Summary

This final chapter has completed the circle of Force Platform development, focusing on the distribution of your applications and components.

You learned about four methods of deployment:

• Using the Force Platform IDE to save components to another organization

• Using the Force Platform Migration Tool to move components to another organization using scripts

• Creating unmanaged packages, which can be published and installed by many organizations

• Creating managed packages, which allow for in-place upgrades and are ideally suited for Force Platform ISVs

You also learned about the various flavors of Force Platform Sandboxes, where you can replicate an environment for staging, testing, and development purposes.

With this last bit of information, you have now moved through the entire cycle of Force Platform development, from defining your first custom object, through adding workflow and analytic capabilities to your applications, through using Apex code to extend the logical functionality of your application, and Visualforce to shape the way your application looks, feels and interacts with data. You even learned how to open your Force Platform environment up to the larger community, through email interaction and Force Platform Sites.

With this foundation, you should be fully ready to begin your exciting efforts at creating your own applications for Force Platform. We hope the benefits provided by this platform help you to transform your own companies into enormously productive and efficient organizations.