Chapter 13. Email Services with the Force Platform

So far, this book has focused on areas of the Force Platform that allow you to build solutions for your community of Force Platform users. This chapter introduces four features that allow you to extend your application out into the broader population of users through the use of email and the popular PDF (Portable Document Format) format from Adobe.

The examples in this chapter add functionality to the existing recruiting application. You will learn how to build an email handler that receives an applicant email for a given position and automatically creates a Candidate record, associates that candidate with the appropriate position, and creates a Job Application record. email attachments, such as resumes, will be associated with the Job Application record. Those candidates chosen for interviews will be sent an email with interview schedule information attached in PDF form. You will also see how you and your users are able to customize emails through email templates created as Visualforce pages.

Note

If you have been following the examples in the previous chapter, your Force Platform organization should be ready for the exercises in this chapter. If you have not done the exercises, or want to start with a fresh version of the sample Recruiting application, please refer to the instructions in the Code Share project for this book. You can find information on how to access that project in Chapter 1: Welcome to the Force Platform. In addition, the project contains instructions on how to update your organization with changes required for this chapter.