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David Somekh calling external software from salesForce
Our firm generates a product code by running a coder.exe application, which reads product description from a file: data_in.txt
Calculate the product code and return it in a file: data_out.zip
We would like to use our coder from SalesForce,
Meaning:
Run our application from SalesForce Tab by pressing a button.
The application should get a data_in.txt file as an input from SalesForce
And return the code to SalesForce in a data_out.zip file as a result.
Is there any apex exchange software that can help us do this? Does anyone have experience in doing these kinds of things?
Can someone give us an example on how to do this?
Thanks
Web browsers are also not allowed to write the data_out.zip to a local disk.
Best bet is to apply the product code naming algorithm as a Salesforce formula or nest an S-Control in a Web Tab.
That's exacly what I needed to do also. Kick off an external program with data from salesforce and send the results back to salesforce. Here's how I did it. If there is an easier way, I would like to know about it.
-Set up a web server - with SSL, PHP (or other web prog lang) and salesforce API. (You should be able to "exec" the coder.exe via PHP on this server)
-create a custom link with session, location, and relevant ID
(ie: https://yourserver.com/yourpage.php—sessionId={!API_Session_ID}&location={!API_Partner_Server_URL_70}&your_sf_object_id={!Your_SF_Objet_ID} )-the "yourpage.php" uses the saleforce API to retrieve the "coder.exe" input file, then execs it on your site, then uses the API again to attach the output into the object it came from.
This method works OK for me because the program I execute takes quite a bit of time to complete. So the above is just a way to kick it off. The last step in the program after uploading the result to SalesForce is to send an automatic email to the person who requested it to let them know the results are ready. This is a greatly simplified explaination, but just letting you know that it can be done.
Message Edited by sean_at_33050 on 09-29-2006 11:19 AM