The DX command line interface is tightly integrated with a new org type known as Scratch Orgs. These can be created and deleted at will (no more dev signup pages), so no need to to reuse orgs or try to clean them. More importantly CI build scripts can now truly start from scratch! Credentials are also managed for you, making it super easy to login without pesky prompts. Changes you make either locally on your file system or in the org itself, are monitored. The later via a clever new org change tracking facility.
• Force.com IDE v2.0. Salesforce have made it even easier to download the Force.com IDE with a brand new plugin. The plugin integrates with the above features of the CLI, as well as adding more advanced code completion and code analysis facilities.
• Packaging v2.0. A new way to structure our application code in a more modular way has arrived. It looks like the documentation for this has yet to be available, so i’ll update this blog post when it does appear.

Einstein, Since its announcement, myself and other developers have been waiting to get access to more custom tools and API’s, well now that wait is well and truly over. As per my previous blogs we’ve had the Einstein Vision API for a little while now. Announced at the event where no less than three other new Einstein related tools and API’s.

• Einstein Discovery. Salesforce demonstrated a very slick looking tool that allows you to point and click your way through to analyzing various data sets, including those obtained from your custom objects! They have provided a Trailhead module on it here and i plan on digging in! Pricing and further info is here.
• Einstein Sentiment API. Allows you to interpret text strings for terms that indicate if its a positive, neutral or negative statement / sentiment. This can be used to scan case comments, forum posts, feedback, twitter posts etc in an automated way and respond or be alerted accordingly to what is being said.
• Einstein Intent API.  Allows you to interpret text strings for meanings, such as instructions or requests. Routing case comments or even implementing bots that can help automate or propose actions to be taken without human interpretation.
• Einstein Object Detection API. Is an extension of the Einstein Vision API, that allows for individual items in a picture to be identified. For example a pile of items on a coffee table, such as a mug, magazine, laptop or pot plant! Each can then be recognized and classified to build up more intel on whats in the picture for further processing and analysis.
• PredictionIO on Heroku. Finally, if you want to go below the declarative tools or intentional simplified Einstein API’s, you can build your own machine learning models using Heroku and the PredictionIO build pack!

Platform Events. These allow messages to be published and subscribed to using a new object known as an Event object, suffixed with __e. Once created you can use a new Apex API’s or REST API’s to send messages and use either Apex Triggers or Streaming API to receive them. There is also a new Process Builder action or Flow element to send messages. You can keep your messages within Force.com or use them to integrate between other cloud platforms or the browser. The possibilities are quite endless here, aysnc processing, inter app comms, logging, ui notifications…. i’m sure myself and other bloggers will be exploring them in the coming months!

External Services. If you find a cool API you want to consume in Force.com you currently have to write some code. No longer! If you have a schema that describes that API you use the External Services wizard to generate some Apex code that will call out to the API. Whats special about this, is the Apex code is accessible via Process Builder and Flow. Making clicks not code API integration possible. Its an excellent way to integrate with complementary services you or others might develop on platforms such as Heroku. I have just submitted a session to Dreamforce 2017 to explore this further, fingers crossed it gets selected! You can read more about it here in the meantime.

Sadly i did have to make a key decision to focus on the above topics and not so much on Lightning. I heard from other attendees these sessions where excellent and i did catch a brief sight of dynamic component rendering in Lightning App Builder, very cool!

Thanks Salesforce for filling my blog backlog for the next year or so! 😉