Wes Nolte and I have been blogging for quite sometime and we see a need in the Force.com community. We’ve been blogging lately about advanced topics (jQuery, Twitter, Adobe Air, etc.) but the majority of our traffic is for what you might call our “beginning” topics. Also, if you browse the Salesforce message boards you’ll see that a majority of the questions center around “getting started” (e.g., how do I write this trigger, what is a unit test, how do I make a Visualforce page redirect…).
Salesforce has some great articles at developer.force.com and the Force.com community has chipped in with some excellent content but there is still something missing. There’s a beginning book for Salesforce users (Salesforce.com for Dummies) and an advanced Force.com development book (Development with the Force.com Platform) but there is no comprehensive guide for analysts and developers just coming on to the platform. This is the niche that Wes and I want to fill with our new book:
The Salesforce Handbook
A newcomer’s guide to building applications on Salesforce.com and the Force.com Platform
We are targeting this book for business owners, analysts and developers just getting started. Just think of all the new Vmforce Java developers that will be investigating the Force.com platform in the coming months! So if your boss walks into your office and says, “Let’s look at this Salesforce.com thing and see if we can build something”. We want this to be a reference that you can pick up and essentially find out everything you need to know about Salesforce from a high level with links to other articles, sample code, blogs, Salesforce docs, etc. that interest you.
We plan on writing on a wide array of topics and not delving too deeply into any one aspect. We’ll be publishing the table of contents shortly but we’ll be covering as much as possible including tools, declarative development, security, reporting, Apex, workflow, integration with external applications, data loading and much, much more.
We have been working on the book for a while now and hope to release it in the next 2-3 months. We are self-publishing it with Lulu and it will be available in paperback and digital versions. No idea about a price yet.
Drop us a line if you have any questions or comments.
Tags: analyst, beginner, book, developers, force.com, guide, handbook, newcomer, salesforce
Sounds great! I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a copy when it comes out. I agree – there is a gap between the beginner / advanced. It sounds like this book will help fill that gap.
Cool, support on all channels is most certainly appreciated!
Fantastic! I’ll be definitely in line to pick up a few copies.
Sounds great. I love the idea.
Where’s your RSS link for this blog? (OK, I’ll add this to my reader manually . . . boo hoo).
BTW, my one recommendation would be to write the book from a “here’s what you need to do to get up and running on a day to day basis vs. a 2nd step vs. a 3rd step” etc.
In the couple of companies I’ve seen that use the SF platform, there’s been a pretty big difference between the standard user and the power user. It sounds like your book is an effort to help evolve the standard user. If that’s a case, I think its a brilliant idea and look forward to seeing what you put together.
There’s simply a wealth of information, add-ins, plug-ins and native app offerings out there, so much so that anything that helps navigate this wealth of information would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
Thanks for the compliments. I’ve added the RSS links.
The book won’t be written in step-by-step approach (at the time of writing this at least), so we’re on the same page there (harhar). I quite like your idea of evolving a standard user into a power user, and I think that inadvertently this is one ‘feature’ of the book although our intended audience thus far was business owners, developers and analysts.
Your comments are appreciated, thanks!
I would love to get a copy of this. Can and how can we be notified when it is available?
Great to hear! You can subscribe to this blog or follow us on twitter (link is on the right of this page).
Great! Our next SFDC-Bible
! We’ll also take some copies!
Great to hear about it…. shall await this handbook.
eagerly waiting for the handbook
Thanks. I guess I wasn’t the one who thought this was needed.
https://sites.secure.force.com/ideaexchange/ideaView?c=09a30000000D9xt&id=08730000000I3VRAA0
Any update on the book?
It’s all going quite well, we’ll post a short update soon. Thanks for your interest!
any update on the book?
Yip, it’s published and available! http://salesforcehandbook.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/and-were-published/
According to Indian currency how much it must be?
Its available here or not.
Excellent! Looking forward to it.