getpaid.SalesforcePloneFormGenAdapter 1.0

PloneFormGen adapter allowing for creation of arbitrary Salesforce.com records based on data collected from a web form

PloneFormGen GetPaid Salesforce Adapter

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Product home is http://plone.org/products/salesforcepfgadapter. A documentation area and issue tracker are available at the linked locations.

A Google Group, called Plone Salesforce Integration exists with the sole aim of discussing and developing tools to make Plone integrate well with Salesforce.com. If you have a question, joining this group and posting to the mailing list is the likely best way to get support.

Failing that, please try using the Plone users’ mailing list or the #plone irc channel for support requests. If you are unable to get your questions answered there, or are interested in helping develop the product, see the credits below for individuals you might contact.

Overview

This product builds on top of the foundation for through the web form creation provided by PloneFormGen and Salesforce connection provided by the Salesforce Base Connector and Salesforce PloneFormGen Adapter. If you are unfamiliar with PloneFormGen’s capabilities and the problem space it intends to serve, we encourage you to start by downloading that and reading the README.txt file in the root of the product. In particular, the “Overview” and “Rationale For This Product” sections are recommended.

In addition if you are unfamiliar with Salesforce please see salesfoce.com. For more information about Salesforce base Connector and Salesforce PloneFormGen Adapter please see http://plone.org/products/salesforcebaseconnector/releases/1.0.1 and http://plone.org/products/salesforcepfgadapter.

Once you’ve setup a suitable PloneFormGen form folder (and correctly installed and configured the PloneFormGen GetPaid Salesforce Adapter its dependencies), you’ll have the option of adding a new action adapter called a “GetPaid Salesforce Adapter”.

Once you’ve added a GetPaid Salesforce Adapter to your form, you’re presented with both “default” and “field mapping” (in addition to the standard “overrides”) management screens for editing the adapter. The default screen consists of a drop-down menu populated with all the sObject types (i.e. Salesforce Objects) found in the Salesforce.com instance that corresponds to the credentials entered when creating a Salesforce Base Connector in the ZMI. This should include both standard and custom sObjects.

Once you’ve chosen your sObject type, moving through to the “field mapping” management screen will display two seperate sets of two-column forms. Each for setting which Salesforce field will be populated by a field on either your form, or from data supplied by GetPaid. Each field is represented by a single row, with the field name in the left column, and a drop-down selection menu of all available Salesforce fields on the right. Select the desired Salesforce field for each field and click “Save”.

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NB: While it is not required to map every form field to a Salesforce field, you will want to make sure that all the sObject fields defined as required fields in your Salesforce configuration do have a mapping. Otherwise, the sObject will not be succesfully created on submission of the form. All required fields for your chosen sObject should be marked accordingly and appear at the top of the list of options.

Should you go back and switch to a different sObject type after having provided a mapping at any time, you’ll want to recreate your desired mapping. This is intended behavior, since the update would fail (or worse, produce very confusing results) if the previously selected sObject type’s mapping were maintained.

Rationale For This Product

Using the wonderful foundation that is provided by PloneFormGen, PloneGetPaid (and Plone for that matter), the task of creating a form that collects and validates some desired information, then integrates with third party payment processors to collect funds associated with the information is no longer a task that requires developer intervention. Now this can be done by the any content editor with a decent grasp of the Plone user interface. Having this data inside the CMS or emailed is only of limited use however.

Salesforce.com provides an extensible, powerful platform from which to do Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tasks ranging from sales, marketing, nonprofit constituent organizing, and customer service. The Salesforce PFG Adapter symbolizes the pragmatic joining of a best of breed CMS and CRM so that each can focus on its own strengths in a way that is easy for non-developers to use.

Salesforce.com offers functionality called web-to-lead, but aside from PloneFormGen’s many strengths over the web-to-lead form builder this software offers the following additional features:

• Configurable validation of individual form fields

• Ability to create as many different records as you’d like from the results of one form

• Ability to create custom sObject records with your form

• Ability to create whichever type of sObject records, whereas web-to-lead creates a Lead record, which can only be converted to a Contact, Account, or Opportunity record. Want to directly create a Campaign record from a form? That’s fine.

Dependencies

Depends upon the beatbox library >= 0.9.1.1, which is a Python wrapper to the Salesforce.com API (version 7.0). You must have a Salesforce.com account that provides API access.

To download and install beatbox, please visit:

http://code.google.com/p/salesforce-beatbox/

See dependencies for PloneFormGen 1.2.x+. As a pre-requisite, all of these must be met in order to use the PloneFormGen GetPaid Salesforce Adapter.

SalesforcePFGAdapter see http://plone.org/products/salesforcepfgadapter

SalesforceBaseConnector >= 1.0a3. See http://plone.org/products/salesforcebaseconnector

DataGridField >= 1.6.x. Earlier versions didn’t properly disable DataGridField’s add row feature, which is important in our case because the user can’t add new possible form fields for mapping from within the Salesforce Adapter. Those need to be added to the form itself.

Installation

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Typical for a Zope/Plone product:

• Install and configure dependencies (includes beatbox setup and creation of Salesforce Base Connector with credentials in the root of the Plone site.)

• Unpack the product package into the Products folder of the Zope/Plone instance. Check your ownership and permissions.

• Restart Zope.

• Go to the Site Setup page in the Plone interface and click on the Add/Remove Products link. Choose salesforcepfgadapter (check its checkbox) and click the Install button. If not done already, this will install PloneFormGen in addition to the salesforcepfgadapter. If PloneFormGen is not available on the Add/Remove Products list, it usually means that the product did not load due to missing prerequisites.

Permissions

See Permissions section of README.txt within PloneFormGen.

Security

See Security section of README.txt within PloneFormGen.

Known Problems

Credits

• Rob LaRubbio <rob –AT– onenw –DOT– org>

The Plone & Salesforce crew in Seattle and Portland for their work on Salesforce PFG Adapter:

• Jon Baldivieso <jonb –AT– onenw –DOT– org>

• Andrew Burkhalter <andrewb –AT– onenw –DOT– org>

• Brian Gershon <briang –AT– webcollective –DOT– coop>

• David Glick <davidglick –AT– onenw –DOT– org>

• Jesse Snyder <jesses –AT– npowerseattle –DOT– org>

With special PloneFormGen guest star:

• Steve McMahon <[e-mail]>

Jesse Snyder and NPower Seattle for the foundation of code that has become Salesforce Base Connector

Simon Fell for providing the beatbox Python wrapper to the Salesforce.com API

Salesforce.com Foundation and Enfold Systems for their gift and work on beatbox (see: http://gokubi.com/archives/onenorthwest-gets-grant-from-salesforcecom-to-integrate-with-plone)

See the CHANGES.txt file for the growing list of people who helped with particular features or bugs.

License

Distributed under the GPL.

See LICENSE.txt and LICENSE.GPL for details.