AppExchange Quick Knowledge for Begginers

App Exchange

App Exchange provides a platform to offer marketing of your cloud computing applications and services. To provide you app on App exchange, you must be a salesforce partner.

App exchange generally provides a place to create, publish, install apps to salesforce. Let’s go through one by one,

Create : User initiates process to create app, by creating custom object, fields, layouts, tabs, pages, classes, reports and dashboards. These are the components which are shared with other users as an app on App exchange.

Publish : A salesforce user can publish their app on App exchange. To publish on exchange, they should be salesforce partner. They can tell about app to other users via documentation or videos.

Install : This is the last step of this process, salesforce users choose app from app exchange and install that app in their org. This is a simple process, just select an app and get it now, can install either in production (also in developer org) or in sandbox. You need to provide salesforce credentials, read user guide and install it then Done.

Who have rights to use App Exchange?

1. Anyone can search and install apps from App Exchange.
2. Users should have ‘Download AppExchange Packages’ permission to install apps.
3. Users should have ‘Create AppExchange Packages’ and ‘Upload AppExchange Packages’ permission to publish app on App exchange.

Before installing a package what should we do?

1. Always take a demo or test drive before installation.
2. Also, check that according to application, you have sufficient requirements or not, means that app should be compatible with your org and system.
3. Some time apps automatically provides push upgrades feature, means automatically upgraded in your system whenever new version is created.
4. You can also uninstall packages if you needed.

Sometimes installation fails due to following reasons,

1. In app package, there will be custom objects so may be possible that org’s custom object limit can exceed.
2. In app package, there will be custom tabs so may be possible that org’s custom tabs limit can exceed.
3. If you are trying to install an extension to a package, and you don't have the base (main) package installed in your org then it will fail.
4. As per app requirement, may be possible that some components or settings should be turn on in your org, so that should be enable as required feature of an app.
5. Package of app contains Apex code and you are not authorized to run Apex in your org.
6. Package can contain a failing test class.

How to publish an app on exchange?

To publish an app, component on the AppExchange, follow these steps,

1. In which org, your package is created, connect this org to AppExchange.
2. Create a profile for provider.
3. Give some documentation or videos to tell customers about your app or product.
4. Create the listing.
5. If you have app or component, then submit business plan for review.
6. If you have app or component, then submit the package for security review. Whenever approved by salesforce then you can publish. This is the major part of publish process.
7. After your app is approved by salesforce, publish the listing on the AppExchange.
8. Review about your app, how that’s performing.

AppExchange in salesforce

https://appexchange.salesforce.com/

Top 10 popular apps on App Exchange,

http://www.salesforceben.com/top-10-popular-appexchange-apps/

1. Mass Update & Edit :  Select records from an list view or related list and update them using multi-line editor. Also, can do mass transfer records, set a field to an empty value.
2. LinkPoint Connect :  In Outlook, you can view/create salesforce data like Contact, lead and opportunity and case records, inbound/outbound emails to salesforce.
3. Docusign : It’s Lightning ready app with latest salesforce technology. It’s used for e-signature on documents which save time and also provides workflows and data update feature, that also save time to write in apex trigger.
4. Cirrus Insight : This app gives ability to interact with Salesforce in your inbox. Using this app, we can sync emails, calendar and view Salesforce data all within inbox.
5. MailChimp : Used to send emails, manage mailchimp subscribers from salesforce leads, contacts and list view. Also, can upload to leads, can see subscriber activity history in salesforce.
6. dataloader.io :  This is also most useful app to do DML in salesforce data, just login in salesforce and download records or perform any DML in salesforce. You need to upload data in csv file format. Also, provides search filter and save filter, auto mapping facility.
7. Conga Composer :  This app is used to send documents also save time to prepare and edit that document. Also, reduce error in typing and you can also can fetch data from salesforce easily.
8. Ebsta : Used to sync gmail/google calendars, also supports multiple time zones, meeting updates and events which are upcoming and delete events which are out of box. Also, can see status of message, it’s read, ignored or not opened.
9. Data.com Assessment App :  It’s used for data quality and field level details to show that where are gaps that need to be addressed. And match that how can improve it.
10. Salesforce Adoption Dashboards : This provides details about user login history and adoption of key salesforce.com feature, sales and marketing productivity.

Hope you like the information.

Thanks