Deployment

Because mobile Web applications are just Web pages, deployment ultimately requires that the user simply visit your application’s URL. If you’ve built your application to use OAuth for authentication, you can host its Web pages anywhere. If you’re using session sharing, you need to host it in an application, referred to here as a container that the user has already used to authenticate to Salesforce.

The advantage of a container is that users don’t need to authenticate to Salesforce again just to use your application. Additionally, they have all of the other features included in the container application. But don’t be fooled. At the end of the day, the container is purely a Visualforce page viewer and bookmarker. To be successful, your Visualforce page has to be mobile ready.

The mobile applications that can serve as containers for Visualforce pages are Salesforce Classic and Salesforce Touch. To enable a Visualforce page to be shown in Salesforce Classic, follow these steps:

1. In the App Setup area, click Create, Tabs. Click the Visualforce tab you’d like to make available in Salesforce Classic, and check the Mobile Ready check box.

2. Create a configuration to make the Visualforce page visible. In the Administration Setup area, click Mobile Administration, Salesforce Classic, Configurations. Click the New Mobile Configuration button. Enter a name for the configuration, make it active, and select the users and profiles who will use this mobile configuration.

3. With your new configuration, you make tabs visible to the mobile device. Click the Customize Tabs button in the Mobile Tabs section of the configuration. Select a tab from the list of available tabs, click the Add button, and click the Save button.

The steps to add your Visualforce pages to Salesforce Touch are next:

1. In the Administration Setup area, click Mobile Administration, Salesforce Touch, Settings. Check the Enable Visualforce in Salesforce Touch check box. This step needs to be performed only once for an entire organization.

2. For each Visualforce page to be displayed in Touch, go to the App Setup area, click Develop, Pages. Click the Visualforce page, and check the Available in Touch check box. You also need a Visualforce tab for each page. To create one, go to the App Setup area; click Create, Tabs; and click the New button in the Visualforce Tabs section. Select the Visualforce page to be displayed in Touch, give your tab a label and name, pick a style, and click the Next button. On the following two pages, select the profiles that can access the tab and which custom applications include it. Then click Save to finish the Visualforce Tab Creation Wizard.