Author Archives: lkao

This homework asks you to create a trigger that creates 2 identical Contacts after an Account is created.

Considerations:

• If I need to create 2 Contacts that are children of a newly-created Account, what DML statement is needed, and when is it needed? (Hint: before or after insert?)
• Bulkifying code, a very Salesforce-y thing. In your trigger, where do you want your DML statement to occur? Why?
• I initially just assigned the firstContact to the secondContact. That surfaced an error. Why?

You don’t have to be technical to want to learn some basic Salesforce Apex concepts (like triggers). If you’re a PM working on a solution that relies on Salesforce, learning how to read Salesforce Apex can give you valuable insight into how prior generations customized your instance. It also helps you troubleshoot some error messages that inevitably come up, saving your resource-constrained Salesforce developers time.

David Liu’s SFDC99 website is a wonderful resource that helps non-techies understand the basics of Salesforce’s proprietary language. He’s gone even further by outlining a self-paced Salesforce Developer Curriculum for you do-it-yourself-type learners.

Usually when I see websites that help teach Salesforce Apex (their proprietary coding language), the sites all assume a basic understanding of Java and/or object-oriented concepts.

For those of you accidental Salesforce administrators who need to troubleshoot technical errors, or want to take that declarative logical thinking to the next level, make sure to check out the Women Code Heroes site for some great content. (Full disclosure: I’ve been fondly reading the posts here as I’m on my own “learn Apex basics” journey within a greater volunteer community effort to expose coding concepts and Apex familiarity to women.)