Blog at Salesforce.com & Force.com: New To Salesforce (For Developers / Technical Track)

New to Salesforce.com and Force.com Platform

The New to Salesforce assists developers who are new to the Salesforce.com CRM and Force.com Platform understand the various cloud technologies, and create applications with Apex or Visualforce.

If you are a fresh or an experienced C# or Java developer and want to excel yourself in Salesforce.com CRM and Force.com Platform. Then below are the steps to learn basics of Salesforce.com CRM and Force.com Platform.

Step 1:
Learn below these terminologies because these are related to Salesforce.com CRM and Force.com platform.

What is Multi-tenant Architecture?
What is SaaS (Software as a Service)?
What is PaaS (Platform as a Service)?
What is IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)?
What is DaaS (Development as a Service)?
What is Cloud Computing?
What is MVC (Model-View-Controller)?
What is CRM?
What is Sales, Marketing and Customer Service?
What are the benifits of CRM?
What is SFA (Sales force Automation)?
What is Campaign, Lead, Account, Contact, Opportunity, Product, Quote and Cases Management?
What is Lead Process?
What is Sales Process?
What is Support Process?
What is Sales Cloud?
What is Service Cloud?
What is Forecasting?
What is Reports & Dashboards?
What is Salesforce.com?
What is Force.com?
What is Database.com?
What is Data.com?
What is Work.com?

http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/index.htm

Visualforce Developer's Guide
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/salesforce_pages_developers_guide.pdf

http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/index.htm

Salesforce.com Limitations
https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/salesforce_app_limits_cheatsheet.pdf

Step 3:
Learn below mentioned guides / helpful links to get knowledge of Salesforce / Force.com Deployment.

Change Sets
http://help.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/changesets.htm
http://na4.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/changesets_best_practices.htm

Force.com IDE or Eclipse
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Force.com_IDE

Force.com Java Ant Migration Tool
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/daas/index.htm

Development Lifecycle Guide (Enterprise Development on the Force.com Platform)
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dev_lifecycle/salesforce_development_lifecycle.pdf
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dev_lifecycle/index.htm

Step 4:
Learn below mentioned guides / helpful links to get knowledge of ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) tools used in Salesforce / Force.com data integration and data migration.

Apex Data Loader
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dataLoader/index.htm
https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/salesforce_data_loader.pdf

Apex Scripted Data Loader
http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/dataLoader/index.htm
https://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/salesforce_data_loader.pdf

Jitterbit Data Loader for Salesforce
A free, third-party data migration tool that lets administrators automate the import and export of data between flat files, databases, and salesforce.com.
https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N300000016ZoVEAU

Dell Boomi
(CSV, SQL Server, MySQL, CRM Dynamics, Salesforce, WebService, SAP etc.)
http://www.boomi.com/

Dataloader.io
No download, free data loader for Salesforce. Leverage keyboard shortcuts for object lookups and data mapping. No security token required.
https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N30000009w8ZBEAY

Informatica Cloud Data Loader for Salesforce
Informatica Cloud Data Loader for Salesforce is a FREE data loading application that automates the import/export of Salesforce and Force.com data between databases and files.
https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingid=a0N300000016cUTEAY

On-Demand IDE (Developer Console)
A browser-based collection of tools you can use to create, debug, and test applications in your Salesforce organization.

On-Premise IDE (Force.com IDE)
Eclipse plugin for developing Force.com applications, providing source code editors, test execution tools, wizards, and integrated help.
http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/page/Apex_Toolkit_for_Eclipse

Force.com Migration Tool
A Java/ANT-based command line utility for scripted deployment of application metadata.
https://cs10.salesforce.com/dwnld/SfdcAnt/salesforce_ant_28.0.zip

SOQL / SOSL IDE (Force.com Explorer)
.NET-based tool for inspecting schema, and building and testing SOQL queries.
http://wiki.apexdevnet.com/page/Apex_Explorer

For Mac users, SoqlXplorer provides metadata exploration, a SOQL query tester, and a graphical schema view for examining object relationships (a piece of functionality that's only available on the Mac OS X platform!). Download SoqlXplorer from Simon Fell's PocketSOAP website at www.pocketsoap.com/osx/soqlx. After the download automatically extracts itself, drag the SoqlXplorer icon to your Applications folder to complete the installation.
www.pocketsoap.com/osx/soqlx
For other great Salesforce.com tools and utilities built exclusively for Mac OS X, see www.pocketsoap.com/osx.

Other Helpful Resources:
All Salesforce documents available here at
http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/Documentation

Pages

New To Salesforce (For Developers / Technical Track)