I recently had to do an analysis about chatter as my customer wanted it to be enabled and i thought it would be worth sharing it here.

What is Chatter?

Before we start to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of chatter let me give you a sense of what chatter is.

Chatter is like a social networking website (twittter, orkut, facebook etc) with the only difference that the users of Chatter are the people within a company (ie Salesforce.com users). Chatter is an application which allows you to connect and share information with your colleagues in real time. Chatter when used efficiently could lead to excellent Service and Sales within your company.

As an example, let's say that you are using the "Call Center" application of Salesforce. A customer of yours has raised a case and it is being taken care of by your customer service representative. If the representative does not know a solution, he can simply write a post in chatter asking for help. His colleagues could help him quickly by replying to the post. This would lead to quicker customer service.

More Information about Chatter:

You can find more information, code recipes, and an excellent custom application called "Chatter Bubbles". click here.

What you can't find in the above link is obviously the disadvantages. So, let's see it here.

Features not available as of now :

• Chatter could be enabled for the entire organization only. So, if you say that you want only a had full of users to use Chatter then that's not possible.
• The profile page (Profile tab) of every user is not customizable. When you login to Salesforce, at the right topmost corner you will see your Name next to the Setup link. When you click on this link you will be shown your profile page, which displays the people you follow, the people who follow you etc. This page is not customizable.
• Chatter email notifications are predefined. You cannot customize them.
• Anybody can follow anybody. NO RESTRICTIONS.
• You can see the Show/Hide Chatter button on the home page as well as on the detail page of any record (the associated object should be enabled for chatter). You cannot remove it from the home page as well as from the detail page of records. The Chatter gadget is not associated with page layout and hence cannot be removed.

I hope that these will be addressed soon by salesforce.

Some Quick Tips:

Get registered for a free developer preview - Click here

Chatter Email Settings:









Chatter custom feeds:

You can write triggers to create custom feeds. All objects related to chatter are exposed through the API and hence you can play around with them. Here is a small example

trigger customfeeds on Opportunity (after update) 
{
     for ( Opportunity newopp: Trigger.new) 
     {
             Opportunity oldopp = Trigger.oldMap.get(newopp.id);
             if (newopp.Probability != oldopp.Probability)
             {
                 FeedPost fpost = new FeedPost();
                 fpost.ParentId = newopp.Id; 
                 fpost.Body = ' - Probability has changed from '+oldopp.Probability +'%'+ ' to '+newopp.Probability +'%';
                 insert fpost;
             }
     }           

    
}

As a continuation to my previous post of  "Displaying nested PageBlock tables", in this article i would be explaining the steps to expand/collapse your nested table. To read the previous article Click here


Why do this???

Mainly, to improve readability and user friendliness. Secondly, by doing so you better understand the power of Javascript combined with Visualforce.

Step 1:

You will need two images, one for expand and the other for collapse. Below are the two images. Right-click the images and save it to your machine.

- Upload this image into Static Resource as Plus_Image

- Upload this image into Static Resource as Minus_Image


Step 2:

Upload these files into Static Resource.

Step 3:

Create an Apex Class named "nestedqueryexample". Paste the following code.

public class nestedqueryexample
{
  public List<Account> getaccsandtmember()
  {
      List<Account> accounts = [Select Id,(Select TeamMemberRole, User.Name From Account.AccountTeamMembers), Name, BillingCountry from Account];
      return accounts;
  }
}

Step 4:

Create a Visualforce Page named "nestedqueryexample". Paste the following code.

<apex:page tabstyle="Account" controller="nestedqueryexample" showheader="false">
<script>
        function switchMenu(obj,obj1,obj2) 
        {
            var el = document.getElementById(obj);                                       
            if ( el.style.display != 'none' ) {
            el.style.display = 'none';
            }
            else {
            el.style.display = '';
            }
            var e2 = document.getElementById(obj1);                                       
            if ( e2.style.display != 'none' ) {
            e2.style.display = 'none';
            }
            else {
            e2.style.display = '';
            }
             var e3 = document.getElementById(obj2);                                       
            if ( e2.style.display != 'none' ) {
            e3.style.display = 'none';
            }
            else {
            e3.style.display = '';
            }

