The Salesforce Partner Program has many advantages. The first place to visit is https://partners.salesforce.com/. You will want to focus on the areas of the site relating to being an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner. From here, you can click on Join Now. It is free to join, though you will want to read through the various agreements carefully, of course.
Once you wish to start listing a package and charging users for it, you will need to arrange billing details for Salesforce to take the various fees involved. While this book is not equipped to go into the details, do pay careful attention to the Standard Objects used in your package, as this will determine the license type required by your users and the overall cost to them, in addition to your charges.
Obviously, Salesforce would prefer your application to use as many features of the CRM application as possible, which may also be beneficial to you as a feature of your application, since it's an appealing immediate integration not found on other platforms, such as the ability to instantly integrate with accounts and contacts.
If you're planning on using Standard Objects, and are in doubt about the costs (as they do vary depending on the type), you can request a conversation with Salesforce to discuss this; this is something to keep in mind in the early stages.
Make sure, when you associate a Salesforce user with the Partner Community, you utilize a user that you use daily (known as your Partner Business Org user) and not one from a development or test org. Once you have completed the signup process, you will gain access to the Partner Community. The following screenshot shows what the current Partner Community home page looks like. From here, you can access many useful services:
This is your primary place to communicate with Salesforce and access additional materials and announcements relevant to ISVs, so do keep checking often. You can raise cases and provide additional logins to other users in your organization, such as other developers who may wish to report issues or ask questions.
The following features require that a completed package release goes through a Salesforce-driven process known as the security review, which is initiated via your listing when logged into AppExchange. Unless you plan to give your package away for free, there is a charge involved in putting your package through this process.
However, the review is optional. There is nothing stopping you from distributing your package installation URL directly. However, you will not be able to benefit from the ability to list your new application on AppExchange for others to see and review. More importantly, you will also not have access to the following features to help you deploy, license, and support your application. The following is a list of the benefits you get once your package has passed the security review:
Salesforce asks you to perform an automated security scan of your software via a web page (http://security.force.com/security/tools/forcecom/scanner). This service can be quite slow depending on how many scans are in the queue. Another option is to obtain the Eclipse plugin from the actual vendor CheckMarx at http://www.checkmarx.com, which runs the same scan but allows you to control it locally. Finally, for the ultimate confidence as you develop your application, Salesforce can provide a license to integrate it into your Continuous Integration (CI) build system. CI is covered in the final chapter of this book.
This book focuses on building a fully native application, as such additional work involved with so-called "hybrid" applications (where parts of your application have been implemented on your own servers, for example) are not considered here. However, keep in mind that if you make any callouts to external services, Salesforce will also most likely ask you and/or the service provider to run a BURP scanner, to check for security flaws.
Make sure you plan a reasonable amount of time (at least two to three weeks, in my experience) to go through the security review process; it is essential that you initially list your package. Though if it becomes an issue, you have the option of issuing your package install URL directly to initial customers and early adopters.
It's worth taking some time to review the content and facilities in the Partner Community. Some of the key areas to take a look at are listed as follows:
There are many Chatter groups shown in the Featured Groups page in the Partner Community. Review them all and set up E-mail digests to help keep you informed without having to manually log in and check through this page each time.
Partners can use Environment Hub to create orgs for development and testing purposes. Orgs can be linked and logins managed here as well. Unlike the orgs you can get from the Salesforce Developer site, these orgs have additional user licenses. It is also possible to link your TSO and create orgs based on templates you define, allowing you to further optimize the base org configuration for your own development and testing process. For more information, review the Partner Community page detailing Environment Hub (https://partners.salesforce.com/s/education/general/Environment_Hub).
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