Salesforce Mobile - Formula Fields with Line Breaks Work Around

If you are an admin for Salesforce Mobile you are probably familiar with how easy it is to get setup and running for simple out of the box implementations. However, you might see issues with line breaks in formula fields. Let me explain:

Formula Fields are rendered at the Salesforce Server for Salesforce Mobile and pushed down. So when you have Formula Field which is a text field with line breaks (BR() Function) the field won't look correct in Salesforce Mobile. Instead of seeing a line break like this:

In Salesforce Mobile you will see

This was giving me quite a headache. Here is the simplest solution I could find.

1. Create a new TextArea field in Salesforce to replace your existing Formula Field.

2. Create a Workflow Rule on the Object. Have the Workflow rule execute every time a record is updated or created. Make sure the formula always evaluates to true.

3. Create a new Workflow Field update for the new TextArea field from step 1. Copy your existing Formula Field's Formula into the new value for the Field.

4. Activate the Workflow.

That's it. Now the formula will be evaluated and stored in Salesforce as a String. It will now be displayed properly in both Salesforce and Salesforce Mobile.

It's too bad it doesn't render properly in Mobile out of the box, but this is a liveable work around.

If anyone has a better solution please share!

Blogging Live From Dreamforce 2011!

So this is my third day here in San Francisco at Dreamforce 2011 and wow. If you take part technology conference and part rock concert, and mix it in a blender you'll get Dreamforce. This is my first time at Dreamforce, and my head is literally spinning with all the different ideas of applications you can build with Force.com. Its incredible.

I've spent a good amount of time in the Developer Zone networking, attending sessions, and participating in the Dreamforce Hackathon. I built a new Force.com application specifically for Dreamforce which integrated with the San Francisco MUNI Transit authority in a matter of hours. Specifically for this event, I took the Chicago Bus Radar Force.com Application, and rebuilt it to make it work with SF MUNI API, and cleaned up the code for others to use more easily. My hope is that attendees have found it useful to find Buses around SF during the conference.

If you want the code for the SF MUNI HTML5 Force.com Application (Wow, thats a Mouthful!), here is a link to the Force.com unmanaged package which I have released under MIT license: https://test.salesforce.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04tZ00000008qDo

Look for a GitHub release in the near future, probably later today!

Networking here has been incredible. Its funny how many people you know from Twitter, the Force.com Developer Boards, and various blogs but you've never met face to face. To meet them in person in real life is a rare opportunity given our geographic differences, and the fact we are all up in the clouds! Connecting with folks here has been phenomenal.

I didn't even mention how awesome the Metallica concert was last night? It was hilarious to see folks in the audience using iPads to take photos and videos during the concert. Only at Dreamforce.

I present my session tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM, so hopefully folks don't party too hard tonight and wake up! It'll be worth it!

Google Charts API and Force.com

Recently I created an open-source project for integrating Google Charts API and Force.com to create custom dashboards. The project is a Visualforce component that leverages a custom Apex Controller, a custom dashboard record object, and Google Charts API to dynamically generate charts. Its pretty simple and can be used out of the box via "clicks not code". The codebase could be extended upon for lots of different use cases if developers so desire.

Here is a demonstration video:


And here is a code deep dive video:

You can access the repository here:

http://github.com/corycowgill/Google-Charts-Dashboards-for-Force.com

Hope you find some uses for this!