        }
</script>
    <apex:pageblock >     
        <apex:pageblocktable value="{!accsandtmember}"  var="accdet">
            <apex:column >
                   <apex:facet name="header">                                        
                         Team Members                                                                               
                    </apex:facet>
                    <apex:outputpanel id="plusimage">
                          <apex:image url="{!$Resource.Plus_Image}" onclick="switchMenu('{!$Component.inlinetablesec}','{!$Component.minusimage}','{!$Component.plusimage}')" title="Expand - Team Member's"/> 
                    </apex:outputpanel>
                    <apex:outputpanel id="minusimage" style="display:none;">
                          <apex:image url="{!$Resource.Minus_image}" onclick="switchMenu('{!$Component.inlinetablesec}','{!$Component.plusimage}','{!$Component.minusimage}')" title="Collapse - Team Member's"/>
                    </apex:outputpanel>
                    <apex:outputpanel id="inlinetablesec" style="display:none;">
                                                <apex:variable value="{!0}" var="rowNum"/>
                                                <apex:repeat var="count" value="{!accdet.AccountTeamMembers}">
                                                    <apex:variable var="rowNum" value="{!rowNum+1}"/>
                                                </apex:repeat>
                            <apex:outputText rendered="{!rowNum=0}">  No Team Members  </apex:outputText>
                        <apex:pageblocktable value="{!accdet.AccountTeamMembers}" var="tm" rendered="{!rowNum>0}">
                            <apex:column headerValue="Team Member">
                                   <apex:outputfield value="{!tm.User.Name}"/>
                             </apex:column>
                             <apex:column headerValue="Role">
                                   <apex:outputfield value="{!tm.TeamMemberRole}"/>
                             </apex:column>                          
                        </apex:pageblocktable>
                   </apex:outputpanel>     
            </apex:column>
            <apex:column headervalue="Account Name">
                    <apex:outputtext value="{!accdet.Name}"/>
            </apex:column>
            <apex:column headervalue="Billing Country">
                    <apex:outputtext value="{!accdet.BillingCountry}"/>
            </apex:column>
        </apex:pageblocktable>
    </apex:pageblock>
</apex:page>

Code Explained:

In this example, we have used a Javascript function named "switchMenu". In our visualforce Page, we have placed the nested pageblocktable, the expand image and the collapse image into three apex:outputpanel's.

When the expand or collapse image is clicked when call the Javascript function which displays the necessary outputpanel's and hides the ones that are not required.

If you note carefully, we have passed parameters to the javascript function using $Component variable. Components inside a table or repeat tag are preappended with an integer value to identify them uniquely.

For example, our nested pageblocktable has an id "inlinetablesec". So, for the first row the id of this table would be 0:inlinetablesec and for the next 1:inlinetablesec and so on. This is done automatically by Salesforce, and we make use of this in our javascript function to display/hide the respective tables.

Hope this article helps you in some way. Write to me in case you have any difficulties.


Screenshot:

I recently had to work on a requirement which included nested queries and nested tables. Thanks to the forums and the developer guides, i got the information from a couple of posts and articles.

This article is just a consolidation of information spread over many places.

Scenario:

I will have to display a list of Accounts. Under each account i will have to display the associated Account Team Members.


SOQL Query:

The SOQL Query to retrieve both the Account Details as well as the Account Team Member details will be as follows..

Select Id,(Select TeamMemberRole, User.Name From Account.AccountTeamMembers), Name, BillingCountry from Account

This is what is called a nested query which is quite obvious from the fact that you can see two "Select" statements in a single query..

Now, let us create a simple visualforce page to display the query results.


Visualforce Page:

<apex:page tabstyle="Account" controller="nestedqueryexample">
    <apex:pageblock> 
        <apex:pageblocktable value="{!accsandtmember}"  var="accdet">
            <apex:column >
                   <apex:facet name="header">                                        
                         Team Members                                                                               
                    </apex:facet>
                    <apex:pageblocktable value="{!accdet.AccountTeamMembers}" var="tm">
                        <apex:column headerValue="Team Member">
                               <apex:outputfield value="{!tm.User.Name}"/>
                         </apex:column>
                         <apex:column headerValue="Role">
                               <apex:outputfield value="{!tm.TeamMemberRole}"/>
                         </apex:column>                          
                    </apex:pageblocktable>
            </apex:column>
            <apex:column headervalue="Account Name">
                    <apex:outputtext value="{!accdet.Name}"/>
            </apex:column>
            <apex:column headervalue="Billing Country">
                    <apex:outputtext value="{!accdet.BillingCountry}"/>
            </apex:column>
        </apex:pageblocktable>
    </apex:pageblock>
</apex:page>  

Controller (Apex Class):

public class nestedqueryexample
{
  public List<Account> getaccsandtmember()
  {
      List<Account> accounts = [Select Id,(Select TeamMemberRole, User.Name From Account.AccountTeamMembers), Name, BillingCountry from Account];
      return accounts;
  }
}

Your final output will look like this.


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