Salesforce developers have a lot of tasks on their hands. Luckily, there are several ways in which Salesforce developers can accomplish a particular task. Often, one task will have multiple ways to go about it.

However, with all the available methods to accomplish a particular task, there are some methods regarded as standard. These methods are known as best practices. This article outlines some of the most common Salesforce best practices for developers.

About Salesforce Developer Role

The Salesforce developer role is among the most beloved role in the Salesforce ecosystem.

But what do Salesforce developers do? Well, Salesforce developers are primarily your programmers and coding experts for all Salesforce projects within the organization.

Their major task is to find code solutions to build apps and automate repetitive tasks. They are also responsible for customizing the Salesforce platform to organizational needs.

Becoming a Software developer within Salesforce has a steep learning curve. However, it is a very rewarding option. The Salesforce developer role is one of the most sought-after careers in the Salesforce ecosystem.

The role is so lucrative and Glassdoor estimates a Salesforce developer’s salary to be around $132,257 per year in the United States as of 2022. More and more tech enthusiasts are jumping onto this luxury train that is the Salesforce developer role.

7 Salesforce Best Practices for Developers

Here are some of the most common Salesforce developer best practices of 2022.

Determine Your Customization Criteria

In the Salesforce ecosystem, customization is at the core of developing a personalized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. Customization helps to personalize the platform for the user making it easy for them to use it.

When choosing the Salesforce features that require customization, it’s essential to follow a defined criterion as a developer.

• What are your goals?
• What are you trying to achieve with the implementations?
• Are the customization changes possible?
• What needs to be added or removed?

With Salesforce, you want to implement functionalities like forecast track, lead source tracking, sales stages, and account stages. The benefits of customization include;

• Scalability – Salesforce software customizations enable a business to factor in future feature requirements. Hence developers can include these criteria without incurring subscription costs.
• Low integration costs – Salesforce integrations enable businesses to integrate with other software for free or at low costs.
• Efficiency – Salesforce customization enables swift processing and easy usage of features by the end user.

Use Registered Salesforce API Tools

The use of registered Salesforce API tools is among the most common and overemphasized Salesforce best practices for developers.

The Salesforce platform allows for integration with third-party applications. Third-party integrations provide a seamless and personalized user experience.

Other than that, integrations avail a whole lot of additional features initially unavailable in the platform.

Developers have access to all APIs and capabilities to build such experiences. For instance, Slack HQ is an independent API that enables communication to be organized among teams. Some of the APIs developers would implement include;

• Events APIs – Enables apps and bots to respond to activity-driven triggers.
• Admin APIs – A subset of Web APIs which automates and simplifies the administration of Slack.
• Status APIs – provides a pragmatic way to monitor the health of Slack.

With APIs, developers can bridge the gap between apps and the Salesforce platform that were not necessarily compatible with the Salesforce ecosystem. There are two types of Salesforce APIs;

Develop a Governance Process

A well-established governance process ensures every member of the team is on the same page regarding the required standards to deliver efficiency with the Salesforce platform.

A governance framework is considered a Salesforce best practice for all developers. The governance  framework involves the following steps; 

Start with the basics

 Identify the key stakeholders that will get affected by the Salesforce developers implementing some APIs or integration capabilities. Is it the sales, marketing, or customer success team? Ensure they understand the basics of governance to make the transition easier.

Prioritize business initiatives and goals

 All roads lead to the set business goals. For a clear governance framework, ensure it adheres to the business initiatives. This enables the stakeholders to determine the necessary tools/resources required to achieve this goal.

Design Process

 A solid design process makes priorities and goals approval easier for relevant stakeholders. Salesforce developers can ask the following questions to figure out the design process applicable to the relevant committee.

• What problem do you want to solve?
• Who has this problem?
• Can the solution help every stakeholder equally?
• What are the requirements for the development project?
• What are the shortcomings? – budget and other constraints.
• What is your ultimate goal?

Create the committee

 Always select committee members from every affected department for the upcoming Salesforce development. Also, set clear roles to reduce confusion during implementation.

Communicate and campaign

At this stage, you have the opportunity to set the tone for the governance process. To communicate successfully, here are some elements to include;

• Communicating regularly
• Encouraging radical transparency
• Senior management commitment
• Sticking to processes and structure

Bulkify Your Code

Bulkification is the design choice to make one large request instead of many small requests. For Salesforce, bulkification revolves around the efficient processing and retrieval of data.

For example, one operation creates 50 records rather than 50 separate operations that each creates one record. This helps Salesforce developers’ transactions avoid governor limits.

Also, Salesforce bulkification improves the organization’s performance and not just the triggers.

Define Developer Skillsets and Rotations

The Salesforce development platform offers several career options for developers. The most common skillsets needed include;

• Salesforce Certified Administrator
• Salesforce Certified Advanced Administrator
• Salesforce Certified App Builder

Depending on the certification you start with, here are the steps to improving your Salesforce developer skillsets;

1. Get Platform Developer certification to improve your skills in developing Salesforce applications using tools like Apex, APIs, and Visualforce.
2. Integrate Salesforce into your daily routine to allow you to create personalized Salesforce for your company.
3. Use Salesforce StackExchange to get expert answers to your Salesforce development questions.
4. Find a Salesforce mentor to hold your hand through development bottlenecks. Identify problems you are facing and work with them to solve them.

Use Salesforce Sandbox

Salesforce sandboxes are copies of Salesforce org in separate environments used for testing, training, and development without compromising the data applied in the organization’s product.

Salesforce sandbox offer tools that enable developers to;

• Isolate customization and development work from your production environment until you’re ready to deploy changes.
• Test changes against copies of your production data and users.
• Provide a training environment.
• Coordinate individual changes into one deployment to production.

Test Everything

This is among the top Salesforce best practices for developers that most developers do without realizing it’s benefits. The success of a Salesforce developer is a working Salesforce application. Whether you are building functionality or customizing Salesforce features, testing the efficiency or operation of these features is essential.

Testing in Apex is critical before your application is deployed to customers. There are two ways of testing an application. One is through the Salesforce user interface, important, but merely testing through the user interface will not catch all of the use cases for your application.

The other way is to test for bulk functionality: up to 200 records can be passed through your code if it’s invoked using SOAP API or by a Visualforce standard set controller.

Conclusion

Salesforce best practices for developers are endless. However, the most important one is to continue upskilling in the Salesforce ecosystem. Get involved in the Trailblazer community to learn and engage with like-minded developers.

What makes a great Salesforce developer is to thrive on overcoming challenges. Keep pushing yourself to improve in the areas of software development in which you are weak.

Are you interested in a Salesforce career? Do you want to upskill and add to your Salesforce knowledge? Here at PlumLogixu we offer certified courses to help you learn in–demand skills. Check out our courses or get in touch to get started.